SexuaLobster

Great Destiny Man update

The youtube link is a small test render.  The first two GDM cartoons drove many people to assume that Great Destiny Man was intended to be Steven Seagal.  I can't deny there's a resemblance to 1990s Seagal but it is not intentional.  So in the new series, as well as re-designing GDM to take him slightly further away from Steven Seagal, there is a famous actor named Steven Seagull who people constantly confuse Great Destiny Man for.  This bothers GDM a lot because he's on his own quest for fame but no matter how many foes he kills, he'll never get more famous than an actor.

The thirsty heroes arrive.

The ale sucks.  This episode is kinda boozy.  If you've seen GDM ep 2 you might remember that this character Gendo is a big time hallucinogenic berry eater.  That will play a prominent part in episodes #2 and #4.

I finished at the studio, and for a short yet glorious period I was finally able to jump into animating episode 1.  Now that it's half finished I'm going away on holidays for a month, so I probably won't post for a while (unless you guys want to see holiday snaps?)  But generally my studio time has ended and I'm back on my bullshit. 

I'm really enjoying making a fantasy thing, it might be my favourite genre to work in (other than degenerate urban environments with manwhores and small time scammers of course).  The studio I worked at seem confident that there will be a season 2 of Bluey (the show I worked on), I don't know when or if that will happen, but I'll be prioritising GDM since I've signed an agreement to make it and all that...  Also I find it much more enjoyable making this sort of thing from home, even if it doesn't pay well. I get to animate every part of the cartoon, and do sound and music and all that stuff, not just storyboarding.  Great Destiny Man will not
contain any highly stylised dogs, no sirree.

Patreon of Destiny

I'd like to share some finished shots from GDM episode 1 but I've only got a bunch of half finished ones at this time.  The client (an american company called Octopie) liked the animatic of the first episode so that is the first hurdle navigated.

I've been thinking for a while now about whether to treat the four GDM episodes as patreon projects and I've decided not to.  My reason for considering it is that the fee that I will be paid for making the series isn't very high for what I'd like to deliver.  For a while I thought about over delivering by animating something really dense  and beautiful, hiring an assistant animator or perhaps even two, but I realised that while I'd like to be earning more from it, I don't need your pledges to make this series.  Also Octopie will own the episodes, the characters and all the underlying IP involved, so I don't think it would be ethically pure of me to take money from you when the work won't be mine to control in any case (although part of the deal is that I have a non-exclusive license so I can upload them wherever I like including youtube).

When I no longer have a job or a client and I resume work on Falcon Hat or another Fernando & Gooseman cartoon, or another hideous music video, or Meth Orcs 2, that will be the appropriate time to come back to Patreon.  I'll signal it as clearly as I can so everyone has a chance to cancel and no one gets any surprises.  Also I've changed the description on my patreon landing page and also removed the goals except for the facetious ones.  

Thank you all of you again for supporting my work.  Honestly a few of the cartoons I made in the three years I have used this site are not very good, but I'm very proud of others.  I'm so glad I made Fernando and the Disk of Chaos, Sweet Sweet Goo, Meth Orcs and Tobey Maguire.  There's a few more that are good but not great and sadly there are a few stinkers.  It would not have been possible without you all.

I'll continue to post a kind of production blog here in the manner I have been over the last year.

Post of Great Destiny

Full steam ahead on episode 1, Great Destiny Man and the Shadow of Treachery.

The above track is an early version of the GDM theme with a more restrained selection of instruments than the original theme.  I have rarely bothered with stringed instrument sample packs but I think I've been treating them like pads and with more careful arrangement they can sound good.

I'm maybe 3/4 through the animatic for ep 1, I've got most of the lines in and I think it has a good energy.  Sometimes at this stage I'm like yecch i'm sure it will come together later but I feel good about this one already.

I can't remember if I posted the specs of the series when I posted about it recently, or if it had been decided at that point, but it's 4 episodes, totalling 12 ish minutes run time.  I've got until July to do it, which is a long way off but I'm going to take some time off in November.

If you're in Australia, you can watch Bluey, the show I've been working on from October 1 on the ABC kids channel.   If you're not in Australia, it should get pretty wide distribution so it might be on your TV next year.
Definitely if you're in the UK.  They've started posting clips, here's a clip from an episode I storyboarded.   In my storyboard the characters did some pretty cool dances in this scene and later and then they changed all the dancing in the episode to FLOSSING.  Which I think will appear dated very quickly but no one asked me.  Also flossing is easier to animate.  

Finally the scene I animated for SMOSH finally came out.  I delivered this back in May, but I think they sat on it because they had other anime content they wanted to do.  My bit starts around 3:10.  And no I didn't write it or have anything to do with conception I designed the characters from the script and animated it.  I didn't read the script properly at first and didn't realise they were all sitting down the whole time, if I had I wouldn't have given one guy a massive back-strapped sword, nor the other guy a cape, nor the girl a massive bouncy hair thing.  But then it worked out cause it's kinda funny that the guy on the left is sitting impossibly on his sword.  Anyway it was pretty fun, I don't think my anime gels very well with the other animators, but I think it's fine, the thing is pretty inoffensive and easy to watch over all.

