Arj and Poopy

Production Blog VII: Completion

2007-02-01T16:37:00.000-08:00

Ok, so we skipped a couple of stages in the process here, but that was because I was going beserk working on "Congo Windfall". And the good news is, it's finally up and ready to view.

I will return with some blogs on the animation process soon.

Production Blog VI: The Title

2007-01-01T17:59:00.000-08:00

The Backgrounds are complete now, so it's onto Animation. This episode is by far the most animation heavy of all the Arj and Poopy's, so this stage isn't going to be quick.

But we have now announced the Title of the new episode - after a lot of discussion, planning and consideration, the All new Arj and Poopy Episode, is :

"Congo Windfall".

Stay tuned for and update on the Animation.

Arj and Poopy's All New Episode.

Production Blog V: Backgrounds

2006-12-24T07:11:00.000-08:00

The Storyboard is now complete. Very rough, but complete nonetheless.

The next stage is Backgrounds. In the past, once I had completed the storyboards I would go through and complete each scene before moving onto the next - meaning I would do the background for scene 1, then do all the animation for that scene, before moving onto scene 2. But for the last few Arj and Poopys (starting with "Unlucky in Love"), I began creating all the backgrounds for the short first (from the first to last scene), before going back to the start and beginning Animation. This is basically the same way animation would move through departments at any studio.

I found this approach to work a lot better - everything runs more smoothly, and you can have greater focus on each particular area. When going from scene to scene and only focusing on character animation for instance, it's a lot better than finishing animating one scene and then having to get you head around drawing persepctive for the background of the next scene.

Below is the first background from the All New Arj and Poopy movie*. In my next post I will show the layers involved with creating this first background.

Arj and Poopy's All New Episode, Scene 1 Background.

* Stay tuned for the release of the title of the All New Arj and Poopy movie.

Production Blog IV: Storyboarding II

2006-12-20T17:33:00.001-08:00

Back on track with the new episode, but the Storyboarding is going a little slower on this episode as it's a little more complicated than usual. At the moment the board is about half done, but probably rougher than normal, which might slow things up when I go to clean up the poses in animation.

Below is me drawing one of the poses for the current board. I draw these poses quite rough and quick, and one like this I might actually stick to quite closely when I clean it up.

Production Blog III: Storyboarding

2006-10-28T17:56:00.000-07:00

As always happens, just when I was about to go crazy on this Bouncy episode I've been snowed under with other work, so production has ground to a halt, for the moment. But if I was on the new Arj and Poopy episode right now, I'd be doing the next stage: storyboarding.

I tend to storyboard pretty quickly; I might get through a whole episode in less than a day. I draw very rough, and even though it's messy, often there might be a drawing (or part of a drawing) or an expression I like, and I will do my best to keep the essence of that rough in the final animation. Sometimes that's not as easy as it sounds: when cleaning up you can lose what was special in the rough drawing, no matter how many times you go over it, and I will often end up liking one of my rough drawings more than the final product.

Below is a series of board panels from the opening of "Unlucky in Love". These panels are pretty elaborate, all my boards start out like this but as I motor through the panels the drawings get rougher and rougher, so by the end of the short the characters are represents by blobs - just basic composition indications. For some reason I really like drawing in orange - it keeps it light and makes it easy to see your linework when cleaning up the drawings later. I do the boards directly into Flash, with each panel drawn in their own "scene". I do this for 2 reasons: firstly because I can roughly time the scenes when I draw them so that I'm creating an animatic of the short as I go, and secondly the panels end up becoming the layouts - I will just draw the backgrounds right over the top of them.

I'll hopefully get this other work out of the way in the next month and we will be back onto the new ep.

The Arj and Poopy Golf Classic

2006-09-30T21:03:00.000-07:00

The Annual Arj and Poopy Golf Classic was held for all Arj and Poopy staff last week - here are a couple of shots of Arj's shots.

Production Blog II: The Bouncy Recordings

2006-09-27T16:28:00.000-07:00

Arj firing up in front of the mic.

When Arj comes to town, we invariably get together and record a bunch of stuff - random jokes, things for the website and sometimes piece together episodes on the spot.

Will Ward is our resident sound recordist, who works mainly on feature films, most recently the film "Jindabyne" with Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne. Arj and Poopy work strictly with very heavy and talented people. Will gets us into his studio on the Fox Studios Lot for our sessions.

The voice of Bouncy meanwhile, who at this time cannot be revealed just yet, is based on the East Coast of the USA. He was able to record his dialogue in his home studio, with just a bit of direction via e-mail, and it came back absolutely perfect.

So with the all dialogue in place, the next step is storyboards.

Arj and Poopy's Official Sound Recordist, Will Ward.

Production Blog I: Deciding the Setting

2006-09-20T17:10:00.000-07:00

There's going to be a new episode, and it's going to have Bouncy.

So far that's the premise of the latest Arj and Poopy Episode. Gratuitous, sure - but it's time we get him involved. This ep will really be about introducing him, show a bit about his character and how he interacts with Arj and Poopy. But other than Bouncy, there still has to be some classic Arj.

Once we decide on that classic Arj joke, the next step is coming up with the Setting. Before "Unlucky in Love", we were getting claustrophobic always being inside Arj's apartment. We'd wanted to get out of the apartment for "Shpants" but that one couldn't really be anywhere else, as he was arriving home from shopping. So for Unlucky, we came up with the idea of Poopy train spotting out in the forest. The great thing about how Arj recorded Unlucky, (and most of his recordings), was there was nothing specific about the setting. "Unlucky in Love" could have been set in a cave or on the moon, it didn't matter.

So we're zeroing in on that joke now, and after a couple of episodes, it looks as though for this one we're going back to the apartment. Then we just have to decide on whether it will be night or day...

The Arj and Poopy Blog

2006-09-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

It's all happening - The Official Arj and Poopy Blog.

Ever wondered what is going on with Arj and Poopy? Where is Arj? What's happening with the store? When is "King Prawn" going to be ready? Why aren't there ever any new episodes? What's happening with the newest episode? Well, you'll find round about beat-about-the-bush answers to all those questions and more, right here.

Right now, we're going to focus on The All New Arj and Poopy Episode. It is as yet Untitled, but any info about it you will find here. But not just yet. Stay tuned for the first official post. Very soon. Seriously.

B