A Go!Animate Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! This would be a post about the animatic for the film… BUT my scanner and my computer have decided that they want to be fussy and don’t want to talk to one another here lately. So I decided to take a little break from the film for the holidays and work on getting those two back together again (that would be the Christmas miracle...  pray that I don't need a new scanner!). I did want to take the opportunity to talk about Go!Animate, the website that I’ve been using to create the little cartoons I’ve been making with my nephews.


Go!Animate is a website where, as their tagline reads, “anyone can animate”. I discovered this site after Go!Animate followed me on Twitter. They have created a unique platform where you can create a simple Flash cartoon with pre-animated characters and preloaded backgrounds, sounds and special effects, even camera moves. They have licensed characters from various properties including Street Fighter, Star Trek and even Akon (the rapper!) and they also have a custom character creator. They have a very clean and simple interface for their animator program. You drag and drop your elements onto the “Stage” and adjust the length of time your elements appear. You add another Scene to make a change. You can import your own sound and images. You can also sync sound and music to the elements. The site has a community of GoAnimators that regularly chat on the forums and there is a Facebook Chat like feature so you can instant message other GoAnimators. You can even easily share your creations on the various social media portals.


At first glance, a professional would call it “cheating” or “lazy”(and they have, I asked.) The program gives you a very small level of control and the controls you do have are imprecise and clumsy, especially to sync your sounds and music. The pre-animated characters have limits on what they can do, thus limiting what you can do and the story (if any) you can tell. You need Firefox or Google Chrome to run the site without it crashing or locking up. If you have ever felt that you had to fight Flash to get the results you want, you feel that in spades here. Granted, this is a new site and they are still working out the bugs. So, why would someone like me even bother with a website like this? Several reasons.


This is the perfect platform to teach kids how to animate and I saw a tweet where Go!Animate is creating a special educational version. I’ve been using it to teach my nephew Jamari about some of the basics of animation. Yes, the characters are pre-animated… but to create something of quality you still need the basics of story, staging, pacing, etc. Jamari is seeing these basics and understanding them with this platform because he can see the results instantly and apply them himself to his own cartoons. Once he learns to draw and is ready to take intro to animation courses or learn Flash or ToonBoom or even Maya, he will already know how to compose his shots and tell a story visually. His eyes widened when I explained why you use an establishing shot and why and when you change a scene. I’m so proud.


Go!Animate now has the option to download your films so you can host them wherever. This can now be a very quick and elegant tool to create animated content for YouTube or Hulu and potentially have a solid animated series, as long as the story is there. Hey, look at South Park, its all about story. Its way faster than animating in Flash so you can be razor sharp with topical humor and you can crank out tons of episodes in a very short period of time. You just have to pay a small fee to download the toon.


Also, its FUN! I love animation and I love animating, so this is almost like playing with a toy for me. Yes, its not very sophisticated and you feel like you’re fighting the program, but that’s part of the challenge. Creating something of quality here is difficult and limiting so when you get that scene to read the right way and everything is timed right and acts right, its awesome! They also recently made me a beta tester so now I can add my own pre-animated characters. I’ll be able to work with Jamari on animating elements in Flash which will be even more fun.


But here is the latest cartoon from Jamari and Bralyn, their Christmas Special. We created it to enter Go!Animate’s Jingle Bell Blowout contest to win a Nintendo DSi! I think they’ve got a real shot to win this thing even though there are some good entries there. I’m really hoping that they don’t get beaten by one of the more lude entries that they can’t watch.

And because it has become a family thing for me, I chose Go!Animate to create my Christmas card this year. Everyone else is making those JibJab dancing elves cards, I wanted to be different. I went and found a Christmas song with a Creative Commons license (a concept the GoAnimators haven’t grasped yet… pray for them) and made a little music video card. Check it out!

Merry Christmas again to everyone and I’ll leave you with this link – Larry Lauria’s Christmas Animation Festival

Jamari Animated Update: An Interview on Twitter, an Animatic Clip and a weekend of Spongebob Squarepants

I am SO sorry for the late update!  I’ve been really busy with the recent events and holidays…  Black Friday included!  Here’s an overdue update on how the film and animation related things are going.

