1.  Part of the reason why the site stopped was because I had started going to SCAD or was getting ready to and it was a HUGE workload. I wanted to add more comics and get a schedule back but I just couldn’t do it (and I’m surprised Eric didn’t yell at me for it). Lately though I’ve been drawing loads more and really want to keep Koala Town and the characters alive.  I love them and every time I try to think up a comic to do that isn’t them I just immediately come back to it.

2.  I wanted to do a bigger, more involved, action/adventure oriented story but I think for my level of abilities/discipline I just can’t make that kind of commitment.  So in the future I do plan to start doing more comic strips, most likely in the vein of the original versions where they were 3-4 panels with more involved ones being longer as I come up with them.  I really love writing the bigger stories and imagining how things will be and look but I guess in the end it’s just way too overwhelming.  Also, my panel layouts really blow and don’t flow well at all.

3.  I’ve been working more intensely on learning figure drawing and just trying to improve overall in the skills department.  I think in my future approaches to how I draw and how the characters will look you’ll probably see my time at SCAD reflected in this.  I hope it looks better and I really hope people like it.

So that’s what my current thoughts are.  I want to have done at least ONE new Koala Town strip (probably start in black and white though at first), with all the unnecessary flash stripped away, and just work on the meat of being funny and trying to have good, well-written characters.  Oh, and well-drawn.  Well-drawn characters are also important.

Ok, I’ll stop rambling now.

Be back on or around New Year’s I’m gonna say.

Since there hasn’t been a comic in ages I thought I’d throw something up I made for the Something Awful forums.  Sorry for the lack of posts as well as any new content.  Hopefully, things won’t just die out but right now I’m busy with school and Eric’s busy with working so I’m not sure when we’ll be able to get together and work out some new comics.

The last few months I’ve been mostly working in the background while Aaron does his thing, providing advice or suggestions as he makes progress with the animation stuff. He’s done some really cool stuff so far and hopefully we’ll be able to show something substantial relatively soon.

Aaron also drew two new comics last week, one that isn’t KT-related and  the other I wrote a while ago and we forgot about it.  I’m thinking we’ll start updating whenever we get a funny idea. Technically it’s what we’ve been doing, but maybe we’ll try to do it a bit more often since I believe this was the first time! Not that we didn’t get any funny ideas since then, but we’ve both been pretty busy and just didn’t take the time to write or draw most of the jokes we have properly.

Anyway, here’s to hoping we have something else to show in the next couple of weeks, animated or not.

I know there haven’t been a lot of updates lately.  Sorry about that!  My first semester at SCAD started a week ago so I’ve been really busy, but I also got in the mood to doodling some comics.  :D  So here you go!

Ok, so here’s what I’ve done today.  I spent the past two hours creating a short test animation featuring Koala and Snake moving around and interacting with each other.  Total runtime is only about 8 seconds but I didn’t storyboard it or anything so that’s why.  I was just kind of making it up as I went along and I wanted to test how the new stage worked out.  Also, I discovered a few unfortunate things:

1.  My camera sucks.  Tremendously.  Even in Manual mode it auto-focuses so you’ll definitely notice that right off the bat in the video.  Also, it’s incredibly grainy if you shoot anything past it’s first zoom setting.  It’s a 300 dollar camera but I bought it for 80 off Amazon.  :O No wonder it was on sale.  I doubt I’ll ever have the money for an HD camera so unfortunately, for now, future Koala Town videos will have a weird public access film quality to it.

2.  I really need to work on learning how to make better puppets.  When I was carving the wood for Koala’s feet (that are now Frankenstein’s monster in appearance) I actually kind of realized I enjoy wood carving.  If I had better tools and more wood I could actually probably try my hand at that.  Basically, making puppets makes you want to experiment and make more.  :O Because it’s a ton of fun.  Hopefully, I’ll get to a point where I can make some actually professional looking ones.

3.  I did notice that in the video there’s a lot of areas where I need to insert frames.  Something I’m learning about stop-motion is, and this is probably why it’s so difficult, that you can’t really set up keyframes for the puppets to map a scene out and then go back and do the inbetweens to smooth out the edges.  If you can then I’d love to know the process because right now it feels like I’m flying blind.

So, yeah, right now I have the little tests going on.  There may be some more in the works in the future but, currently, I’m making plans on how the first set will look.  It’ll probably be inside Koala and Snake’s home since that’s just the easiest place to start.  I bought some extra supplies for bigger papier-mache projects so I’ll definitely get started on that this week, either before or sometime after Christmas.  Progress never takes a holiday!

