urbancreaturesanimated

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I’m going to be re-releasing Tooth or Dare on the Diregentleman channel this coming week so I thought I’d make a bitchin’ new thumbnail.

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Tooth or Dare - an Urban Creatures mini-pilot

Murray breaks his tooth on a brick, Shaz offers to help. It goes ...not very well. You know what they say about the best made plans of ghouls and werewolves.

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The plan as of 2021

Initially my hope was to pitch Urban Creatures to a network or streaming service but as time has gone on I’ve realised that going through the official process of pitching and making an animated series isn’t the best option for me. I don’t have an agent, I have no experience working in TV, it would be insanely entitled of me to expect that anybody from a major network would give me the time of day. I’m trying to skip a lot of steps here and that’s not smart.

But the fact is I’ve sunk a LOT of time into this pilot. Writing, casting, recording, storyboards, and now background art- that’s all shit I want people to see. And ultimately I think I’m way too attached to this project to relent any creative control. So, even though I said I wasn’t gonna, I’m officially animating this whole stupid thing myself.

I don’t have to change anything or face potential rejection, I do right by my voice talent by giving them an actually complete project to their names, and I keep my skills sharp so I have a better chance of finding real animation jobs in the future. It’s win-win.

Obviously I will be enlisting the talents of the other Praeps artists as well as others, who I will be paying for their work with funds that I set aside from my savings and my day job and maybe a crowdfunding campaign if I can come up with rewards. Scott will be doing the sound editing.

I have started drafting a gantt sheet and I think with enough help from other artists I can get this bad boy done in a minimum of 2 years. From there, we’ll see what happens.

I’ve also got some little minisodes on the backburner that I might start making.

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two kings with one brain cell between them

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My adobe license expired so now I use Clip Studio. The ruler tools really help with perspective backgrounds like this.

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FURTHER COLOUR TESTS. I think I’ve cracked the colouring and lighting method for the backgrounds with these two- it’s a lot of setting layers to vivid light and using really bright colours.

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colour test. not married to this background art? might fuck around w the colours.

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I say ‘public’ but honestly, from what I’ve seen with other animation pilots I think the smartest thing to do will be to put it up on google drive and share it around  rather than uploading it to youtube/vimeo/etc. That way I can share it with the people who worked on it and the people who have been following my progress, but it still won’t really be ‘public’ as such. I’ve had some professors caution against making pilots freely available because as it turns out, some networks won’t accept pilots that have been posted online. Also I’m desperate to use a very specific, thematically appropriate piece of copyrighted music over the end credits and if I post that anywhere UMG will Get me.

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I have roughly 7 more minutes of storyboarding to do before the pilot is finished. I’m gonna do a bit of editing and sound design in premiere once I’m finished. I feel like at this point I’m entirely capable of having this up and public before Shaz shows up in Less is Morgue.

I’m feeling good about this. If you followed me back during the Atrocious Animation days you’ll know that I never got NEARLY this far along on that. I think having Less Is Morgue going and having built connections through that has made it feel more realistic that I can actually complete shit.

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oh we are really getting into it now, lads

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Trying to get the animatic done in the next 20 weeks so it can be out there before any of the UC characters show up in Less is Morgue. I made that promise to myself.

Currently I’m about 15, almost 16 minutes in to what is shaping up to be a 25-ish minute long pilot. It’s going good! Murray is still a big ol’ dweebus.

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Horizontal poster for banner art and whatever else. I’ve given myself an ultimatum that I’m going to finish the pilot animatic and the bible in 20 weeks so I can hopefully start pitching soon.

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two halves of a whole idiot.

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I drew them as slashers because I watched Child’s Play and Texas Chainsaw Massacre recently

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my favourite Murray boards to draw are the ones where he's fully wild-eyed and defensive like some kind of frightened bush baby

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A new official poster to reflect the title change and the design change of the main characters. I’m channeling my inner Richard Sala for this one. Next is to do a youtube banner!