Cereal Addicts Annonomouse - Cast of Characters

Here is the cast of characters for my personal project Cereal Addicts Annonomouse. Well, These are general mills characters. I changed their drawing style slightly to conform to my own style. However I did not need to change their character traits to make them addicts, just put them in a realistic situation.

Dig'ems the Frog: He is the spokesfrog for Smacks cereal. He has not appeared in commercials in years though he still makes the occasional appearance on the cereal box.
















Sonny: Sonny is Cookoo for Cocoa Puffs. He can't focus on anything but Puffs. Cocoa Puffs give him a uphoric chocolate high. Even the mention of Cocao Puffs distracts him from anything he is doing. His addiction has taken over his life. He has decided to seek help.











Count Chocula: Though possibly not an addict himself. Count Chocula is a small time cereal pusher. He skulks bad nieghborhoods at night where his clientele of addicts hang out.
















Lucky: An ironic name for a tourtured soul. Lucky Charms cause Lucky intense hallucinations and paranioa. He is on constant gaurd since he sees everyone as after his lucky charms.












Trix Rabbit: Trix Rabbit has been obsessed with getting his Trix for years. He will do anything for Trix. He will go to great lengths for Trix only to hear "Silly rabbit Trix are for kids."
















Capt Crunch: Capt Crunch lost his crew long ago. Now he sails alone searching for the allusive Crunch Berries.
















Tony the Tiger: Tony is a small time thug, and count chocula's right hand man.

















Crave: years ago Crave was the spokesmonster for Honeycomb. He was known for his insatiable craving for Honeycombs. After being dropped by General Mills, Crave hit hard times. However he got clean and now runs the Cereal Addicts Annonomouse program to help others like him.

Boogeyman

These six frames are my most recent animation. The dancing boofeyman is synced to the same song as prissy. The six frames are reversed and repeated to make a 24 frame cycle. This is the most complex character I have animated to date. The drawing is much more consistant then the short project I did this summer (Psycho the Clown). The result is a smoother looking animation.

Timing music to animation

With the GiveMeTac Metronome, I discovered that the tempo of the song I am syncing to was 120 beats per minute. At 24 frames per second that is a 12 frame beat. I was working at 12 frames per second making it a 6 beat. The rhythm of the song is I beleive is a 2/4 (I could be mistaken but that is the rhythm I timed the animation to and it seems to work). The cycle is twelve frames of Prissy swinging her hips back and forth. The accent is on the 2nd beat which falls on the12th frame. On the accent Prissy snaps her fingers. It syncs up to the accented beat in the song! This is my first success in setting an animated rhythm. Now that I finally understand this concept, I can apply it to all my animations, whether synced to music or not. The metronome can help me time things out in my head much more presicely than a stop watch. I had been using rhythms in my walk cycles as long as I have been doing them but it was not synced to any specific beat (as far as I knew at the time). I knew animation has been being musically timed since its roots, but I simply couldn't figure out how to do it. Both Seamus Culhane's book Animation: Script to Screen, and Harold Whitaker, and John Halas' book Timing for Animation (both of which essential books for anybody who wishes to study animation) have great secions on timing animation to music. However, neither book gave a formula for figuring out how many frames to a beat. Here is an example from Timing for Animation: "Bars can contain various number of beats and these must be measured to the film frame." It does not say how one actually goes about doing this. Fortunately animator Mark Mayerson was kind enough to post the formula in his blog. This discovery takes alot of the guess work out of timing. Before this I timed my animation by feel, and trial and error; hoping eventually I would get a better feel for it over time. Now I can use the metronome as an aid to give me concrete measues of time that I can convert to frames.

Mannequin Lover

I was asked to storyboard a music video today. I have yet to hear the song. It is about a man who falls in love with a mannequin.

and it goes a little something like this...

When I saw you on display
You were wearing that pink negligee
I didn't care what they'd say
I knew you would be the perfect lay

Ohhh
Mannequin lover, you were made for me
Mannequin lover, you came with a guarantee
Mannequin lover, you're my personal property
Ohhh
Mannequin lover, fulfill my fanatasy

Ohhh
I'll never forget that first time
When I took you, Oh
Cause you and I were together
Ohhh
Let's tell the whole world
Love is something I now own

Ohhh
Mannequin lover, you were made for me
Mannequin lover, you came with a guarantee
Mannequin lover, you're my personal property
Ohhh
Mannequin lover, fullfil my fantasy

Ooooo, you feel so good
Even though you're only made of wood

Ohhh mannequin lover please please please me
Mannequin lover, get down on your knees

Ohhh
Mannequin lover, you were made for me
Mannequin lover, you came with a guarantee
Mannequin lover, you're my personal property
Oh Mannequin lover, fulfill my fantasy
Ohhh

Isn't that romantic.

ps. please excuse my sloppy drawing, I drew these between deliveries at work.

Here are some poses from Cereal Addict Anonomouse, a personal project of mine. I am currently in the process of drawing, inking, and scanning every pose from the short. These will be used to do layouts digitally. Then the digital layouts will be used with the recorded dialogue to rough out the timing of the peice. I have more poses, and I will continue to post them so keep an eye out for more.