Finally, going back to what I said about the puppets earlier, I’d really love to learn how to make better ones.  I’m finding Koala is a serious pain in the butt to animate since either her head doesn’t move easily or it flops around or her feet get in the way etc etc.

Okay, enough about that.  Real quick, also wanted to add that I watched Peter and the Wolf last night and it was excellent.  The stop motion was very well done and holy crap were those puppets well made and designed.  They did a great job with Peter’s expressions especially.  Here’s the trailer to it:

Well!  It’s almost done.  Tonight I’ve been working hard for the past many hours cannibalizing wood from here and there (just from blocks and boards and other junk) to build a raised platform that would serve as the stage.  I found some moldy old boards lying around as well as some thick blocks from a previous, dropped project and sawed them down into what would become the frame for the platform.  Next, I needed to get something to cover the frame that would be used as the tie-down board for the puppets.  The tie-down board is what you use to, well, tie the puppets to the “floor” so they don’t wobble or fall over while you’re animating them.  I was originally going to just use cardboard and hope for the best but I needed something sturdier and found an old sheet of ehh…whatever that wood panel is called that has the holes in it you use to stick your tools up on the wall with.  You’ll know it in the upcoming photos.  So I used that as well as a broken down canvas frame from an old, crappy painting I did and that went into the finished product.  Now, I can start doing walk cycle tests and other test movements.  :D

I tried to make a quick Koala walk test but unfortunately the papier-mache feet weren’t sturdy enough and she kept falling over.  Now that I have some wood scraps though  I can easily break those down into little puppet feet and get that to work.  Shouldn’t be too hard.  I think I’m done for the night though.  I stopped to make something to eat and everything is intensely sore.  I don’t have a vice unfortunately so when I saw I have to manually hold the wood in place with my hand.  It’s a serious pain.  The same goes for hammering.

So, what’s next on the list of to-dos?  Well, after I refix the feet I’ll try to get some new test animations done and then after that, I’ll start building our first set.  :D  We still don’t have a script yet, sadly, for our very first Koala Town cartoon sketch but hopefully we’ll think of something!

But, well, that’s just how it is.  Originally, I had wanted to give them a cloth teddy bear look.  Unfortunately, my sewing skills rival Daisy Ashford’s novel writing abilities so I ended up dropping that plan out of frustration.  At the suggestion of Eric I looked into Claymation, but unfortunately all I have to work with is Play-Doh which turned out to be very uncooperative in terms of sculptability.  It kept bouncing back and mucking about so I dropped it (up yo’ butt.)  Finally, I went with what I had wanted to try for a while now:  paper sculpture.  Using papier-mache bodies and heads as a base and creating a sort of painted, pseudo-crepe paper “fur” for Koala I made a figure that resembles something of a purple pinata.  I actually like the way it looks though.  It has a minimalist feel to it that I’m starting to warm up to.  It’s not the professional quality level I wanted but given I’m a total novice at this stuff and I’m exploring new territory it’s a pretty good start.

Now, for Snake, well that was easy.  I cannibalized a stuffed crab for plush fabric when I was originally making a furry Koala.  The plush turned out to be way too thick(Koala looked like a Snorlax) so I had to scrap it but I kept the green antenna because they were perfect for Snake.  They even had wire inside for posing.  On top of that, there were two of them!  So now I have two Snakes and a Koala.  I had to take some extra fabric though and sew a tail onto the end of Snake but it came out well.  I just wish I had some embroidery thread to thicken up his eye dots.  Or maybe some fabric paint even would be simpler.  I’ll remember to get some from Hobby Lobby if I can.

Welp, I’m sure you’re bored!  Have some pictures of Koala chillin’ and riding Snake:

So, what’s next?  Well, this week I’d like to get some dialogue recorded and try to make a test video.  I’m thinking of just taking some old strips, probably the one’s before we started Koala Town.  Once we get some good footage in and I’m more comfortable with how to make these things (and also after I build some sets) I think Eric and I should be set to start writing our first pilot sketch.  Still debating if it should be a single sketch or do Koala Town as a 15 minute story/sketch show done in episodes.  If you have any thoughts feel free to post ‘em!

In other news, I bought a tripod and somewhat expanded how much table space I have for the set.  Hopefully, that will help make the sets a bit easier to work with.  We’re getting there!