First, a report on the Cineviews Film Festival!  Their special guest was fellow Lynchburg, VA area (Amherst County too!) native Tuck Tucker, supervising storyboard artist on SpongeBob Squarepants.  It was a pretty nice setup for the opening night gala.  The nicest restaurants in town were catering and one table even had “Crabby Patties” (sliders, haha).  

When I met Tuck, I think I surprised him when I pulled out my old He-Man VHS tape for him to autograph.  His presentation was very good.  He talked about starting in Hollywood and the projects he's worked on and he talked about what it’s like to work at Nickelodeon and what the workflow is like… it was a nice night.  I even met some nice folks from Charlottesville! 

The next day was the storyboarding workshop.  There was mostly kids there, but there were a few professionals there too.  I met Patrick, an artist out in Evington and Caroline, who scores music for all multimedia!  Tuck played the animatic for an episode of Spongebob that he directed and hit pause at certain parts.  He then instructed the audience to storyboard what would happen next.  He asked me to pitch one of mine to the class.  Pretty cool.  Patrick pitched and a few kids pitched too.  It was fun and I learned a few things about storyboarding… including that they use sharpies to storyboard to force the artists to draw clearly and describe the action and not worry about making pretty drawings.  

It was nice meeting you Tuck and thanks for the kinds words… and for autographing my little Spongebob standy!  It has a place of honor on my desk.  

The film selections at the festival were great...  they were all animated!  I got to see Mary and Max, a fantastically written stop motion film, The Secret of Kells which is an Annie nominee for Best Animated Film this year and I got to check out Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues on the big screen.  I got to meet a lot of the Riverview Artspace folks (Tuck's mom is an artist there!)...  Bravo guys and I can't wait for next year!

Speaking of storyboards and animatics, I have been editing the audio from the recording session and adding the voice and storyboards to create the final animatic for the film.  Some of the audio needed some serious cutting and pasting but I’m pretty happy with how its sounding.  I’m learning as I go through this process.   At the film festival, Tuck talked about how the actors on Spongebob read their lines from the storyboards.  WOW, I kinda wish my actors read from the storyboards on my film!  My actors read from a script.  Their delivery and their interpretation of what happens is different in some places from how its drawn in the storyboard.  However, they open up opportunities for acting and laughs that weren’t there before, so it turned into a win… I’m just going to have to redraw some of the action.  Next project though, my actors will have storyboards to read from instead of a script.  I’m not done editing it together at the time of this writing, so I’m sure I’ll learn even more as I go along.  Meanwhile, here is a small clip of the animatic with the kids voices. Please forgive the animation “blue pencil”…  my revisions will be in sharpie, haha!

Finally, a very special thank you to @Hollywood_Tweet on Twitter.  The Jamari Animated project has been invited to be one of their live Twitter events!

I was checking out the Twitter and I saw a tweet from them saying to join them in their live chat.  I click on it and I’m sent to this awesome page where I hear and see an interactive chatroom.  I can hear the folks from Hollywood Tweet talking, see a chat dialogue from people attending and media elements all around.  I joined in and helped them test out some of the elements of their new toy. Hollywood Tweet will host a series of Twitter events where they showcase filmmakers and musicians.  They have the ability to interview via web cam or microphone, they can play video clips and they can open websites on the audience’s computers, all in realtime.  I think I’m the first animator they’re going to showcase…  which is pretty cool!  It's really humbling and I'm so honored to be picked for this.  This is all thanks to my nephews!  The nice folks at Hollywood Tweet saw my nephew's Halloween cartoon on GoAnimate.com and loved it!  It was the beginning of a great Twitter friendship.  Thanks again guys and I'll keep everyone informed.  It's yet more motivation to get things rolling on this film so I have cool stuff to show and talk about!

Next blog post, the art for my Christmas card this year...  if I can figure out what I want to do...  this is what I did last year, King Moonracer and the Misfit toys.

See you next post!

What is Jamari Animated?

I wanted to explain the project for any new guests to the blog.