Grapefruit Black Market and kids show promo.

If you'd like to see a little bit of the show I've been working on, check this promo out.   I thought I was going to finish in 3 weeks, but turns out its 6.  Grrk, i'll get there.  I've started storyboarding the first Great Destiny Man episode, but I won't have anything to show from that for a while.

But anyway I finally finished the comic!  It took just a little bit over a year but I got there.  Feels good! 

In case you're wondering, this isn't a patron project, I'll save them for cartoons.

This was a really good exercise though, something to keep me drawing humans during a period when I'm drawing highly stylised dogs most of the time.

The story has places where it loses energy a bit but from the point where Fernando encounters the trio of pervlords known as the Grapefruit Black Market I think it's a wonderful journey, and I really enjoyed drawing Big Plums.  I'd love to keep him around and use him somewhere.  If this was somewhat re-written I think it would make a great cartoon, but the first thing to do regarding that is to leave it marinate for a while and then look at it again with some objectivity.

New series of great destiny?

I've been talking with a fellow I've worked for in the past about making a web series for his company.  My first idea was "Climate Cops", which was a legally different version of my fat old Captain Planet character starring in a reality tv show where he busts polluters.  I wrote some pretty good material for it and I'd like to return to it, but the scripts came out too long.

Then I went over my Great Destiny Man scripts.  I've tightened up the two good ones and written two new ones.

If you haven't seen my Great Destiny Man cartoons, can I recommend watching the first one and skipping the second one entirely, it's a bit shit (I don't know what the hell I was thinking with that one let's just forget it happened).

I want to reboot him so he doesn't look like Steven Seagal or Samurai Jack.

Here's an early effort.  I like the torn skirt rather than the pantsuit he had, I want to do something else for his sleeves though.  I want him to be really crusty but every little scar or bit of frayed hair is something that needs to be redrawn.  I think I'd like him to have one of those cool hats to keep the rain off, though that will obscure his beautiful face.

At the moment it's looking like 4 episodes, and I think all of them are strong.  12 minutes run time.  We'll see if it happens, at the moment the signs look pretty good.  Sadly they're not offering a great deal of money for it...can't have everything!

Here's the latest two pages of the comic.  Post will resume afterwards.

"I'm sorry, Fernando." sighed Apricot as he was slowly swallowed. 

"I couldn't get it up anymore.  I turned to the Black Market for help, but my quest for erections shattered my morality.  Stop his rampage!  Save Pleasure Island!"  

The two manwhores shared teary gazes as Apricot vanished into the maw.

"Apricot was a messy bitch and I'm glad he's dead!" yelled Big Plums, glowing with malice.  

"Now face me, Fernando, or have you forgotten how?"

David Nishball

 Invigorated by apricot’s passionate sacrifice, Fernando assumed the ancient manwhore pose. 

For a moment Fernando felt as if he was the uncracked tub of yogurt within his fridge. 

The goat that dared to graze with wolves and lay with lions. 

The eye of the storm of sensuality. 

Fernando was ready.

“This technique is forbidden but I see no other way”,  

Sudds & Macho Man Randy Savage

I’ve incorporated a number of suggestions into a plan to end the comic. It’s been going for almost a year! Unfortunately the ending requires 5-6 pages, so still a ways to go. But I’ve made it this far, I’m seeing this through to the end.

Speaking of endings I’m on probably my second last storyboard on the kids show. So another 5-6 weeks. Then if the GDM series happens that’s what I’ll jump on to next, with GREAT relief.

If you’re wondering what happened to my other two animated projects: I shelved the horse cartoon because I got so close to the end that a lot of what I have left is the lame tricky stuff that I did not feel like doing earlier. Once I finish at the studio I intend to finish that, not as a matter of urgency but I do plan to finish it this year. If I go ahead with Great Destiny Man, I’ll have to shelve Fernando & Gooseman’s Falcon Hat cartoon. I only got about 1% into it so I can’t feasibly finish it with part time effort.

Big Pumps

Here's another little art update.

Randy's bringing the booze.  (her lips dont move yet but she's speaking here)

She has a nice rhino hat, similar to Gooseman's walrus hat in the comic.

I've started painting backgrounds and drawing background characters so hopefully in my next post I'll have some finished shots to share.

I was planning on storyboarding the whole thing before animating but since I storyboard at work I found it too tempting to start working on the cartoon properly.  The last 3 minutes or so are written but otherwise unplanned.

Here's what's been happening on Pleasure Island recently:

“If more people had signed my petition, this never would have happened.”  Gooseman muttered darkly.  

He then tipped the remainder of the fetid liquid in the bucket over his head and disappeared, his novelty hat allowing him to conceal himself amongst the horde, his motives as inscrutable as his expression.

CoverEye & ridjf

Fernando watched sadly as his buddy bailed on him.  All of a sudden Big Plums pelvic trusted him a good distance away, bouncing painfully off of several stinky walruses. A winded Fernando got up, noting that the remnants of the grapefruit juice had protected him. He realized the key to defeating the titillating titan was to turn his own strength against him, but first he had to reach him.

