Been playing around with some non-conventional fire treatment, for a cross between reality and fantasy. This is a seamless cycle (update: right-click the play button and turn Looping on – thanks andyland21) and will soon be for sale as an image sequence or Toonboom Animate Pro 2 .tpl
TorchFire from chluaid on Vimeo.
This caustic refraction effect is something I’ve always wanted to do in 2D. In Waterlollies and Dashkin, you’ll see where I’ve tried to use it on rocks, cave walls and even on the Auld Sage, but in Flash it’s hard to get it looking realistic. While my latest attempt (below) still involves quite a bit of drawing and FX experience to work well, the realism in the final treatment is thanks to some handy effect modules in Toonboom Animate Pro 2.
Here is a page dedicated to the effect that will soon be for sale in my store.
Work on The Last of the Dashkin 2 (temporary title) has begun. The story has been in place for a while but it’s now a matter of getting it into screenplay format before moving on to panels and a working visual format.
LotD was a prologue. The plan for part 2 therefore is that it’ll be an on-board view as the story really begins to blossom. It’s not the story that will be told in the feature film, so some of the bigger mysteries will remain.
For the conclusion of the story, I’ve decided against putting myself through hell. In other words, I’m using Animate Pro. I have a plan and a little secret to help me get the movie onto NG at a reasonable filesize. In the meantime, I’ll keep you posted with screenshots and updates!
Journal entry: Nov 27, 2009.
Day 35. I’m nearing the summit of this huge mountain. The world is watching and failure is not an option. Why did I choose an old friend as my climbing partner? True to his nickname, Ed “Halfs” Boa is barely competent and I find myself doing twice the work just to ensure we both get to the summit alive, sane and on time.
Now and then his talent shines through and I’m reminded of our successful early years together. And yet in the back of my mind, I’m dreading the next time he stuffs up and almost kills us both.
Most of the time Boa coasts along with an agenda compl
Hi all! (echoes).
I’m not going to apologise for being inactive because that’s how I’ve opened so many blog posts, it’s getting old. The fact is that with micro-blogging (Twitter) sucking all my best thoughts out as they happen, there’s not much left for a full blog article. Besides, there’s only so many times you can say “still overloaded with freelance stuff but have big plans for Brackenwood”, before it sounds like lies.. especially with nothing to show for these big Brackenwood plans.
So what have I been up to all this time? I mean, it’s been almost two years since the release of Waterlollies. Soon after that, besotted with ToonBoom, some may recall that I announced that I may not do another Flash Brackenwood.
I admit now that’s something I didn’t really think about before saying. If I had thought about it, I’d have realised that Flash is where the Brackenwood audience is, particularly thanks to Newgrounds. If I completely abandoned Flash in favour of ToonBoom, I’d be alienating my biggest audience, the .swf audience. My YouTube channel just doesn’t give Brackenwood the same exposure as Newgrounds. Here are the figures at last count:
My YouTube channel – 50 movies – 1.2 million views
My Newgrounds page – 10 movies – 11.9 million views
Having said that, if the Brackenwood feature film is 2D and I have any control over how it’s done, it’ll be ToonBoom all the way. As you can see with the D&D shorts, ToonBoom gives me so much freedom to do the stuff I’ve always wanted to do, whereas Flash is very limiting.
OK here’s the announcement then. I’m currently working on a new Brackenwood movie for Newgrounds, which means I’m using Flash. Unfortunately Flash CS4 refuses to co-operate so I’m using Flash CS3. Without giving anything away about the story, let’s just say that it’ll answer a lot of questions. Questions about what? You’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime I’ll be posting screenshots and timelapse screen captures, thanks to Camtasia Studio (techsmith.com).
The reason I’m making all these promises now is to force myself to get the job finished. I always work better to a deadline that I’ve announced, because the pressure of audience anticipation lights a fire under me. For the release, I’ve set a tentative date for the first week of November (2 year anniversary of Waterlollies). It absolutely must get done by then.. so email me your encouragement and impatience 
Screenshots next week! Promise. For now though, here’s something I found while going through some old backup hard drives. It’s a scene test from the Yuyu, containing rough animation. Enjoy!
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