There have been a few press releases about the upcoming RANDY CUNNINGHAM, 9TH GRADE NINJA. Which is the show I am currently a director on. I'm really excited for the buzz to start, and am really proud to be working on this show. It's a comedy action show aiming at 8 to 12ish boys, but the writing is in the vein of the old Looney Tunes, where kids will like it on one level and adults on another. The comedy is fresh, always going for the joke and isn't watered down. The writers are in the room next to us and I hear them pow-wowing all day, and a couple weeks later, I see what they were doing in a script.
The designs are great and give us a lot to work with. It's great not to have to fit into established limitations on posing, action or camera angles. Whatever the scene calls for, we go for it, and it's been great.
The voice actors are giving us all great stuff. It's a ball to work with and we try to make a real effort to do the reads justice with the acting poses. Thanks to my Supervising Director, here's some pics of some of the cast.
Here's the CARTOON BREW article (click)
VARIETY (click)
BEN SCHWARTZ'S (the voice of Randy himself) BLOG (click)
Once the show is on, I'm looking forward to showing some sketches and behind the scenes stuff
For you Techies out there, we work in Storyboard Pro. Which I find a great program not only to board in, but it's great to animate in traditionally. Some options are limited being that it's a story boarding application. There's no xsheets, but you can make the duration of a panel as short as 1 frame, and exporting quicktimes is a snap. The line quality is also a bit iffy because it's vector based, but with a few adjustments, I manage to get stuff out that I really like, in fact, I may try to do my next comic book project in it and see how it goes.
I'd be happy to go into more detail on how I customize things in Storyboard Pro if anyone is interested, just leave a comment saying so.
I try to always leave a drawing when I post, so here's something from my sketchbook.
Well you've sold me! Better give us a heads up when the show is going to air so we can tune in. (I admit, I don't watch TV all that much anymore. Too much "work" (animating) to do.)
ReplyDeleteI'm currently trying to make the transition from Flash to Toon Boom Animate, and I hear great things all over about their Storyboarding program as well. It's not quite in the cards for me yet (gotta save up the money) but perhaps once I get acquainted with Animate I'll start trying to do my boards digitally. So yeah, if you want to share your methods and tips, I know I'd be interested in reading them!
Also that's some heck of a cast. Animating to those voices must be a blast.