Dalton Becker 

Thanks for reading!

Falcon Hat Animation test

I want to have more character animation in Falcon Hat, so I'm experimenting with the idea of dropping the amount of shading on the characters, drawing with dark grey instead of coloured lines (the way I used to up until around 2010), and using simpler mouth shapes with no jaw movement. Here's a shot I animated today in three stages.  

Super rough - this includes the second part which I haven't animated yet where he crushes a crazy bean into the punch.  I've roughed out over half of the film (which will be around 8 minutes long) in this fashion.

2nd stage

Here's what I did today (took about 6 hours)

I'm hoping this approach will make my cartoons more fun to watch, and also mean I spend more time drawing and less time mucking about with shading and other crud.  They do lose a bit of the glossiness but gain movement which is what I think most people want from a cartoon.  I'll still use my regular techniques in closeups if it looks good.

Here's two new comic pages I'm really happy with (Big Plums has just sucked down a glowing pink potion):

"That smells like bubble gum flavour!" barked Gooseman, who was mad for some reason.  

Big Plums fell to his knees, clutching his groin as it started to glow brightly, groaning and moaning like a fresh walrus still getting to grips with his new life in the Pit.

"Oh yes, I can feel it!" he shouted as his body began to heave and pulsate. 

Eidridin & Zap Gun

Then two things happened at once.  The storm broke, and Big Plums bellowed the most provocative moan that Fernando had ever heard.  This was followed by a stench that seemed oddly familiar...

Gooseman recognized it right away. “No! You wouldn’t!”

But it was too late to stop what was coming.  A herd of walruses burst from the tree line, drawn by Big Plums’s mating call and artificial walrus pheromones.

bigtasty67 

Mammal Juice v1

This is the very first version of Fernando's track from Falcon Hat.  He's going to perform this at Gooseman's networking costume party until he is interrupted by a rambunctious guest (it might sound like what happens in Moancore but it's different).

I'm going to re-record half of the end part, the energy is off in the first bit and the last bit, but also the words dark and darkest are too close together so I'll replace darkest with fiercest.  

I've roughed out about 2:30 of Falcon Hat.  Fernando's brother Hernando will be making a quasi-triumphant return.

Here is where they greet and combine their musks after a long time apart.

To my shame I've only managed one new comic page recently.

I really let myself get too far into detail here, and I kinda messed up Big Plums face in panel 2, but I am happy with panels 3 & 4.  I don't draw back muscles very often and I drew panel 1 without a reference so Big Plums looks kinda weird.  I should do some back muscle studies.

I think I'll just keep plugging away at the comic and the animatic, I think when my job finishes in September I ought to have a finished 7-8 minute animatic to jump into.

Diss Rap + Falcon Hat

The above rap is intended to be Fernando's freestyling diss rap to Big Plums (the villain in the collab comic).  It loses energy in the middle a bit, I think I might re-write or edit it down somehow for the final version.

I was waiting for Smosh to release the cartoon I animated a scene for before I made my next post but they appear to be sitting on it so....

I've started Falcon Hat!

Roughs only for some time to come I'm afraid.

This is set during a costume party Gooseman throws to try and promote Fernando's new material.  Gooseman is grinding a crazy bean into the punch here in order to give the journalists something to write about.

Perhaps you noticed that Gooseman does not appear to be wearing a costume even though it's a costume party.  Well think again!

Here we see Gooseman's halfassed costume item and also meet our antagonist, journalist for Ass monthly, Brett, who is dressed as either a puma or a panther, I haven't decided yet.

Falcon Hat will probably be around 7-8 minutes long, yes it will be a doozy.  It will have action, love, obsession, and I haven't decided whether it needs a musical performance part yet.  

I must admit I haven't picked up the Horse cartoon since finishing the Smosh cartoon, I'm more interested in this now.  I think I'll end up working on them simultaneously.

Aaaarg I can't wait my job to finish so I can work on this properly.   That's probably bad on some level.  And also retreat into my hermetic lifestyle again.  Being surrounded by people all day tires me out.  

Also I realised I can compress gifs really easily.  Sorry for the huge gifs in previous posts, I will compress them from here on out which will hopefully make these posts better for your bandwidth.

Here's the pages for the diss rap:

Fernando knew his time hanging around on street corners would pay off eventually. He had witnessed many a rap battle, and started his flow.  

*diss rap*

Gooseman added a desultory "woahh" but without his trademark autotune it fell flat and felt like an unnecessary addition. 

Shocked by the mellifluos energy of Fernando's rhymes, Big Plums spun out, his chin hitting the grass painfully. “This was a dance off, morons” Big Plums spat. 

It was pointed out that Fernando's had it pretty easy in this comic, he has yet to be truly challenged.  And I agree, I don't think it will have any resonance if he is not tested.  So I guess it still has some ways to go.

Thanks for reading my super cool post to the end!

