toiletpuck.com

The website is up...kinda. There's not much to look at just yet. The first episode is very close to being done, I would say only 3 weeks away. Then it'll be on the website for the world to see. The website is a work in progress. I plan on having many more features, especially if the series catches on, then we will have a message board feature, a shop, games, and downloads. So visit toiletpuck.com and check back by June 14 2009 for the first episode to "air". I know it's air for the television, but is it air for the world wide web too? I dunno.

rotation on the fly

I only had a three quarter view of this scientist before I started animating. I got to a point in the scene where I needed a front view, but did not have one. So I created his front view on the fly.

janitor

The pic above is a screenshot of how the final scene actually looks. The pic below is a shot of the design of the janitor and the establishing shot of the first scene.

We only see this guy in the first sequence of the first episode, and never again after that.

pan test

Trust me, it'll be hilarious once the audio and sound effects are added, and the timing adjusted. I just wanted to render it to make sure the pan works...and it does. There is a quite a bit of dialog in this scene, so it'll stay on the characters legs longer, but you get the idea with this abbreviated version.

Urinal Puck

It's amazing how many people I talk to that do not know what a toilet puck is, until I explain it to them several times. Everyone knows the urinal puck though. So to make it crystal clear what a toilet puck is, I made a scene where the janitor tosses pucks into the urinal. A couple scenes later he puts a clip on the same pucks and sticks them on the toilet rim. Brilliant!

ep01 sc07

Another scene, without sound. It's all coming together quite quickly now. Thus far I am very happy with how it's turning out.

compositing

Put together the walk cycle, the background, a new opening door, and voila! You have a complete scene, minus the sound.

writing on the washroom wall

Some of my girlfriend's quotes I used as graffiti on the background.

The audience may never be able to read them, but it's the kind of inside joke that makes the creative process fun.

The "inside joke" graffiti was my girlfriends idea. In case you can't read the backgrounds, here are the quotes:

"I'm dream interpreting, don't talk to me right now."

"I want to introduce this to your life; I wanna sit around and discuss with you the aesthetic value of different tomatoes."

Z-"In a crunch it could be a substitute."
N-"I don't want a crunchy substitute."

"It's really hard to maintain a naked life style."

N-"Look at him."
Z-"Where is he?"
N-"He's not there. Look at him in your mind."

economy of a scene

It's all about economy of a scene at this point. Primarily because there are only 4 weeks remaining to finish it on time to submit it to the Ottawa Animation festival. So in this sequence, instead of showing a long shot of the characters pull their pants up, flush the toilet, and exit the washroom, I cut to a close up shot of their legs, panning from one character to the other as he pulls up his pants. I don't have to animate them flushing the toilet, because once they stand up we will hear the flush. Then I cut to the shot of them walking out to the left. Doing it this way saved me a lot of animation. Plus there is something really cool about the low angle shot of their legs on the toilet, it's kind of Quentin Tarantinoish.

current line up

Here is the current line up of Super Heroes and Super Villains in the Toilet Puck Universe.

censored

Even though Toilet Puck has no "anatomy", I thought it would be funny to add a "censored" block over him when he drops his clip.

inanimate toilet puck

Before good ol' comic book gamma radiation gave him life, this is what Toilet Puck looked like.

scientist walk cycle

I am not sure yet whether or not to swing his arms. It kind of makes him seem more dorky if he doesn't swing his arms. Plus it will save me some time. I'll have to consider this one.

another bg pan

There was a scene in the storyboard that would not work. So I had to change it. Without going into the details, the scene is replaced with another panning scene of the character's feet. This is the new bg pan.

pan bg

And here it is with a blur to emphasize the zippy quickness of the pan.


This is a pan shot, zipping back and forth from the far left stall to the far right stall. We will see the feet of the super heroes from under the stalls as they talk.

another dirty background...updated

So here's how it looks with the character in the scene. It really pops, I like it.


The backgrounds for episode 1 are finished. The next step is to clean up the posing of the characters and break them apart so they could be animated.

a bunch of bg's

The two pics on the top, with the washroom door, are a part of the same scene. The door goes from being grimy to clean when it becomes the Super Hero Washroom, even the symbol on the door changes to a Super Hero. The rest of the bg's are grimy because they are from the first part of the first episode, before the place gets cleaned up.

graffiti and textures...updated

I added Major Pecs sitting on the toilet. There will be another character on the far right toilet, but I haven't cleaned him up yet.

Yes, I definitely want to have the washroom with graffiti and dirty textures before it becomes the clean looking super hero washroom.

graffiti...updated

Here's the shot with a couple of Super Hero's feet in the stalls. Major Pecs on the left and the Unintelligible Hunk on the right.


I had a thought to make the public washroom dirty, grimy, and disgusting in the first episode. Then at the end of the first episode, when Toilet Puck comes into existence, and the washroom becomes a washroom exclusively for super heroes, it would look nice and clean. The trick will be to animate the stall door opening with all the graffiti on it. But I think I know a way to do it.

explosive diarrhea

A shot of the washroom after the explosion. I will most likely animate some water spraying from the broken pipes in this scene.