hey i'm gonna do one of these longform kinda blog posts basically looking back on what happened with my NATA.
first of all, i entered NATA this year. while i didn't finish my open round entry, it was still submitted, and you can view it on the official NATA site here.
let's talk about me and tournaments, or just contests in general. i am NOT GOOD with deadlines at all. if it was commissioned work, i'd work hard on it, but with contests, most of the time i'm just not bothered with them until last minute. i started working on my open round entry when the details were announced weeks ago, as a lot of animators i knew were entering it, like Brynimation, SirDuckDee, Flikkernicht etc.
first, i started off by working on the storyboard for the cartoon (yes i still do storyboard, shut up), and completely wrote the script at the same time while drawing it. i got the storyboard done in like, two or three days i think. if you're interested in seeing it, click HERE to download it from the NG dump. with that over, i needed voice actors, and that took a bit, because i got a voice actor at each stage of work. first, i got my good friend Jordan, a.k.a. ThePivotsXXD, to voice the main character, who was telling you all the AMAZING facts! with him on board, i needed to look for people who would voice the mafia guys, and each voice was done like, the second or third week. the first person i got was Ryan, a.k.a. Chongo, to voice the guy questioning the fact man at the end of the video, then Joel, a.k.a. FLASHYANIMATION to voice the "who you talkin to/back to sleep ya mutt" guy, James a.k.a. SirDuckDee to do the voice for the Don, who said my favourite line of the video "that's the way the cookie crumbles!" (fun fact, that voice is James' supposed Tommy Pickles impression. he did an audio recording using that voice, so i did a little vid of that and put it on my second youtube channel, so click the "put it" text to see it on youtube.), and at like, THE VERY LAST MINUTE, i had my pal Dan, a.k.a. TheJovialCerealBox/Dan Hall/Champion of Solitaire to voice the "where's my money, tommy" part.
for the more important voices, like Jordan and Ryan's lines, i had to wait for a couple days to get them to start fully animating. when i got Jordan's lines, i started a bit of animation in the second week, but basically just slacked a bit until saturday of that week i started getting more into it. in the third week, i was making more progress, but losing more sleep, as i was staying up to 5am/6am getting more and more animation done. then the NATA deadline was approaching. i was working as hard as i could to get it done, which i nearly did, but i just didn't have any time left as the deadline was approaching. the last day was when i was really pushing to get it out. that day, i got a w.i.p. swf sent to the best SFX guy in the ENTIRE WORLD, Ryan a.k.a. BooneBum. he did that while i was working on the animation, and sent me it when i had 7 hours left, all my fault. at least i have SFX, the voices, and the majority of animation done, i can crank it out, right? i was wrong. it was unfinished, so i just had to enter it unfinished.
this was the first tournament cartoon i had ever mostly finished. in 2013, i entered TOFA where i pretty much failed, and i can see why, like, i didn't even bother to add the rest of the voices in the animation when i stopped animating. then i tried entering NATA in 2014, which was going pretty well, but i didn't get that finished!!!! i would like to really get back to that animation sometime soon.
i'm happy with my NATA cartoon, i really am, because it was something i really put a lot of work in to, and even though i didn't get it finished, i'm still proud of it. excited to see the results, and see what feedback i'll get, so i can learn from it.
my NATA entry is near enough finished so i'll work on that and upload the finished thing like, in a week or something i don't know. i want to thank Jordan, James, Dan, Ryan, BooneBum and Joel for their help with the animation, and of course, i would like to thank KEVIN MACLEOD for his wonderful music, go check him out, incompetech(dot)com, guys, great music.
if you want you can see my past attempts at entering tournaments, go ahead here's TOFA 2013 and NATA 2014.
until next time, folks, remember this saying...
BI-LO: Why Should You Pay More?