Name shame

So after ruminating about it for 2 weeks I decided to change my youtube display name back to SexuaLobster (If you didn't read my last post, I changed it to "Nice Man" to see how that felt).

Only I'm not allowed to.  When I try it says "this does not seem to meet our names policy".  I'm guessing it's because it has sex in the title.  If I try to learn more about the names policy I am taken to a page with precious little of interest on it.

So basically I'm an idiot and shot myself in the foot by experimenting with my display name.  I've changed it to my real name for now.  

I thought about using the name "Greasy Tales", which currently is the name of my second channel but I like it enough to make it my main name.  Anyone dislike that name?  I think it's distinctive and it accurately describes what my channel is about.

*actually after posting this i ended up going with Greasy Tales.  Something about using my regular name weirds me out*

The path to the channel is still youtube.com/sexualobster thankfully.

Darn it, now I really regret doing that.

The Smosh cartoon is finished, they may request some changes but it's pretty much done, hence why I'm back on the Fernando comic.  Fernando disses Big Plums in a freestyle rap so my next task is to make the rap.  I feel like this story is finally winding towards an ending. 

May's over already, name change.

I don't have any images to enhance this post with, this month I've been working on a commission for Smosh in the time I usually spend on my projects, and I'm not allowed to post anything from it.

I took it on because Smosh are a big employer I've never worked for before, and also I thought it might be cool to spend part of the budget on animation assistance and get some directing experience.  I'm almost finished it and I'll be able to get back to the Fernando comic and Horse cartoon this week.  I'm told they want to upload it on the 5th.  I'll post about it when it goes up.

It's an anime parody, and I'm enjoying animating in that style more than I thought I would.  The characters are reasonably complex in terms of line art, but they are coloured very simply, and so I can give them more fluid movement with less effort, and I get to spend more time drawing.  

It kind of made me wonder if I could tweak my own style to make it more fun to watch and to work in.  

I wrote a beautiful Fernando & Gooseman script this week, one that is very much like the very first things I made back in 2005-2006.  It's set at a costume party hosted by Gooseman, and it's a non conventional jumble of stuff with an ensemble cast that flies in the face of good writing practices.

Unfortunately, like everything I write these days, it ended up being quite long, it would be something like 7-8 minutes in length.  I now have 3 Fernando cartoon ideas around that length, several half finished ones, and one 30 minute one.  I have tried writing some other concepts over the past few months, but I haven't gotten anything past the second page.

I think after I finish on the kids show in 3 months time I ought to make the thing I most want to make, completely setting aside practical considerations like appeal and time.  Whether it will be the costume party script I wrote this week I'm not sure, I'll need to let it sit for a while and look at it again.

Apologies for the lack of posts, I've been working 60+ hours a week at the two jobs but slowly we are winding towards the time when I return to my usual again.  I think I can finish the Smosh thing over the next few days.  And I'll finish on the show in August or September.

The other thing I did recently was change my youtube display name to "Nice Man".  I've been wanting to change my name for years now, I've always wondered if my cartoons have suffered somewhat from people's reluctance to click on an artist who has sex in their title.  

Anyway so far all that's happened is a whole bunch of people have asked what the deal is and the views have gone down, not up.  I suspect that's because the youtube algorithms don't like people changing their name.  

It is a risky thing to do and also Nice Man is rather generic, I struggle to think of a name that I want to represent myself with.  My other ideas were "Platonic Lobster" (Kind of want to get away from lobsters though, I don't share an affinity with them), "Ol' Scabby" (still suffers from extreme crustiness, and containing an apostrophe is problematic), and "Spicyboy" (this would get more and more ridiculous as I get older, much like SexuaLobster).  I also considered just using my real name, which is probably what I should do, but it doesn't appeal to me.

Anyways, I'll probably change it back to SexuaLobster since its caused the views to decline and its all for nothing if people don't watch the cartoons.  

Thanks for reading my wordwall, I'm interested to hear from you guys: what was your first reaction when you saw the name "SexuaLobster", did you click on something despite the name or did it not matter in the slightest?  Are any of those options I listed clearly superior to Nice Man?  Should I just go back to SexuaLobster and just wallow in it?

Horse cartoon update

The lyrics here are "Get out of the way" and it is the second time the verse occurs.  The first time is a more straight representation but for this one I thought I'd go with dancing animals.

This took a long time but was worth it I think.  I've pulled the background straight out of My Mother in Law is a Scorpion, although it might be fun to imagine an animal bar or club I think this works fine.  I changed the jumping sheep to a flamingo because I realised I have a sheep in 2 shots time and one is enough.

This one is less spectacular, and it's not finished yet but I'm going to leave it to the end.  

The background is a placeholder, I'm not sure what I'll do yet.  Also I tried to repurpose the horse poo from earlier but I don't think it's working.  I think he should maybe vomit some sparkles and a butterfly as well as rainbow elements.

The next one I'm going to do is this workout shot which is based on those awesome 1980s spandex exercise videos that used to be on in the morning.

With every rotation, Fernando felt his libido spiralling out of his control, but Plum's oppressive beats sparked his imagination. 

