Date: 1-16-2014

Due Date: 1-16-2015

Resolution: About a year ago I had an idea for this song. One night while hanging out with a couple of friends one of them recorded my idea with their phone and created this...

I then stole a video from YouTube and added our collaboration to it.

I recently bought a copy of Animation Studio Debut a simple animation program that I feel, with my limited knowledge of Flash 4 from back in the day, I can figure the program out well enough to give this song a proper music video.

Well, I have a year to see if these feelings are accurate.

Credit: Connor Hair for creating the beat for the beets!

Result #16: Though It's Not A Masterpiece, I Did Successfully Create An Animated Video For Eat Dem Beets!!!

Update #1: The Learning Process…

Date: 2-17-2014

I decided it's time to start learning this animation software so I can knock the Eat Dem Beets resolution off my list. Today I started by going through the tutorials that came with the program.

Back in 2000… I taught myself Flash 4, because I just got laid off from Amazon.com, had some extra money, and thought I could be the next Daily Doodie (at the time he was creating a new doodie animation every day.) 

A lot of the concepts in this tutorial came easy to me. They use some of the concepts as Flash 4, but so far this software seems much easier and a very impressive animation tool for beginners that I bought on sale for $20 bucks.

Here's the first thing I learned:

Pretty simple, pretty basic, but I'm going step by step.

The coolest feature of this software is that they teach you how to animate with bones. When I was animating with Flash 4 I never got to the point where I had characters actually walk. I just made them glide around with a bit of a bounce, kind of like the characters in South Park.

With these bones… you just create vector art, then throw some bones in there and the software does the rest. Well, you still have to position your characters but when you move, say the lower leg, then the foot, upper leg, hips, body, or anything else that is connected to that bone adjust within the boundaries of motion that you create. It's pretty amazing.

Here's the second thing that I learned:

The creature and the ball came with the software, but I drew the background and created all the motion, with step by step instructions of course.

At first… I was kind of afraid that it was going to take me forever to learn this program, but now that I've started I'm excited to get to work. If anything my ability to draw with a mouse is going to be the toughest hurdle. I'm going to have to dig up the old Wacom pad!!!

Update #2: Done With The Tutorials!!!

Date: 2-19-2014

Way back in 2000 when I taught myself Flash 4 I never got to the point of learning how to do lip-syncing, this program does it for you!!! Granted you have to create the different layers, but it does the work of selecting the layers.

Again this is something I put together with the artwork provided by the tutorial, but I fully understand the concepts.

I can't wait to play with this program for my own stuff!!!

Tomorrow I get started on the BEETS!!!

Update#3: And it begins.

Date: 2-20-2014

So here's what I was up to tonight. Since there's music in the background I wasn't able to have the program automatically do the lip-syncing for me, but that's fine. It was good to learn a workaround, which was more tedious than difficult.

The Anime Studio Debut tutorial had a link to Papagayo, a free program that helps you manually lip-sync your animation.

I had a couple of issues with this program like there's no pause button when you hit play you have to listen to the entire sound file from the beginning and when you edit the text you are using to sync things up it resets everything you did, even if you're just changing one letter (which I learned the hard way leading me to have to start over when I was damn near finished) but it was free. Even though I had to do this twice these two programs saved me way more time than the techniques I would have used back in the day with Flash 4.

I'm at my stopping point for the night but I thought I would share my progress for those of you playing along at home. I was originally going to wait until I had the finished product but then I figured I've shared every step of every other project I've been working on since starting this 365 Days of Resolution experiment, so why not keep the trend going.

Now it's time to watch movie #99 of the AFI's list of the 100 greatest films of all time, while I practice my knitting to eventually finish Resolution #2.

I'll keep you posted on that as well :)

Update #4: We Have Arms, Legs, Bones, And A Microphone…

Date 2-21-2014

This is what I did tonight. It's a little more tricky outside of the tutorial zone, but I'm still learning and pretty confident that I'll have this program down within the next couple of weeks. Well down enough to complete this resolution :)

As always, I'll continue to keep you posted.

Update #5: The Conclusion…

Date: 1-16-2015

I had much bigger plans for this video, including an actual dance and other characters. I was getting pretty good at using the animation program but then took a break as I was learning how to draw.

I wanted to draw my own beet character from scratch.

Well in the time that it's taken me to learn to draw I forgot how to use the animation software, but I feel all it will take is a day and a bit of motivation to get me back up to speed.

I was going to consider this a failure to send off to redemption but I did figure out this animation software enough to create something of a music video.

It's an ugly success, but a success nonetheless.

I will definitely continue working on this until I have an official Eat Dem Beets music video.

Until then...

Play Along At Home…