We’ve created an account in a very interesting animation community known as ToonTube, and we submitted a few of our projects to get started. Little did we know that we would eventually stumble across a post on the ToonTube website featuring our ‘Everything Animated’ project, as well as congratulating us for winning ‘Animation of the Month’. This monthly contest is based on community votes, so we are completely flattered to receive so much love as newcomers!

Not only is this as awesome honor, but it’s a bit ironic, too. ‘Everything Animated’ was originally created for a completely different contest in a completely different animation community. While our project did not win in the original contest that it was intended for, it still ended up winning in a completely different way!

A million thanks to ToonTube and everyone who voted!

Below is a video that we put together showing the creation of the digital storyboard for “Everything Animated”. It took about an hour to roughly draw all of the scenes. Despite having to edit and remove a few shots, the digital storyboard was nearly spot on to the final animation.

We don’t usually participate in contests, but when we first heard about the MyToons Bumper Blastoff Competition, we decided to at least check it out. At first, we had no idea what a ‘commercial bumper’ even was, but after reading about it on the MyToons website, we figured that we could actually pull that off. Producing 30 seconds of animation definitely beats producing 30 minutes.

Our MyToons bumper is complete and submitted with only a few days to spare… whew! And it weighed in at exactly… 29 seconds… WHEW! So far it has gotten some great reviews.

You can check it out right here:

In order to speed up production time, we needed more help. So we enlisted the creative minds of not only our sister (who created all of the sparkly special effects that you’ll see in the bumper), but our parents as well. We’ve definitely gotten our creative genes from our parents (who were both artists growing up), so we can’t thank them enough for all of the support that they have given us. Even going out of their way to put pencil to paper and help design the toys found in the room. Our mom even pulled our her old musical talents by helping us produce the official music!

We can truly say that without our sister and parents pitching in their time and efforts, we most certainly would not have made the deadline. A million thanks to them and thanks to everyone who has commented on our submission at MyToons! You flatter us!

In December 2007, we heard about a website called MyToons via the Cold Hard Flash website. The article was about a commercial bumper competition that was being hosted at MyToons. A commercial bumper (or break bumper) is a brief transition announcement that is usually placed between the television program and the actual commercials. The rules are simple: The bumper must be under 30 seconds, and it must contain the MyToons Logo.

We decided that we would enter this competition if we could fit it into our work schedule. At the time, we were knee-deep in the production of the My Neighborhood Pilot, so we were definitely unable to start immediately, but we did begin brainstorming about what our bumper would consist of. Coming up with an idea turned out to be way harder than we expected. In fact, we couldn’t come up with any ideas at all…

We were constantly asking ourselves, “what could our bumper be about?” We’ve never created something like this before and it was difficult for us to come up with an idea that we can show in 30 seconds or less. This was new territory for us, so it was very difficult for us to imagine anything. After spending so much time trying to come up with an idea that we felt could work, we eventually looked at ourselves and had a mind-blowing realization: WE were the idea!

In other words, we decided to use our frustrating situation to our advantage by simply making a bumper about us trying to come up with an idea for a bumper. Does that make sense? Basically the kid that’s starring in our bumper will be a reflection of ourselves, and he will go through similar frustrations of trying to come up with an idea. We’ll make his world black & white to represent his lack of any vibrant or colorful ideas. We will then combine that concept with MyToons’s slogan (“Everything Animated”) and have our bumper end with his failed ideas literally coming to life by coloring/animating everything in his room. Hence, everything animated.

We’re still in the process of developing this bumper, and so far it runs about 25 seconds long.  There are still shots to be completed so we’re cutting it close to the 30 second limit. But hopefully it won’t get much longer after all of the animation is finished.

The competition ends February 28^th 2008. The original deadline was January 18th 2008 , but they decided to extend it… lucky us!