Encapsulating and emasculating, Plum basks in raps abating his wrath in fact he's fading, Fernado laughs, "Amazing." 

Gooseman staggers to his feet behind him, waiting, "I told you you needed skills other than masturbating."

by Z Zreck

Fernando's going to diss Big Plums with some free styling now, I've already received some great suggestions.

Finally!  I've taken on a second job that will go for the next month, and will eat up the time I would spend on I'm a Horse.  I'll probably regret it. I'm doing it mostly because I want to get some directing experience.  I think it will be the sort of thing that I'll be able to link to but I'm not certain of that yet.

Space Horse

From humble beginnings...

2 days of work later...

I'm not yet satisfied with the way the keys move, they wobble a bit and they pop into 3d. I'm prepared to give myself some slack because this is one of the tougher things I've attempted but I think I can still make this one smoother.  But for now I'd like to step away from it. 

Meanwhile on Pleasure Island...

Fernando eyeballed the plum, its hidden speakers exploded into some kind of beatbox. 

Big Plums erected sausage hit the floor like a supportive stool, he spun himself in various clockwise directions like a DJ spins his records. 

Fernando felt challenged.. Mentally challenged. 

"How do I break this dance?"

by Eidridin 

Big Plums looks a little bit like a meat patty here, I wanted to look at references (search term: "fat man back muscles"?) but because I screen capture the footage to make the video I don't want to be seen to be using a reference, which is silly but still...  If I ever animate this tale I'll fix a number of things.

I would really like to animate this story some time (i'd rewrite and expand it so it makes more sense).  The battle between Fernando and the Grapefruit Black Market is the closest to a DBZ style extended-fight-scene-with-eccentric-villains I've ever come.  Heaps of people have made good suggestions regarding the motivations of the villains, I just haven't used them.  But it wouldn't be hard to add those parts in later.

WIPping my steed

I've got a few big shots not quite done at the moment, nothing here is entirely finished.

There's a guitar solo, (which I've achieved by recording the solo at slower speed and then speeding it up because I'm not good enough to play it at the tempo of the song), and I thought it would be cool to simulate a camera spinning around the horse and the horse's hooves split into fingers.

I was originally going to rotoscope this (film myself playing the solo and draw over it, like the spoon shot in Tobey Maguire) but my camera is busted and I decided to attempt it without.  I'm pretty happy with it but I think I will darken the palm trees and do something more interesting with the Horse's mane, it feels dull right now.

In this shot the Horse does a backflip and scores a goal, time stops while he's in the air.  Seems like the gif export stuffed up on this one.

I made a late minute change to make the goalie a goat.  I still have to paint the sky and grass so its not flat colours, add some spectators, and animate the net being blown apart by the ball (which will be hard, I'm not sure if I can pull that off actually because a net is quite intricate.

Also it might be cool to recolour the "bullet time" part, not sure if I'll do that yet.

This is the shot I'm working on now.  The horse turns into a laser and beams to space, blowing up a blimp.  The horse rearing animation is reused from earlier, but it will be an outline silhouette that masks a night version of the city.  So together with the explosion colours of the city, I've got to paint three different versions of this city.  It will *probably* make more sense when you see it.

Here's the latest from the comic.  Up to 25 pages now!  

New comic video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjGa5iRaY3o 

More Horse!

Today is the first day I feel like I'm totally over whatever darned virus I've had this past week.  Here's some work in progresses:

This was my first idea to illustrate the incredibly witty line "My dick's really loooooooong".  

But, although respectfully long, it was not quite long enough...

 The cloud over the horse's mouth is rabies froth btw.

And finally...

My style guide for the final pose is Shenlong from DBZ.  It took a long time to animate but I think it pimps.

I posted this one in the last post, for the line "Ladies ladies ladies ladies".  Here's the finished shot:

I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing with the background.  It's more saturated than the characters so it's not leading the eye well.  I might have to recolour the ladies and desaturate the bg a little.

Now I would like to share page 23 of the comic, and the prose written by our very own wmfivethree.  I very much enjoyed drawing this action sequence.  You need to forgive and forget that Cherry Boy's hand is on Fernando's shoulder in panel 1 and not panel 2.  

The juicy jock tensed himself for the unholy gimp tactic known as the Gonad Slam. But Master Flaster's training (as well as "quality time" spent with Randy) had left Fernando well prepared, and he managed to counter with a voracious Taint Grapple that handily deflowered the obscene maneuver. "A Boy still, but a Cherry no more!" he growled in soiled triumph.   wmfivethree 

More Horse WIPs

The title gif is the line "mums, dads, tiny children", followed by...

"I'll crush them all", as he powers down the beach.  

Next line is "Ladies ladies ladies ladies!"

Don't worry he doesn't crush them.  The action in all the gifs I post is too fast by the way, something about the way I export them, I'll have to try something else.

Ugh, I feel like I'm coming down with something.  Sucks because I wanted to put a big day into this today (Sunday).  Got some time off over Easter, I'm going to horse it up big time.