Jamari Animated started out as an idea for a birthday present for my nephew Jamari.  I wanted to make a little cartoon for his birthday.  Well, I started talking about it in the notes section of my Facebook page and I got offers to help from my friends and family.

The story:  During a little game of kickball, a bunch of kids discover a little guy wearing a raincoat in the playground without a cloud in the sky.  They make fun of him.  Suddenly, the kids get blasted by the raincoat kid, who surprisingly has weather related super powers.  Raincoat makes it rain and washes out recess.  It’s up to superhero Jamari to save the day.  He uses his super powers, including the Bible, his faith and the power of God to save the day.

Storyboard from film.  Jamari's Bible powers activate.

That’s right.  This is a “Christian Action” cartoon.  It’s based on an idea I had back in college about a show called Bibleman.  I didn’t like the show, but I liked the concept and thought it deserved a makeover.  So I’m giving the Jamari character the superpowers from my makeover idea.  The faith power works like this:  Bible verses glow on the front of Jamari’s armor.  Then, powers based on the Bible verse happen.  For example, if Jamari’s armor glows with Matthew 7: 26 (And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand), then the ground will turn into sand and the bad guys will sink down in the sand.  Cool, huh?  If the film ever becomes an animated series or series of videos, I think it would get kids excited about grabbing their Bible and checking those verses out… and of course, certain verses would be used as super powers over and over and kids could get favorite Bible verses.

I’m creating the film with the computer program Flash.  The film will also be stereoscopic.  That means that it will be the kind of film where you wear the 3-D glasses and the characters pop off the screen. 

The film will be the first festival film from my production company Studio Luke 15, LLC.  It’s also the first film from the Amazing Space Films project, which is a fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, an arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of Amazing Space Films may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.  Anyone who donates to the Amazing Space Films project for Jamari Animated gets a credit in the film!  We definitely need to raise funds to create the 3-D effects and get the 3-D glasses.  If we raise enough money, we may be able to upgrade to a better animation production computer program, like ToonBoom.

You can make a donation here:

Next blog post, I’ll talk about the CINEviews Film Festival.  I’ve already registered for the storyboarding workshop with Tuck Tucker, Lynchburg native and supervising storyboard guy on SpongeBob SquarePants.  I read his bio and he worked on He-Man and She-Ra in the 80’s!  I’m SO bringing my He-Man video for him to autograph!

Jamari Animated Update: Voices are FINALLY Recorded!

One of the reasons I love animation is that the process of creating it always leads to little memorable adventures in life.

The recording session for Jamari Animated was on November 9th at 90.9 The Light – Liberty University. I had NO IDEA that Liberty was so busy at night! The campus is a lot bigger from when I was at Boys State there and I got lost! The students were very helpful in pointing me in the right direction though. The 90.9 facility is great and Justin Berry, their sound mixer that did all the recording, was very nice and very helpful. To support 90.9 The Light, they accept donations at this link.  90.9 The Light.

The boys did a great job! Special thanks to Rhyan and Tyler Cooper who voiced the bully characters! Josh Sosin is the voice of Raincoat, and he did an outstanding job. Thank you Jen Staton and Ginger Cooper for arranging for them to come, and thanks to the dads, David Sosin and Steve Cooper for coming! Facebook made it all possible!

Thanks to my sister Michelle for bringing her boys too. I really appreciate her help with Jamari and Bralyn at the recording session. It was a little bumpy at times, but we got it done!


Jamari and Bralyn have been recording for animation a LOT here lately. They recently created a Halloween Special on GoAnimate.com. It was so well received; the boys have decided that they want to create their own little animated series for the internet, just for fun. They’ll record episodes whenever they get the chance. Part one of episode one is online now.


