Ben Levin Dot Net

WEEKEND WORKAGE

Ben — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:55:01 +0000

Here’s a sampling of this weekend’s indoor activities. Some more animation from the Max Levine Ensemble video I’m making.

Ghost in a cup!

Some clean animation before I colored it and added the background. This one is the ghost flying into the cup.

This one is the ghost twirling itself into the cup like a little ghost poo. Or ghost soft serve – whichever you prefer.

The ghost is singing in this shot, and it took a minute to figure out the proper mouth shapes to draw for the lip sync. Since this ghost doesn’t have teeth separated from it’s lips, the consonant sounds (like “ssss”) didn’t look convincing. So I drew those little gooey mouth shapes where it looks his drippy “teeth” are connected and it worked! I also cheated and gave the ghost a tongue for a couple of frames.

I’m hungry for some soft serve now.

PUNKER THAT SMACKING BUCKETS

Ben — Thu, 09 May 2013 08:12:34 +0000

I like to dream…

GIVE ME ANOTHER SHOT

Ben — Mon, 06 May 2013 06:58:49 +0000

BAM! Finished another shot for the Max Levine Ensemble music video.

KEEP ON DRUMMIN’

Ben — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 07:08:03 +0000

Some rough animation from the Max Levine Ensemble music video I’m working on. Animating drums takes forever. Well, it takes ME forever.

I broke everything up into parts just to get my head around it – right arm, left arm, head, hair, lower torso, hi-hat, snare and the rest. Breaking it up also means I can loop it easier without redrawing a bunch. It’s only going to be on screen for two seconds, so I’ll let it loop here for infinity.

Camarillo City Rockers

Ben — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 06:47:37 +0000

This was my first time seeing Leftover Crack since I moved from New York City to Los Angeles. Some of the more memorable times seeing Leftover Crack in their hometown of NYC included a squat basement show, where I’m fairly certain I contracted scabies, and their quasi-annual Cracktoberfest, which attracted just as many police as drunk punks. I was glad to see weirdo punks were alive and well in the strip malls of California.

Also, if you haven’t heard Niño Zombi, and you like evil ska-punk, you should check them out.

10 USES FOR SKA

Ben — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 04:01:56 +0000

10 uses for 10 different ska bands.

I SKETCH WITH COLORS

Ben — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 03:24:23 +0000

Dude holding a Lincoln head. This will have context in a couple days.

TESTING STUFF

Ben — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 08:30:58 +0000

Doing some animation tests with a new character. Still figuring her out.

Calibration Troubles

Ben — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 10:20:47 +0000

My computer passed away several weeks ago but I’m finally back up and running!

Half way home

Ben — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 07:10:52 +0000

Happy to say I’m well over the halfway mark to finishing my music video for The Max Levine Ensemble! If you’ve met me in the past year or so and heard me talk about working on a music video – yes I am still working on that video. Only 937 more frames of animation to go! That makes it sound not so bad, actually. Anyhow, here are some stills from the shots completed thus far. I’ve been coloring and rendering everything as I go to ease the pain of having an incomplete project.

While I’ve been working on this cartoon quagmire, The Max Levine Ensemble has released three music videos. Well, actually they’ve released two, and Spoonboy has just released a new one from his solo works. It’s called Sexy Dreams, and if you love sexiness and dreams and Batman and questioning gender roles, then I suggest you check it out.

Really good stuff.