Although this isn't really close to finished, I wrote a beautiful story recently and I think I might like to animate it next.  It's called "Tony's Misty Man Den" and it's an adaptation of the role playing segment in the last podcast where Gooseman and Fernando try to milk a rich guy.  Unfortunately it's quite a large project, probably longer than Ultimate Street Yacht Battle and shorter than the Disk of Chaos.  I've struggled for a while to write a complete story that I'm excited about but is an achievable length.  So I guess I'll re-assess it when I finish I'm a Horse.

Finally here's the latest Fernando comic page:

"Startled by Cherry Boy's ferocious lust, Fernando harkened back to his man-whore training with the wisened satyr Mr. Flaster~ "Dodge, you idiot!" were the sage words that came to him through the ether of his memory, bringing him back into the present moment where he had already been successfully glomped by Cherryboy." Meta Nexus 

I'm going to do one or two more pages from the last batch of suggestions before I post them for the next round of writing, but I think this is one of the strongest pages so far. (read the story up until now) 

Some more WIPs and follow-up to last post

Thanks everyone who responded to my last post about hiring an animator to animate a music video.  Overwhelmingly you were fine with it.

But!  Thinking it over since, I've realised that it would make more sense for the animator to work on the cartoon I'm making at the moment, I'm a Horse.  There's really no reason to ask him to animate something new, I'm not sure why that didn't occur to me first.  So now I'm a Horse will move along at more than a snail's pace hopefully.

I tend to work on the cartoon as much as I can on the weekends and work on the Fernando comic during the week nights after work, so the cartoon's progress has felt a little slow.

Also, I wonder if I really have any songs that are super strong that I haven't animated.  I think Horse Person is pretty good, but it's another horse song...  Although that could make an interesting career transition.  Sexualobster, the guy who now refuses to work on anything that does not feature horses.  I would have done more song collabs but I've got the comic going on and I don't want to start too much stuff and not finish anything.

The gif at the top of the post is the stomped farmer, he no longer turns into Treshtog the orc now, but he has Treshtog's recoloured legs and right arm.  You might be able to see he still has Treshtog's boots as well.  Still a couple of little touches like his shadow and also I'd like to make the clouds in the background move but this one's pretty much there.  I might animate the horse eating grass too.

Likewise, Stormhorse shot is almost done.  I will give the human observers some movement, and I don't think there's enough shit yet.  To be honest I just got bored of animating shit so that's something I'll have to come back to when the mood takes me.

The lyrics for this shot are "mums, dads, tiny children" and in the next shot the song goes "i'll crush them all".  I feel kind of bad animating a horde of little children getting stomped by a horse, not least because it actually happened to me when I was a little child, my mum's horse trampled me.  I was fine, I got bashed by the horse's torso and went under the hooves but none of them stomped me, not that I can remember anyway.

Question regarding commissioning a music video or two.

I asked an animator I like for a quote to make a 1:00-1:30 music video for me.  Example tracks would be Pool Man or Express the Quest.   (I haven't decided, or we could even vote on it).

Since I'm a Horse is going to take quite a while, my idea for the next patreon project is I could commission either two music videos, and I would make up the difference myself (in other words, your pledges would subsidise me commissioning two music videos), or I could bump up the fee and ask him to take on one larger music video such as Horse Person.  (That would mean releasing two horse music videos in a row which is kinda  strange.)

What do you think about either of these ideas?

If even a few of you reply and say you are not ok with me using your pledges in this manner, I won't do it, because I don't want to overstep the lines of respect we have maintained up until now.  I accept that my visual style might be a factor in the continued support many of you show me, so I understand if my music teamed with a different animator might not be something you're into and if so, please let me know!  

Express the Quest

Here is a nice new song I have been working on over the weekend.

Some of you will recognise the very first verse as the song stub from the last podcast episode.  

I played around with it a few months back and couldn't make it work.  Then I looked at it again yesterday and for some reason the juices flowed thick and fast.  I should start another collab song, I forgot how much fun they can be.

I think it's a fun song and could be worth animating, probably more than any of the other tracks to come out of the podcast.

Here's another horse work in progress, depicting the moment when majesty meets reality for several horse enthusiasts.

Also, I got my tablet back from the repair place, battery issue fixed until it fails next time, so I'll get back on to the Fernando comic this week.

Here's the lyrics for the manmilk song:

I set out on a great quest, searching for a hero to express my breast

I'm driving through this gleaming city, looking for someone to milk my titty

Deep inside, my special pride

A strange condition, can't stop my mission

bigtasty67 

I wanna please, I wanna make

Manmilk dairy products, all you can take 

t3h_bunneh 

Let it sour, let it curdle

Its all ours, my lovely turtle 

t3h_bunneh 

Milk my distended nipples with ease,

Please process them into yoghurt and cheese

Hugrold

My chest pumps full of fire, deep in wait for your palm of desire

Our eyes will meet with each subtle squeeze, our hearts will flutter in the breeze

ChaosGaming 

My pecks and areolas so swollen

Need  supple hands to get my milk flowin'

Thor Obliterator 

Sweet relief that beats all drugs,

If some kindly soul would drain my swollen jugs!

wmfivethree

Cartoon MP4s

Here's new links for all of the patreon MP4s if anyone wants them!Piccolo: Attorney at Law Sweet Sweet Goo Pleasure Island 5 Raw Latex 3Let'

Here's new links for all of the patreon MP4s if anyone wants them!

