Badassery episode 9 notes

After attending GDC and doing some presentations/workshops and doing some film festival screenings I was a bit burnt out this past week so I figured I should make some fun dumb shit- so I returned to my epic series of animated absurdity BADASSERY-

Here is episode 09 for your viewing pleasure MANO E MANO

The script for this episode was 12 pages long- there were 174 shots on the storyboards- There was one day of prep -it took 4 days to animate it all with one half day to do the audio post-

None of it used any software rendering either- it was all exported using Cinema 4d's openGL hardware render which "renders" it exactly as you see it on the screen- so a 10 second shot takes like 20 seconds to "render"- it has its limitations of course but visual quality is not a priority with Badassery I just want workflow speed-

So roughly it took a week to make the whole thing-

I did something different on this one in that I went on youtube and let people know that if they donated money via paypal so I could buy beer they would be executive producers on this episode- so 8 people stepped forward and I had beer to drink while animating-

So this episode actually had a budget.... of $74! I know I'm reaching into Hollywood Blockbuster territory....

I also did some making of vids for this episode you can see those here...

Announcement  Part01  Part02  Part03  Part04  Part05  Part06

So obviously Badassery it not at the level of quality I put into my feature films like I am Nightmare but since its an absurd comedy it works for me- I do love how fast I'm able to make this cheap stuff though-

So with this episode which was 18 minutes long I was able to do it in a week- this got me wondering- if I used this workflow and aimed for a little better quality I could produce 10 minutes of animation a week which would allow me to make a feature film in 2-3 months- again it would not be my best quality BUT depending on the story/style of the film it could work-

I think it works with stupid comedy like Badassery and for disturbing stuff like my series Darksided- but what really interests me is trying it with something totally different-

I have a feature script lying around that I wrote in 2012- its a sexual horror film- its supposed to be a serious horror film which I wrote with a live action film in mind but I'm interested in realizing it as an animated film now using my super speed animation workflow- something I could do part time over a year or two while working on my game-

The style I'm thinking about using is using low poly character models- a bit higher poly than Badassery and with photos as textures sort of like the style they used for the film Metropia like this

But I'll use 3d models- Metropia was like 2.5d which bugged me- it really limited the animation/cinematographic possibilities- so I'm interested in using photographic textures on 3d models a lot like they do for games like GTA but more stylized using my puppet mouth lip sync technique of course because thats where a lot of the speed comes from-

I think theres a real weird space to be found using photo textures with stylized low poly models so I want to explore that-

I'll have to do some tests of course to get a feel for the possible look but the possibility of working on a film one week a month excites me- chipping away at a film 10 minutes a month by working on it one week a month with the rest of the time on my game seems like a good balance between film/games

I know I said I would never go back to film but that thought was really based on creating high quality films like HSM or I am Nightmare with no budget- those films require rendering that is expensive and to create stuff at that level of quality takes a lot of time/effort

So if I create stuff using a super fast lower quality workflow that uses hardware rendering- I have no render expense and I can make the films really fast-

So those are just some of my thoughts at this time after finishing this latest badassery episode-

Tomorrow I start work on the audio post for my friend Jimmy Screamerclauz's feature film "When black birds fly" I'm doing the sound design/mix/master- that should take about a week then when I'm done with that its back to the game-

Thanks for reading/watching!

Brought to you by professional weirdo M dot Strange.