GoAnimate.com’s Jamari and Bralyn


I also wanted to take a moment and say Happy 40th Anniversary to Sesame Street.  I grew up with Sesame Street and loved it.  I have fond memories of all the great animation (hmmm) and I remember that I could count to 10 in Spanish in pre-school!  Sesame Street was the first "edutainment" for kids and laid the groundwork for films like Jamari Animated to be made.  Thank you Sesame Street and may you have another 40 wonderful years.  http://bit.ly/4FnFHQ



For the newer followers of the production blog, you may have read the blog posts and you may not know exactly what this film is going to be. All we’ve talked about here is that this was a birthday present for my nephew Jamari, Amazing Space Films and fundraising, promotion on Twitter and that the film will be stereoscopic, but that’s not the whole story behind this film. This blog actually started in the Notes section of my Facebook page for my family and friends. A good friend suggested that I make this blog and promote the film to everyone. The next blog post will be a review of those old posts from my Facebook Notes and will be devoted to what Jamari Animated is, the story, the characters, its focus and the fact that this is a “Christian Action” cartoon…



Cheers until the next post!

Jamari Animated Update: A Halloween Special, Recording Voices, 3D Swings and The Power of Twitter for Filmmakers

I hope everyone had a great Halloween! I had a great time with my nephews Jamari and Bralyn. While I was helping babysit them Halloween morning, we created a Halloween cartoon over at GoAnimate.com. I broke out my little microphone and they went to town. They wrote it and Jamari co-directed with me... and their grandma was the voice of the ghost! You can check out Part 1 and Part 2 of Jamari and Bralyn's Halloween Special here.

Jamari and Bralyn's Halloween Special, Part 1

I'm really proud of this... they did a great job!


The recording for the Jamari Animated project is on again. The best time for all involved seems to be November 9th. Cross your fingers and say a prayer everyone that it happens this time. I'm praying that it goes without a hitch! I'm going to take advantage of the recording time and get the actors to also record for fundraising trailers. I've got a week to figure that out, so I'm watching tons of fundraising trailers on IndieGoGo.com. I really want to avoid the clichéd "Making of" video... I want them to be fun and interesting so people get excited about being a part of it. I'm leaning towards either an "interview" kind of thing or a dramatic movie trailer voice over kind of thing... or maybe a combo of both.

I'm thumbnailing out some of the scenes from the project that will be using the stereoscopic effects heavily. Here are some thumbnails from the scenes where Jamari is running from Raincoat throwing lightning bolts. Jamari grabs onto a merry-go-round and swings around it, dodging the bolts.

The plan with this is for Jamari's feet to swing out of the screen as he spins around the merry-go-round. I'm learning as I'm designing this and I'm not sure how much of a challenge doing this with Flash (or possibly ToonBoom) is going to be. I'm just thumbnailing the depth script and going from there.

I just wanted to take a minute and talk about Twitter and what it could mean for my project... and all audience funded film projects. At first, I didn't get it. I thought it was just a site for "Facebook Updates". After using it and watching other Twitter users use it, I get it now. Twitter can be just for personal updates if that's what you want, but it's also a fantastic tool for fast, viral networking, promoting your work and tracking performance. For example, I posted my nephews' Halloween cartoon on my Twitter page and checked its performance after a day. When I checked the stats, GoAnimate said the cartoon had 30 hits. Bit.ly reported that 13 of those hits came from Twitter. Bit.ly can also tell you if your link has been retweeted or shared on Facebook.

So, as a creator, I can put a piece of work out there and be able to tell exactly how popular it is and how big of an audience I have. This is key with fundraising (in sales, we called it prospecting). Using Twitter and Bit.ly as tools, I can tell how many people see my fundraising trailer, how many of those people actually donated and come up with a success ratio. With that ratio, I'll know how many people I need to get my trailer seen by to raise the amount of money I may need during my projects. Right now, I have around 100 followers on Twitter and 13 Twitter users watched the Halloween cartoon. That's 13%. So I know that around 10 -15% of my followers will click on one of my links. For sake of argument, lets say 1 person made a donation. So, I would then know that for every 13 views I should get around 1 donation. Of course, those numbers wouldn't stay the same. I would look at those numbers over time and analyze how effective the tweets are, follower to click ratios, click to donation ratios, etc, and I would repeat what works and stop what doesn't. And I used to think that a background in sales was a waste for an animator...