Piccolo: Attorney at Law 

Sweet Sweet Goo 

Pleasure Island 5 

Raw Latex 3

Let's go Clubbing! 

Meth Orcs 

Moancore 

Calloused Hands 

Final Form 

Raw Latex 4 

My Mother-in-Law is a Scorpion 

Bruce Wizard - Magic Trick 

Tobey Maguire

Cat Arms 

BARTPOCALYPSE 

Razor Blades 

Fernando and the Disk of Chaos 

Sweet Boy Beach - Taco Salad

Pleasure Island FINAL CLIMAX

Assfarm

What if ur mum was anime?

METH ORCS - METH HARDER

Prince of Vibes

METH ORCS - DANCING WITH DEATH

SUPER SEDUCTIVE SNAKE SHOWDOWN

Earthly Pleasures

Purrnando

Vile Little Goblin

Despair

METH ORCS - INFLATE YOU BIG AND ROUND

Gooseman Runs for Office

Where did the Gnomes go?

Help!  A goat ate my shorts!

METH ORCS - THE STENCH OF FAILURE 

Gazza of Penrith

Ragemelon: Full Melon Jacket

RANDY (Pleasure Island Crab Tab)

Spectral Seed

HOW TO DOMINATE A TWINK

Horse wip

I'd like to share a couple of Horse work in progresses.  The above is where the titular horse is in an alternate realm and is on fire for some reason.  Don't worry, he's happy about it.  The colours are too dark at the moment, also i'm going to add a glow to the flame so it looks less cheap.  Generally I want to do some more full animation stuff with this, and I'm starting to get better at drawing horses.  My first few efforts were a bit random mammal.

Here is a little scene in the swiss alps where a farmer briefly turns into Treshtog before getting stamped by the special horse.  Treshtog is in there because I'm going to reuse his legs (maybe give the farmer some short shorts) and one of his arms.

The comic is kinda stalled right now because I sent the little tablet on which I like to draw it off for a warranty fix.  The pervy battle will continue though.

Next project + comic + Pleasure Island Zombidle game

I've got a collaboration with Berzerk Studio out at the moment.  You can read about it here. 

I'm making a new Pointless Show video that will have some more info.   The Zombidle game is on steam and its free.  You can access the Pleasure Island level after a few minutes of gameplay, go to the event portal.  It ends 5th March.

It's been a few days short of a month since I published the final version of Fernando and the Disk of Chaos and I'm sorry I have been slow to inform you of my next project.

At first I thought I would animate the Bush Friends comic, then I thought I'd animate the Captain Planet: Climate Cops idea. 

I've decided to do neither and I've started on an old music video idea I had about a horse.  And no, it's not Horse Person. How many horse songs can one person have?!  Well, in my case, two.

It will be something along the lines of Final Form or My Mother in Law is a Scorpion in terms of size, I want to stuff it full of cool animation and try some tricky stuff that will stretch me.

I have to fess up though: my progress on it will be very slow.  I've spent most of my spare time since Disk of Chaos working on the Fernando comic.  

We're already halfway through the season of the kids show, so another 6 months to go.  It will probably seem like I'm hibernating until it's finished.  And just in case some of you are wondering, the update video I'm making and the comic are not patreon projects, only finished cartoons are patreon projects.

At this stage I would like to attempt another large Fernando project when I finish on the show but I am not sure which one yet (I'm attempting to write some new ones but not very actively).

Finally I'd like to share Fernando and the Grapefruit Black Market.

I realised that there was nowhere someone could easily absorb the story from start to current and that made it difficult to contribute, so the above link is the most accessible version of the comic so far.  I'll have two new pages up in a few days.

Music Pack & Disk of Chaos MP4

I outlined in the other post what's going on with my hosting.

Here's an updated version of the music pack.

And here's a super high quality version of the Disk of Chaos.

I'll just warn you it's over 900mb in size, but if you want the file and you have the internet power go ahead.  I uploaded it to send to a fellow in LA who is organising a screening.  

I'll wait to see how this web hosting thing goes down before I upload new mp4s of the cartoons, so for now they are not available.

New links for updated music packs

My website hosting expired yesterday, and I'm trying to negotiate continuing with them at a more basic hosting level since I no longer need the more powerful plan.  

In the 4 years since I last renewed it I've pretty much abandoned having a website and I use it for hosting files for patreon and also an e-mail account.  They haven't gotten back to me so here's new versions of the Music packs.  They have been updated with most of my 2017 output as well.

SexuaLobster's Hot Release  

Various cartoon tracks 

Show I'm working on + Weird stats

If you're curious about the show I've been storyboarding for, here's an article that was written about it.

You can see a clip of the pilot in the article.  The show looks quite similar to that but better, with slightly different character designs and also nicer backgrounds.

