We’ve recently signed on to produce an animated intro for a very cool idea for a web series titled, “Neighborhood Watchmen”. The project is currently in the final days of a kickstarter campaign, so if you’d like to help propel the success of it, then visit www.kickstarter.com/projects/1296199210/neighborhood-watchmen and pledge away if you can. Or simply spread the word!
More updates on this project will be coming soon!
Political Earth is a short film “mockumentary” created by Scooter Downey, for a contest being held on infowars.com. We were brought on board to produce the animation.
You can check out the full video right now on YouTube or Vimeo! The overall style of this particular project has been something completely new to us. Almost all of the visuals are of real pictures. The animation style is similar to that of a Monty Python intro, or South Park. To say the least, it has been a very interesting project to work on.
A few months ago, we were asked to create a small animated logo intro for the guys at The Spunion, for the premiere of their “First Of Tha Month” series which consists of monthly underground mixtape releases. Here’s the video of the animation only:
And here’s the full video with a sample from the first release:
Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats had tweeted little nuggets of wisdom that she had picked up over the years about storytelling. Those tweets were eventually compiled and labeled as “The 22 Rules of Storytelling”. They’re definitely good to keep handy if you’re writing a story!
#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.
#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on - it’ll come back around to be useful later.
#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.
I got to paint one of the covers for Adventure Time #2, go buy the comic!!
Medium: Gouache on Watercolor Paper!
In celebration of the 20 years that the story has been in existence, we were hoping to release the very first episode of our original series, titled “Broken Stone” this year. Unfortunately that’s not going to happen. This has been an extremely busy (and quite exciting) year for us, and unfortunately we weren’t able to allocate enough time towards the Broken Stone project to finish it in time. But that’s okay! We’d much rather not rush it.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Broken Stone, we’ve decided to share some extremely old (and previously classified) content from the world of Broken Stone. Below, you will find images and footage from the original issues and episodes that have never before been seen by anyone outside of CJC.
These first two images are from the VERY FIRST ISSUE, created in 1991! The story was originally titled “Ninja Man”, but it has long since changed as it was constantly rewritten.
These next few images are from what would be considered “Season 2”. Created in April 2000, the story picked up 10 years after the climactic events of Season 1. The images shown are from a bar fight scene that took place near the front of the issue.
And finally, in 2003 we made our first attempt at bringing the series into the world of animation. We decided to start with Season 2 (which was titled “Dragon Stones” at the time). Below you will find the first half of Episode 1, and it runs about 17 minutes. Don’t expect any mind blowing visuals! We actually used this project as a tool to learn Flash in general, and this was one of the VERY first things that we’ve created in it!
We’ve completed about 40 minutes worth of animation in total, which equated to about 5 episodes. We plan to eventually make it back to this portion of the story and completely reanimate everything.
The new Broken Stone series is in development as I type this, and we’re hoping to be releasing the first episode within the first quarter of 2012.
Check out this interview that Bryan Waterman recently did with the Brookline Patch about The Waterman Movie!
Over the past few months, we’ve been working on an idea for a new project that randomly came to mind. We don’t have an official title for it yet, and we can’t really share much about the story (since it’s all still being ironed out), but here’s a sneak peak at the main cast of characters!
We thought that it would be pretty cool to give each character their own unique look and “vibe” by having them each independently designed by different people. So, we teamed up with artist/writer wizard Lexa Forsyth (Known as lexarr in the tumblr world) to help bring these characters to life, and she did an incredible job! Not only did she deliver an awesome visual concept, but she brought along with it the heart and soul of the character as well! We couldn’t be happier with the results!
That’s about all we can share for now, but more details about this project will become available as we continue pushing forward with it!
An awesome article explaining the different types of Writers’ block, and how to overcome them!
Back in June, Waterman Studios held an online event via Vokle.com where they made two big announcements. The first one being that The Waterman Movie is officially in production (which we posted about later that week). The second announcement was that there was going to be a stand up comedy event held in Studio City, California to benefit the production of Leslie Nielsen’s final film. Tickets for this event have finally gone on sale!
Simply visit www.TheWatermanMovie.com to purchase your tickets today!
