CUPdate 96: Return to Mr Marcus World

To take a break between projects, my brother and I spent a day just doing random activities with our characters. One in particular that we call Return to Mr Marcus World. It's where we do various prompts with our characters in different mediums.

The first one we did was sculpting our characters in Donkey Kong Bananza! I started with Pigger.

Then I sculpted Cimc.

After that, we went back to our animation roots with Mario Paint. I made a little animated sequence of Doge and Ted eating a snack of Oreos together.

Then I used more of the copying frames features with the next animation. This is from Mikey's perspective where he thinks Gojo is his best friend.

The next activity was drawing pixel art versions of Hannah and Subeebia in the style of old Pokemon Red/Blue sprites with the same limited palettes.

Then continuing along with the Pokemon theme was Pokemon fusions between two characters. The first one was Mooth fused with Spectrier.

Then I drew Scott fused with Lombre.

So we did all of these on a Saturday after finishing Macca Masquerade, and it was fun to just do some little low-key drawings and things that didn't have to fit into anything. These kinds of projects always help rejuvenate me and keep me feeling creative.

CUPdate 32: Sculpting, Animation, and Music

So this time around I decided to do a variety of creative projects. These were mostly on Sundays, which is the day I like to dedicate to personal project creation.

I started out by trying out 3D sculpting in Blender. I haven't done character sculpting in years so this was just a quick test to re-learn how it all works, but I'd say it's pretty close to having functionality that ZBrush has and a really good free alternative that I can use now that I don't have access to ZBrush anymore. This was just a fun little Sunday project to test and see what I could do with it, and I learned some new things! This is my character Kali.

Then I decided to check out what the 2D animation was like in Blender. It still is a bit different from what I'm used to with Adobe Animate, but I was able to make a short animation in it. Just a quick transformation animation of Zandra for fun!

And for fun I decided to play around with BeepBox. I saw a video where someone recommended this site for making game music and I remembered trying it out once before. So I was playing around and made this short little loop. I also forgot I had a SoundCloud so I decided to make it be my first post on there.

I also made a quick loop in Bosca Ceoil. I was mostly just trying out some software and then found some old ones that I made and uploaded those as well.

I continued the Return to Mr Marcus World Nay Event where I did draw-overs of some game screenshots, so that was fun! The first one is Mikey and Gojo in How to Say Goodbye, and the second one is Arianna in Melatonin. I just drew the characters/drew over existing characters and added text, I didn't draw the other background and official character elements.

And then today ends September, so I finished my digital sketchbook page. I mostly just ended up drawing these on Sundays throughout the month, since I haven't had as much time dedicated to working on projects at my computer. But I managed to sketch a few more this week.

I also finished rewriting the SN World Festival Eventure that I started over a month ago. There wasn't even that much left, so I could've done it sooner. But I'm glad I finished that up!

So overall not a ton for this post, it was kind of just a variety of different small projects. But that's mainly because a lot has been going on in my life. Some health-related things, some traveling, and just overall a lot of things contributing to me being more tired, which leaves me with less energy to actually dedicate to bigger projects more consistently.

Hopefully I can be back to normal sometime in the near future. But the next CUPdate isn't for about a month, so we'll see what happens between now and then.

Exit 84: CCAD's 24-Hour Animation Contest

In March, I participated in the CCAD 24-Hour Animation contest, alongside 3 of my other alumni friends, Jinny Hinkle, Hillary Hastings, and Laura Mansfield. This year they let alumni participate, so we were excited to have the opportunity to participate, since it had been something CCAD started doing after we graduated.

Before I take you through the process behind our short film, I'll post the extended version (with additional credits and a custom title screen) that we created here:

Now I'm going to go over our process. The kickoff video in Discord started at 6:30 PM on Friday March 19th where we got the prompt, which was this video. And from there, we all hopped into a Discord voice chat where we brainstormed ideas. Our first idea was about someone watching movies on their TV in their living room while all of their food came to life. But then we came up with the idea where there's this afterlife that looks like a drive-in theater, where whichever food you eat, it makes you remember a different memory.

Once we had that idea, we started to draw concepts of the main character. Hillary drew our storyboard thumbnails and I timed them out into an animatic. Then Jinny started to create the color scripts while Laura drew more character concepts.

Here's how our storyboards, color scripts, and final animation compare:

We finished our edit of the color scripts into an animatic about 6 hours in, so we were ready to start animating and working on backgrounds! We figured out some final looks and color tests, so I made these color tests based on Jinny's color scripts:

Hillary and Laura went to bed at some point while Jinny continued to work on backgrounds and I worked on the sound design for our film. I made a shot list in Google Sheets for us to keep track of the progress of each of our shots.

In the morning around 7-9 AM, Hillary and Laura came back online to help out with backgrounds, while Jinny finished up the character rig that she created in Photoshop. From there, all of us animated various scenes and basically just kept revising as we went.

Around noon, we finished all of the animations and I put together a final edit while everyone went to grab some lunch. We wrote notes and make some final edits to adjust some of the timing and make final changes. Around 3 PM, we finished entirely and exported the final video and watched it a few times together as a group. And by 4 PM, I submitted the final short film for judging. Jinny and I ordered Noodles & Company, then passed out immediately after.

Here's an image I put together of our OCs before we worked on the project:

So overall, we had a lot of fun and were really happy with how it came out! For me, this felt more intense than Global Game Jams because animating is a lot of work, and also we had a lot less time to work with. But I would do it again! We all felt super motivated to work on our own projects after this, so it was a huge booster for us.

