When we first started talking about creating another bumper for the MyToons contest, it was literally a crazy thought because we only had two days to do it. But the more we talked about it, the more we wanted to go for it. Even if we didn’t finish it in time for the contest, we were going to finish and submit it anyway. We had an awesome idea in mind with a great message in it, and we just wanted to share that.

With the overwhelming love and support that we had received after submitting our ‘Everything Animated’ bumper, we wanted to create this one not so much for the contest, but more so in appreciation to the incredible MyToons community.

The idea actually originated from our sister Angel (who helped us develop Everything Animated). She had also witnessed the sheer mass of love and support that we were getting for out work, and she brought it to our attention in a way that we were unable to see it at first. The MyToons community is a massive group of people who are not only fans of animation, but are talented and capable enough to create their own work. Everyone has their own artistic styles and their way of animating, and we thought that it would be amazing if all of these different styles came together to produce a single scene. It would be like a diverse crowd of people in the form of art and animation! We thought this was a really cool idea and we got started immediately.

In order to pull it off, we needed characters… lots and lots of characters… So the very first thing we did was start creating as many characters as we could in order to make a believable crowd. Since we didn’t have time to reach out to have other artist/animators to contribute, we decided to develop it in house with the help of those who also helped us create ‘Everything Animated’; that being our sister and parents again.

Aside from the new characters that were literally thought up and created on the spot, we had mixed in characters that we had long since designed. We have even included characters from projects that we have yet to officially announce (everyone loves Easter eggs!). So with all of that said, let’s meet some of the characters, shall we?

 

Potato Chip Man

This guy was created by our sister Angel. He’s basically a guy in a potato chip outfit. We thought he was hilarious and since there’s no such thing as revisions or even denying character concepts, he made it into the bumper! She drew him on paper, so we had to scan the image onto the computer, then trace him, color him, and break him up so he could be animated.

The Wiki Monster

The Wiki Monster actually a random drawing that was created in Flash a day prior to this project. He’s absolutely incomplete but we decided to throw him into the bumper anyway. He ultimately ended up getting a scene with Josh of 2nd Avenue! How cool is that?! Congrats Wiki Monster and best of luck in your future endeavors!

Wolf Man Philip

Created by Noel (our amazing mother), we asked her to design some characters for us as well, and she came up with quite a few of them. We are a little freaked out by some of her designs, but we love them nonetheless! Wolf Man Philip was created on paper as well, so we had to scan him in, trace him, color him, and break him up for animation.

Terry and Boom?

Yup you may not have caught them in the bumper, but they are totally there! SPOILER: Terry and Boom both appear in the final shot.

Being that green was so far away in the background, we decided to push Terry up to lime green! So, Terry was sporting a brighter, lime green version of his normal outfit. Also, since we didn’t have a place for ‘black’ characters (pun!), we decided to throw Boom into some orange clothing and stick him with the orange crowd!

The Pink Bunny

This character was originally supposed to be a cheerleader, but since we were so short on time, that we had to just work with it in its current state. So, instead of an adorable cheerleader bunny, it turned out to be a kinda creepy yet very happy bunny that’s trying to bring some joy into Angel’s life. This character was also created by Noel.

Banana Guy

Created by Noel, we found Banana Guy hilariously eerie, and thought that it would be perfect to match him with Banana Man.

That’s just a FEW of the many characters that appear in the bumper. We intentionally refrained from talking about some of them because they’re part of future projects that we aren’t ready to reveal just yet.

After we came up with the many characters, it was time to start mixing and matching them together. This was a bit of a task because the two people who originally designed the characters had to collaborate and synchronize their work so that the artwork could connect and animation could properly flow together.

We wanted to do so much more interaction and animation in this project, but we just didn’t have the time. We also had to take quite a few ‘shortcuts’ like duplicating some of the characters in the background to make a more believable crowd, as well as fading all of the characters out during the final shot. The character animation was done in Flash and compiled in After Effects. The Flash work was simple enough, but we’re still very new to After Effects, which unfortunately caused us some issues. Our original idea was to have the camera lift above and zoom out away from the crowd and continue zooming out until the entire logo could be seen, but we couldn’t get the camera to cooperate properly in After Effects, so we had to result to just fading in the logo on top of the animation footage. After Effects is an amazing program and we look forward to learning how to better use it and incorporate it into future projects.