I stumbled across the Star Wars Uncut project a couple years ago, then forgot all about it. Well, it’s alive and well and there’s some fantastic stuff being made for it, including Malcolm Sutherland’s great animated bits.
So, while you should go and watch the entirety of Star Wars Uncut, I heartily recommend that you spend some time at Malcolm’s site and check out his videos. I really dig his style and wanted to share a couple highlights here.
I noticed this morning that there was a snowflake button on the YouTube video viewer this morning. It appears to be on videos that don’t show advertisements. Click it, and let it snow! Below is an image of one of my Unfriendly Giant cartoons. It’s just an image so that when summer rolls around and YouTube removes the snow button you can see that it was there. Click the image to go to the video and then click the snowflake to see what happens. Merry Christmas!
I haven’t seen an Apelad cartoon since I (tried to) shut down my flcikr account. But one came across my view today that I had to share. I present, the seven deadly sins of Star Wars. Man, let me tell you, I’m totally guilty of Greedo.
But really, I’m thinking that George committed at least seven other sins in Star Wars, the least of them being Episodes I, II and III. No, maybe those are the greatest. That’s not true. I liked most of Episode III. But Jar Jar? Man.
What do you think George Lucas’ greatest “sins” in Star Wars are?
So, this is the third Unfriendly Giant flash cartoon that I made. Again, I think it was a step up from the previous two in terms of effort and quality. Something that I notice right away is the new art style I used for the “props” in the cartoon. You’ll notice that there are lines edging many of the shapes on the skateboard and the BBQ. In the past, I kept things looking like (in my mind) paper or felt cutouts. Even when I animate, I imagine the art projects I did as a kid where I’d cut out all the body parts and pin them together at the joints. I think I also put more effort into the “acting” of the characters and the action of the cartoon as a whole. I felt that was needed because this cartoon was pretty heavy on dialogue, I thought.
Funny looking at the “rugrats” and/or “ankle biters” in the cartoon. They sort of remind me of chubby versions of my little Dude. I can’t believe I’d do an Unfriendly Giant cartoon and not put in an Easter Egg. If you can find it, let me know in the comments.
If you watch my first Unfriendly Giant flash cartoon right before this one, you’ll notice a few changes I made and a few things I learned. The first thing I notice is the pitch of the audio. For some reason, I sped-up the audio on my first Unfriendly Giant cartoon. I don’t know why, but that’s how it is, and that’s how it’ll always be.
The second thing that’s different is the mouth animation/vocal sync. For my first cartoon I was happy to have a mouth at all. It moved around Unfriendly’s face a bit and got bigger and smaller. For this cartoon, I changed the mouth drawings each frame. I think there are about five or seven different shapes that match different speaking sounds. That added a lot of work to this cartoon.
I spent a lot more time making animations within animations as well. You should be able to see lots of little reoccurring movements in all the characters. Is there anything that stands out to you as an improvement over my first UFG cartoon? Or at least a difference.
There are definitely two Easter Eggs in this cartoon. One at the end and one somewhere in the middle. Can you find them? I’ll post my final of the three UFG flash cartoons on Friday.
Let's be honest about what's going on here. I post to my blog, and I usually just share interesting links that I find elsewhere. I'm sorry that I don't post more regularly. I'm sorry that I haven't found the inspiration to post regularly with my own thoughts. But that's how it is. Thanks for stopping by though, I appreciate it. Let me know you were here by leaving a comment.
The Unfriendly Giant
Visit my Unfriendly Giant page for cartoons, videos, history, commentary.
I stumbled across the Star Wars Uncut project a couple years ago, then forgot all about it. Well, it’s alive and well and there’s some fantastic stuff being made for it, including Malcolm Sutherland’s great animated bits.
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