I also learned a lot while working on this. I hadn't done a lot of sound design edits on projects before, so to spend hours focusing on that, I had a lot of fun. And overall this was probably the largest Premiere file I'd ever created, with tons of sequences nested inside of each other. My main job on the project was editing, since we were constantly updating the film and needed me to do that almost full-time. I did get to draw some concepts and animate a scene though, which was fun!

And then afterwards, we put together a documentary where we talk about our process and the whole event!

So anyway, thanks for reading this post and watching our short film!

Check out Jinny's blog post here!

Old Forgotten Posts of 7 Years: Part 4

This is the final post of catching up on old forgotten blog posts! These are mostly from 2020, but there is one from later that I'm sneaking in here. I'm writing this in 2025, but posting as if it was posted in 2020.

Various Drawings for CUPdates (February 16, 2024)

Some of these at the end are art and things I meant to post a couple of years ago. I wrote PS Chat Eventure and was reading more Eventures. After re-reading You-Know-Who's Reign Eventure, I drew The Gek with his tentacles being web-like.

I also drew more NADs like Gina.

Also Yoshima.

And Filemon!

I drew a few Digital Sketchbook drawings. December was pretty minimal though.

Jinny and I decided to make a Guess Who game with our characters, so we made a template and printed out the prototype to test!

I also continued the Mr Marcus World Event. These were photos with Nays drawn in them (Doge and Larry).

And lastly, (not pictured), I did a test in Smack Studio. I started with using the Allen Walker sprite from JUS, and then was planning to do some with my own drawings. I didn't get that far on this, but hoping to come back to it!

Nay Attacks: Part 1 (February 19, 2020)

I've been working on how The Nays use their Marks to fight, and I think I'm finally getting somewhere. 

Here's a drawing I did of Rammako using his with a sword attack! He mostly uses this for defense, but also occasionally to attack when he needs to.

Pigger uses a whip mixed with claw weapon where he can control its direction and speed. I got the inspiration for this panel from Renji’s attack in Bleach.

Pubby has the ability to disappear for a few seconds to use this time for sneaking around and evading enemies. I was inspired by the after image strike attack from Dragon Ball/Z.

Jibu can bring cards to life and use them as a barrier or means of attacking with his Mark's abilities. I was inspired by Yugi-Oh for this drawing.

Scott uses destructive powers of blowing up and attacking with his blood. I referenced Sasuke from Naruto for this drawing.

Larry can make his Mark glow and shoot up a beam of light, which serves as an S.O.S. in times of need. I tried to take some inspiration from Sakura in Naruto and Orihime in Bleach.

Gair can use earth powers to build walls or break the ground in order to protect himself or fight against his enemies. For inspiration on this one, I looked at Gaara (Naruto), Todoroki (My Hero Academia), and Ed (Fullmetal Alchemist) for different ways that elemental walls are portrayed.

Zandra uses her legs to maneuver around quickly and can use them to float around like a feather. I was inspired by Lenalee from D.Gray-man for this drawing.

Recent Sketchbook Doodles (February 19, 2020)

I haven't been keeping up on scanning in my sketchbook drawings as regularly, but here are a few I've done over the past few months!

Paper People Nay Event (February 19, 2020)

 This was a Nay event I did awhile ago where I drew a bunch of paper people and made scenes out of them.

Nay Moments (February 13, 2020)

I've been watching My Hero Academia lately and it's kind of reminding me of The Nays in a way, at least in terms of character interactions and moments. So it inspired me to draw some moments from the Battle Vs. Ginko Eventure!

First NADs of 2020 (January 25, 2020)

Here are the first Nay-A-Day drawings that I did in 2020.

Requiem is a disheveled young man who isn't really much of a leader. He sticks with his tight-knit group of Hannah and Xitrev and barely strays to meet and make friends with outsiders. He's usually a better listener and follower, which is why he works well as a bartender. Though he's usually rather serious, he does have moments where he'll throw bananas at his customers if they're causing him trouble. Requiem meets an unfortunate end after his battle with Zumoi, in an attempt to get revenge for his friend Xitrev.

Pixel Art (February 5, 2020)

My friends were talking about old animated forum avatars, so I made one of Pubby.

OC Art Trades (January 21, 2020)

It's been almost 2 years since I did my last art trade, but this year I think I'm gonna try to do more of these because they're always a lot of fun. 

This is one that I did for someone over on deviantART.

Fanart (January 16, 2020)

Can't wait to play DBZ Kakarot tonight! I've clocked at least 80 hours on Xenoverse 2, so I think it's time to move onto the next DBZ game.

The Revenge of Gert

I decided to make this short video on a Sunday afternoon. One of my first RPG Maker 2003 games was about a bad guy named Gert, so I randomly decided to bring that name back for this short "movie trailer" that I came up with. The quotes are from various video game screenshots I took.

The Revenge of Gert from Michelle Rakar.

And here's a gif of the beginning:

Sprite Animation Edits

I coded a website with some custom-created sprite edits. I found a bunch of video game sprites and edited them to look like my characters.

Piko using a Piccolo sprite from Dragon Ball Z: Buu's Fury

Scott using a Neku sprite from The World Ends With You

Gair using an NPC sprite from Final Fantasy VI

Grenna using a mix of the imp and Magus sprites from Chrono Trigger

RoaR using a zombie sprite from Zombies Ate My Neighbors

Spicco using a Toejam sprite from Toejam and Earl

Mikey using a Magikoopa sprite from Mario RPG

Improvement Movement: Gif Turnaround

Barely finished April's Improvement Movement prompt in time! This one was probably the most difficult so far since it involved a lot of drawings and keeping a character on model. I chose Zandra since she's easy to draw!

So here's the final gif!

And then this is a process gif to show a bit of the process. I ended up just erasing lines on the original sketch layer to clean it up so I don't have quite the whole process documented, but still fun to look at!