The 'Merely Meerkats' Diaries - Part 6

I've gotten so bored with animating I started designing the DVD cover for Merely Meerkats, some promotional art and even launched The Official Merely Meerkats Online Shop. I have to draw animation cels for Bruce the Cobra next, then animate the end of the first act. This is a milestone, but nonetheless, there is much that is yet to be done.

In other news, I plan on launching a new revamped version of FARToons.net. It'll be the first design change since 2007. And let me tell you, a new look is much needed. This also means that some of the old content will be removed. So if there is something you want from there be sure to download it now.

The Official Merely Meerkats Online Shop

- Ryan

The 'Merely Meerkats' Diaries - Part 5

At this point I am getting very tired of animating. Especially doing lip sync. It is ridiculously boring and there is a ton of dialog. I'm not sure how I feel about the cartoon so far. Everything is split up into shots and I haven't seen the whole thing put together. But I'm not too thrilled with it at the moment. I know it could be better. But there just isn't time. I'm also pretty bummed out that a new animated TV series came out that is similar to one of the concepts I have been working on since 2003. The only difference is that their show isn't funny and the characters are lame. Mine is hilarious and the characters are awesome. But of course they got there's on TV because they have big names behind it and I don't. I'm glad I came up with Merely Meerkats as a backup but I don't have as much faith in it as I do my other show.

Pretty soon I will have to start designing backgrounds and characters again, which is probably my least favorite part. I had only planned on doing the first act so I only designed what I thought I needed. Even though all I do is work on this thing I really should be putting more time into it. The clock is ticking... Ticking me off... -Pause for applause and laugh track-.

- Ryan

The 'Merely Meerkats' Diaries - Part 4

Eh. The pilot isn't going too bad, though it could be better. Flash is giving me obnoxious problems all the time with it's lagging and for some stupid reason I always have to reset the tween easing over and over. Anyone else have this problem? It is ridiculous! Tomorrow I begin animating the most difficult scene thus far. I only have about a minute and a half animated. Unfortunately it is a slow process, and I found out it has to be at least eight minutes instead of four. What does this mean? Well, for one it means I'm screwed since I only have until late January to finish it. It also means I have to animate more than the first act. To reach eight minutes I'll probably have to animate the entire thing. This will be almost impossible, but what else do I have to do with my life?

I have set up a Facebook fan page for Merely Meerkats if you are interested enough to 'like' it. It is mostly statuses of me bitching about Flash.

- Ryan

The 'Merely Meerkats' Diaries - Part 3

After fighting major technical difficulties with lip sync in Flash CS5 for several days, I finally finished animating the first scene of the Merely Meerkats pilot today. Let me tell you something about Flash CS5... IT IS CRAP! Seriously! Pure crap! Macromedia did such a better job with Flash it's not even funny. Leave it to Adobe to fuck it all up. It lags like crazy, crashes all the time, and has strange frame-rate issues that I don't even understand. For the first time I am forced to animate in thirty frames a second because Flash is too retarded to get it right in anything less. As always, the exported AVI files don't work with Adobe Premiere. So that is something I will be battling later on down the line. Why can't Adobe ever do anything right? Seriously...

The animation doesn't look exactly how I pictured it, but I am no Chuck Jones so what the hell can I do? The voices are also pretty lame but I don't have a Mel Blanc in my pocket. I'm just trying to make it look as decent as I can at this point. I haven't even started dealing with the difficult animation yet. I am not looking forward to getting to the scenes with a lot of movement. But we'll see what happens when that time comes... Which will be like tomorrow...

- Ryan