Category Archives: Animation

Well, I’m back. Also: Solarpunk! Ecotopia!

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I handed off a rough draft of Volume One of my book at the writer’s retreat. Now I can think about other things and then get back to writing.

One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot is a hopeful vision of the future. We live in authoritarian times. But fighting against authoritarianism, though necessary, is not sufficient. We need to supersede it. We need to look beyond dystopia. We need a vision and a direction to go in.

And that’s where the vision of solarpunk comes in: people living in harmony with the world, but with all the things we have learned as well. An early effort towards this was “Evelyn’s Story“, an assignment I did in animation school.

It seems to me that the biggest difference between the solarpunk world and ours might be the solarpunk reduction in short-term thinking and profiteering. Wikipedia on solarpunk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarpunk

Solarpunk artwork tends to be green and sunny. There are related artistic styles in cozy animation and certain outdoor sketching communities, which have also inspired me:

Screenshot
Screenshot
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Stepping back to write

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For the next few months, I will be stepping back a little from social media to concentrate on writing. It’s time to finish my novel!

My editor (Akosua Brown) and I have come up with A Plan. I have been working on a three-book science fantasy series set here in Ontario, involving a family that grows up in authoritarianism, and then flees. (And then their son wants to go back?!!! Also includes a hidden city under Algonquin Park and lots of cute bunnies.)

This started as a short story, “The Rabbit Hole” (included in the recently published “Rabbit Trap Sampler”) and has grown into a three-volume epic.

Our plan for Volume 1:

* July 1–Sep 1: Create draft 1 (rough, for Scott only).

* Sep 1–Oct 15: Create Draft 2 (shareable version).

* Oct 15–Nov 15: Manuscript review.

* Nov 15–Dec 31: Final manuscript.

* Jan 2027: Design. This is when the cover will happen, plus things like trope cards.

* Feb 2027: Uploads.

* Target Launch: March 15, 2027.

Volumes 2 and 3 will follow at six-month intervals.

Story Outline of Volume 1:

* Red is rescued from an abusive home by apparent social workers. He recovers in a guest home. One of the workers introduces him to the intelligent speaking rabbits who actually run the place. He is invited to live in the rabbits’ home, a great underground city.

* Red meets Darlene there, and they form a family. They live in the rabbit city, enjoying a rich if regimented existence… but then they starts to notice things that seem a bit off: strange conversations overheard, odd video programs in the distance, things suddenly hidden by the rabbits as they approach.

* Then Red and Darlene discover the enslaved humans…

I’ve gone through my outline for Volume 1 and identified at least 18 writing segments in the story that I need to create or expand. This means that I need to do three segments per week to get the draft done by the first of September.

I’ll also be working on two limited-animation book trailers.

Let the writing begin!

A Tiny Computer!

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My friend gave me a Tiny Computer. Yes, that’s the whole computer in the first picture (it’s upside-down). It is running Ubuntu Studio, which includes audio, video, graphics, and publishing software. There is a very good chance this could replace my Adobe suite. I will have to experiment. The video is me scanning a drawing into The GIMP, a raster image editor.

The Tiny Computer!

And this post is being made from Linux! Getting images out of my Mac onto Linux required some setup… accessing my Dropbox account from both machines turned out to be easiest. (I kept wanting to cut and paste…)

This Linux distribution is Ubuntu Studio. It includes The Gimp (like Photoshop), Inkscape (like Illustrator), Blender (a 3-D animation app, like the control panel of a 747), Scribus (maybe like InDesign, but we’ll see), Calibre (for ebooks, but annoying because it wants to manage your files), and lots more. There are audio and video editing apps; I’ll have to see what corresponds to After Effects for editing limited animation. Alas, Scrivener is not available on Linux. If I can make and publish a book on this platform…

The trickiest part so far was configuring my scanner. The Epson scanner requires a driver, which Epson provides, but that driver requires further software. I had to go into the command line to install it (fortunately this is the kind of thing I used to do at my old job). And I had the help of my friend Mike, who is a born troubleshooter.

Versions of the First Book Trailer

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The book trailer for The Rabbit Trap went through a lot of evolution.

It’s technically an ‘animatic’, a kind of draft animation that can be quickly produced and adjusted as ideas change. A fully-animated work would follow on from it.

I started out by drawing a few rough sketches on paper and putting them in order.

Then I decided to try Boords, the online storyboarding service.

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A book trailer, shirts, and Fifty Thousand Words

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I have been working on an animatic, a kind of limited animation, to make a book trailer to promote The Rabbit Trap. I hope to have it done in a few weeks.

To express my gratitude for the help I have gotten with it, I have ordered shirts! They will include the new logo I have developed for the story.

As far as the story itself is concerned, Akosua and the Write-Now Club are proposing another writing challenge: another Fifty Thousand Words in Fifty Days challenge! This will take us to the end of summer, conveniently when I had planned to have a first draft done. I’ve pulled out Scrivener and started organizing things already.

Storyboarding a Dream (Sequence)

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A couple of nights ago, I had a short dream in the drawing style of Camila Nogueira. After I woke up, I quickly drew a rough sketch storyboard in the Tiny Sketchbook I take everywhere with me, enough for me to remember it.

I think I’m going to do a proper storyboard and then do my first rough-draft animation, or “animatic“. It’s only a very short sequence, 15 seconds or so. I am thinking that it will be a kind of “Hello World” work as I step into the world of the animatic.

In the world of computer programming, a “Hello World” program is traditionally the first simple program you write when you are learning a new programming language, environment, or toolset. All it does is print or display the words “Hello World”. Sounds simple, yes? Perhaps. But it is a critical step for the programmer, because it shows that they have figured out how to operate the tools required to create the program, which may be a completely new set of equipment or commands… or familiar ones used in new ways.

So this is my Hello World animatic. I haven’t actually made one before, and I have to figure out how to do it. Scan in externally-drawn images? Draw them on the computer? And how do I put them together with the right timing, and add sounds? Photoshop? AfterEffects? Clip Studio Paint? Audacity? Something else? And where do I get the sounds?

I’ve been wanting to do this since I was in animation school all those years ago…