Of course, I'm not saying that we must spam people. I've seen that the best Twitter users mix promoting their work with personal tweets, news related posts and trending topics, all related to what they do. I think the key is that your Twitter stream has to be interesting and fun... while staying focused and true to your brand. In other words, your followers expect a certain kind of tweet from you.

....haha, as if i'm a social media expert.  I'll keep you informed on the results as I go, though.

I also want to thank Twitter for their new lists feature. They basically took the weekly Twitter ritual of "Follow Friday" and turned it into a feature. Now, we're all grouped together in iconic categories. It might seem shallow for some, but hey, every time I'm on an "Animation" list, that's a little victory. It makes things easier too. Say, for example, you're after tweets about cooking, and you trust Paula Deen's opinions on the subject. Well, if Paula Deen's Twitter page makes a list of chefs or cooking Twitter accounts, you can just follow Paula Deen's list instead of tracking them all down yourself. I see it as a Twitter user giving a "seal of approval" to other Twitter users on a specified subject. If you're on Twitter (and if you're not, I highly suggest it), check out my @chaostoon/coolpoints list. Thanks to @GoAnimate, @Hollywood_Tweet, @TheBriness and @Skookum86 for putting me on their lists of professionals. Thanks to @mbusse as well for putting me on a followed Lynchburg, VA list!

Check back for pictures from the recording session!

Jamari Update: Fiscal Sponsorship, The Flu Virus, and Channel Frederator's 4th Anniversary.

Got an update on the fiscal sponsorship. Fractured Atlas has approved the expansion of my fiscally sponsored project to include all films I create for any local film festivals. This includes the Jamari Animated project! The name of the project at Fractured Atlas is "Amazing Space Films". Here's the best part:

Amazing Space Films is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of Amazing Space Films may be payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductable to the extent permitted by law.

You can make a donation here.

Everyone who donates to Amazing Space Films for the Jamari Animated project will get their names in the credits! Any major gift donation of $1000 or more will receive an Associate Producer credit. Your donations will go towards making our films stereoscopic and providing 3D glasses for our audiences!

Of course, Studio Luke 15, LLC nor myself are not directly affiliated with The Amazement Square Rightmire Children's Museum or Riverviews Artspace.

My prayers go out to everyone with the flu this season. My actors for the film have it, my best friend is just getting over it... and I just found out that my good friend Steven, owner of Cryptarchy VFX in Aspen, Colorado, is in critical condition with the H1N1 virus. I've never met him in person. He sent me a connection invite on LinkedIn and we would chat on Facebook all the time. We would talk about how he wanted to create an visual effects house with a strong visual and marketing brand. For an animator with a background in sales like me, he spoke my language. He's an inspiration, a kindred spirit and an honored colleague. If you can spare a prayer, please pray for my friend.

Well, I haven't worked on Jamari Animated much this week, but for good reason. The deadline for Channel Frederator's 4th Anniversary film project was today. They called for 4 second shorts to be combined into one big film. The premise was "What would Fredbot do on his 4th birthday?" Well, what do all 4 year olds do on their birthday? They go to Chuck E. Cheese! You can see my 4 second entry here. Special thanks to Joey for offering critique. Facebook is SOOO useful!! You can see a pic from the short above, and you can see the 4 second short here.

Check back for updates... the next goal is making a fundraising trailer, so I'm definitely animating scenes from the project to make one.

Jamari Update: Schedule Juggle, 3D Glasses and Audience Funding

Well, the recording session has been delayed, again. This time, it’s the flu. Ginger said that the kid that REALLY, REALLY wants to do this has got it so… I can hold for a trooper. Best wishes to him and we all hope he feels better. Thanks to 90.9 The Light for being so understanding and accommodating. Hey, it wouldn’t be a production if there weren’t delays, right? I consider it “Producer Boot Camp”.

There’s a quote from the movie Spaceballs where Dark Helmet says, “Preparing, you’re always preparing… just go!” That couldn’t be more true for me. So, I’m gonna just go. This week, I’m going to finalize the rigs for the Jamari and Raincoat characters and just start thumbnailing and animating some of the simpler scenes. While I’m doing that, I’m going to plan out the 3D for the film. Yes, I am officially going from “thinking about” to “preparing for” stereoscopic for the film. For those who don’t know what “stereoscopic” is, it’s when you wear the red and blue glasses and see the characters appear to jump right off the screen. I believe that the aerial scene in the film will be amazing.