Apologies for not posting it sooner, but I didn't actually find out about the article until recently, and I thought the show was still a secret.  A camera crew was in the studio in December, and I was told it was for a local kids channel.  But turns out it was for the nightly news, which is cool because I was prominent in one of the shots.  But I never saw it because by the time I found out about it, the news channel had deleted the segment, which it only keeps online for 2 days.

The other thing that's been going on is that my channel has had one of its best weeks ever.  When I first published Fernando and the Disk of Chaos, I was a little disappointed by the amount of people checking it out, and expected the views to go back down to normal quickly.  But you can see in the image above what happened instead, and it's still going on now.  And surprisingly the cartoon that seems to be driving it is Meth Orcs, which has been pretty stagnant for a while now.  Even now Disk of Chaos has 134,000 views, which is respectable for one of my cartoons but it's not spectacular.  Heaps of other cartoons are performing strongly, too.

Around half of my cartoons have been disabled from monetisation for about 6 months while they waited for someone to manually review them.  Over the past few weeks a bunch were actually approved for ads, some of them I did not expect such as Meth Orcs and The Four Horsemen.   So I wonder if that plus the fact that I published a new cartoon plus the fact that I reorganised my playlists have all jumbled together and pleased the capricious algorithms.  

I had expected a poor performance because I've accepted over the last 2 years that I was on the wrong side of Youtube's evolution and that the site was no longer showing new people my videos, and then this happens.  I don't know for sure what's going on but I'll enjoy it while it lasts!  

Captain Planet - Climate Cops (Storyboard)

So I almost started animating Bush Friends, but then I decided to try roughly storyboarding this idea out first.

Now I know the art is garbage, it was done super fast.  I hope it's reasonably clear what is happening!

For those of you who haven't seen it, this is intended to take place before my cartoon Captain Planet Rampage. 

I'm after two things:

1) Is this worth animating?  The jokes won't have their full impact but it should be clear whether the thing works or not.  I think it's cool but I don't know if I want to commit to animating it given what a kinda big deal it would be.  Also you should know that if you choose to read this and I do animate it, the final cartoon will be somewhat spoiled for you.

2) Suggestions for more song lines for the Climate Cops Theme.  So far I have:

"you and me, working together, the genesis of change

we'll do our best, and help each other, even if its a little strange"

And the next part I'd consider throwing out if something better is suggested:

"we'll make the forests thrive

we'll keep a few of the beasts alive

climate cops, climate cops, yeh!"

And a general note: If I took it further, I'd make Wheeler look more like Wheeler and CP would look more like the way I used to draw him.  I did the whole thing with Toriyama eyes because they're fast and expressive. 

Bingsoo Dreams

I would like to share with you a comic I drew that will closely echo the Bush Friends comic I posted a month or so ago.

Since Bush Friends was...let's say excessively sexy, and I observed that my natural inclination was to go straight "there", I thought I'd try placing a restriction on this one: no sexual content.

Not to talk it down, but I don't like it as much.  I think there is some good stuff in there, and perhaps you will enjoy it.

I'm still trying to decide if I should animate Bush Friends.  I'm leaning towards doing it, but without the lengthy flash back scene.  Remove that and it suddenly becomes quite a manageable project.  Although I do like the flash back, it doesn't really serve the story at all.  I would like to animate some non human characters for a change though.

In other news, I've been really happy with the reception for Fernando and the Disk of Chaos.  People are loving it, and I can't remember being this jazzed from a reaction to something I made since my early days of animating.  I will say the obvious, it would be nice if more people were watching it.  I guess it's not something that is really appropriate to share.  I am happy to see though that the amount of people who are checking out my other cartoons after watching Disk of Chaos is much higher than usual.

Anyways, give this comic a read if you feel like it.  I've only showed one friend and he said he liked it but wasn't as positive as he was about Bush Friends.

Fernando and the Disk of Chaos full & uncut

Hey, here's Disk of Chaos as one glorious film.   

The only thing I've ever made that's longer than this is World's Greatest Manwhore, which I never put together in one film, it was always 2 parts even if it was one story, so this is longer in a way.

I spent another day going back and adding stuff to the first two parts.  The biggest things are I added space to some of the early flying shots and also sped the music up slightly, so some of the beats feel a bit different.  And I put something in that darned empty picture frame in part 2.

This is still a patron only upload.  I'm going to put a public version up this weekend.  I think I'll paint something new for the credit sequence, and there's an element of the main theme I want to tinker with.  Also, just watching it again now, I might add a crowd sound in part 3.

Disk of Chaos Episode 3 HD mp4

Hey!  Here's an mp4 of episode 3 for anyone who wants it.  Thanks!

Disk of Chaos Music

Ferno Song Greasy Schlong - This is the music from the first half.  It's a good proto version of a possible new Manwhore song in the mould of Dance, Quest and Passion of the Manwhore.  I don't have enough material for a whole song sadly (I didn't even write the lyrics in this, they're by the wonderful contributors to the original comic), maybe that's something I should work on, it would be nice to do another one of those.

Open Sky Episode 3 - Music from the second half.