The Final Countdown

No, I'm not talking about where we are in the production schedule, I'm talking about our special surprise today.

Ladies and gentlemen, after many many delays I present to you

David Hammerfist: The Final Countdown!


Just a bit of back story, this is the first appearance of our hero David Hammerfist and it originated as my 220 film here at Loyola Marymount University. It's not very good to be honest with you, but there are some great ideas and some pretty well executed dialog if I do say so myself. The film was created entirely by me. I animated. I inked it. I colored it. I cast and recorded the voices. The only things that are not by me are the couple of stills during the closing credits. This film was first created in the Fall of 2005, but this version is brand spanking new. I fixed some weird camera moves and re-edited/re-made the ending using new footage from a flash game version of the story that I made in Fall 2006. The game experimented with some 3D effects that I think looked much better. You decide on the results, but I assure it is superior to what was there. So while this film still may not be Disney-hell, not even Hanna-Barbera quality, it does have some life to it. As well as an early Steve: The Indecisive Tile Customer. Whom I just can't get enough of.

So I really hope for two things by posting this. 1) It will hype everyone up for HoF and 2) All of you will share it with your friends and spread it around the net.

I think the content already posted on this site already shows how much better Hammerfist of Fury will be than The Final Countdown so I hope you will all stay tuned.

Oh, and make sure you watch all the way through the credits for a classic David rant about America.

-Matthew

2 minutes

We officially have over two minutes of rough animation done. Rough. I'm the cleanup guy, so that means I have a lot of work to do. For those of you unsure of what "cleanup" does, its really where I come in and give definite lines to JJ's primary animation and then I add in some secondary animation. What is the difference between Primary and secondary animation you say?

Well, imagine someone turning around quickly to swipe with a sword. The general turning around movement, and the movement of the sword would be considered primary animation. But if that was all that moved, it would look a bit stale right? That's where secondary animation comes in. The movement of the character's hair, and small details in the clothes, those would be considered secondary animation (as far as I know).

It can get pretty time consuming too! Originally I thought things were taking long to clean up because I was doing some of the tougher, more full bodied sequences. But I'm realizing that we have a lot of complex shots that need some very specific details to make them read well. So....uh....yeah, we have a long way to go. The project runs about 7 minutes so you do the math.

God help me.

Oh and for those of you interested, the SURPRISE will be going up this weekend. It WILL BE GOING UP. It is all done and ready, I just need to throw it on the page. Wonderful. Tell your friends.

Stay Frosty