I also want to get some of the simpler scenes animated for fundraising sake. We need a fundraising trailer. I am awaiting approval from my fiscal sponsor on my other film, Fractured Atlas, to approve fiscally sponsoring ALL of my festival films. That way, I can raise funds for additional computer programs for the stereoscopic effects and for the 3D glasses for the venues… and YOU can make a small (or large) tax-deductable donation and get your name in the credits! Fingers are crossed…

Jamari Update: Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Jamari! Hope you have an awesome day!

Just a quick update… Unfortunately, Monday’s recording session needs to be rescheduled. Now, it is October 5th. I’m still looking forward to it. Gives me just a little more time to see if there are any changes I want to make to the script before recording.

Still tweaking and adjusting the character rigs. What’s happening is that I set them up, throw the bones system on them and they don’t move quite right so I re-rig them. Maybe I’m just a perfectionist, but I would like the ability to really use moving holds.

One more quick announcement… the children’s film festival at Amazement Square was awesome. They have already invited the Jamari film for the next festival so… that means that I scored this little beauty.

This is only the first one… I’m not stopping now. Also, I was invited to be on the advisory board for next Year’s festival. Thank you Amazement Square, I’d be honored to help.

Jamari Update: The Festival Success!

Hey, the film festival was awesome today!

My first time as a guest speaker at a film festival and it went without a hitch! Jamari, his brother Bralyn, and Mom came out and thanks to Crystal for coming too! The kids (and adults!) seemed like they were really interested in the presentation.

Thanks Rebecca and the amazing Amazement Square staff for hosting the festival! They have great ideas for the future of the festival and are already planning for next year. I also got to speak to a representative from the Cineviews Film Festival and they’re excited and have ideas too.

Jamari thinks the whole thing is awesome and is excited about the cartoon and really likes the idea behind a possible animated series.

Here are some pics from the festival! Good times!

Jamari Update: The Details for Tomorrow

Okay, for everyone who's coming...

Amazement Square's International Children's Film Festival starts tomorrow at 10:30am. They're going to be showing some foreign short films first.

Erik Jachode and I are the speakers for the Get Animated! presentation at 11:30am. I will first do a presentation on how short films are created, featuring art from the Jamari project and my Little Songs of Long Ago project. Then I will do a quick demo of Flash with the Jamari rig from the film. Then, Erik will demo Maya and show his projects.

Right after, Amazement Square will host a workshop creating flip books and zoetropes with the kids.

I'll see you there if you're coming!

The Birthday Post

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAMARI!

This first post is for you, little nephew. Your birthday is next week and this is your early present.

You are officially informed that your uncle Lamont is making an animated cartoon based on you. That's right, you. This cartoon was originally supposed to be completed by your birthday. However, a good friend of mine told me that you would probably like being a part of making this cartoon and watching it as it was made more than actually getting a cartoon, and I agreed. So, you are also going to be the voice of your own cartoon superhero. We are recording the voices for your cartoon on the Monday after your birthday, September 28th. I have sent your mom a copy of the script so you can read the story and practice your lines! Bralyn has a small role in your cartoon too.

Also, you should know that the Jamari cartoon is going to be part of Amazement Square's International Children's Film Festival. I will be making a presentation on Saturday and will be showing pre-production work from your cartoon. You and Bralyn are invited to attend, of course. Nana will come and pick you up.

This website is dedicated to the creation of your cartoon. Check back whenever you want to see artwork and animation as we go along. If the project turns out good enough, my friend Brian (who's helping me make the cartoon) and I may send the cartoon to film festivals and we may develop the cartoon as an animated series for the internet. We will have to wait and see.

Above, you can see some of the art from the film.

But for now, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, I hope you have fun with this ( I am! ), and your cartoon is slated for a Christmas premiere.

-Uncle Lamont