Post #6: The Importance of Scheduling and Having Multi Projects

Alright ladies and gentlemen and welcome to update number six and today I will be discussing the importance of scheduling and having multiprojects as well as general updates. Besides my main series Billy & Willy I wanted to produce a few animated shorts ranging from k-pop related things to just general ideas that I have. So of course my friends it took me a day to come up with a short and I am not going to tell you what it is yet but that is where scheduling is coming in. Remember last week when I had problems with not being motivated? I think one of my problems was I was focusing way to much time and energy on this project and it was beginning to suck the life out of me and I was ultimately going to drop it. Not only did I decide to give myself breaks here and there especially on the weekends but I also decided to have two projects at a time. So in case I do have a slump I can focus my time and energy on the other. I still give myself deadlines however, because I don't like I said just give up on the project even though I am just starting out on youtbe...and animation in general...

Animation Update:

So as you can see I am working on a few strange things (yes that is a TARDIS). The one on the top is my mascot person she doesn't have a name yet but I am thinking of giving her the name Laylishea. She will be the character you will be seeing from now on in my videos as I lost my hardrive in the great devastation of 2019. I will be finishing her after this and start on my video intro most likely at the end of Next Door Nemesis Part 1. ISN'T SHE CUTE! I'm so glad I went with the eyelashes like that. She will also be my new livestream cards as well.

The second is from my first animated short (not series) which name isn't going to be revealed yet as the animation isn't slated until the end of June sometime. It is only going to be exactly four parts and I am also going to be uploading it on New Grounds (Next Door Nemesis will be a pain to upload so I won't upload it on there I think)

Next Door Nemesis is still in slump mode HOWEVER, according to my wonderful calendar it is scene 7 WILL BE DONE this upcoming Sunday. I also have a day off of my afternoon classes this Tuesday so I will have plently of time (along with my paper one of three :() to focus on my animations. I am currently in clean up mode fixing little errors here and there and then I will render and added it to my clips. I have one more scene for part 1 after this and it shouldn't take so long! Other than I have scene 8 to quickly animate (lots of dialouge) and then after that it will be in the post-production process.

I will be doing a twitch stream Tuesday [2:00 PM-3:30PM EST] & Wednesday [9:00AM-11:00AM EST].

Other than that I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you again on next Friday!

PRODUCTION UPDATE NUMBER #5: New Projects, Next Door Nemesis, and Lack of Motivation???

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello everyone and welcome to production update #5 my name is Lauren the founder of L-Animations and the creator of the wonderful animated series Billy & Willy which you can watch on my official Youtube channel. And for those who are new here my production updates are just that weekly updates on my production of my animated series and other projects so enough with this introduction and lets get right into it!

Next Door Nemesis Update: Lack of Motivation?

Alright so this is obviously a no brainer and I am going to talk about my long running project Billy & Willy Next Door Nemesis which is the second installment of the Billy & Willy series. Okay so were do I start? This week has been funky with this project as not surprising as some of you who have followed me previously or just read on my wikia page that I am a college student and it's that time of the semester where I am getting a lot of tests and papers and my specific major is very paper intensive in fact I have three papers towards the end of the month :(. But I honestly find my school work as an excuse because I almost always animate and do work side by side and get both done. This week has just been wonky for me and I expect some in the future as well. Now that I know adobe animate well enough to come out with these complex projects it's not as fun animating sometimes (and I've had the program for three months!) Winter Wonderland was my real dive into animate and now that I know my workflow and style I want to try more fluid animations. This particular scene: 1.7 had to be redone and I hate redoing scenes and that's what really dragged my feet and it included a lot of frame by frame animations if you watch on twitch I had to do some onion skinning as well. But now that I have been working on the new edition of this scene I'm more motivated especially since I am doing a lot new different poses and things with different shapes. Trust me I am back into action now and plan on extending my working hours into this weekend.

         

New Projects?

That brings me into the second part of this blog post with NEW PROJECTS? I mentioned in the first production update that I wanted to do more projects but of course my time and focus is on Next Door Nemesis. I am going to come up with a calendar sometime this weekend to more projects and in each season I am only going to be focusing on 1-2 and if I am pushing it maybe three. Projects I want to work on [Work in Title]

Tales of Elden: The Gnome Prince

Fake Love (Japanese Version) 

Yeah so I want to do more Kpop related things but like I said I don't want to put it up on youtube and that be the reason why I people are following me. So I might put it on a sub side like dailymotion or somewhere else.

...

That is it everyone and I hope you enjoyed reading today's blog and sorry for the late upload I am debating on if I want to put this on deviantart or not probably not in my case. But um that is it see you next Friday!

Screenshot #4: "My Oh My Is that Sally Sparrow I See?"

Screen Shot #4: "My Oh My Is That Sally Sparrow I See?"

Hello everyone and it is Lauren from the past I have honestly know idea what I am going to be posting in my Friday update as I am writing this post Monday at 9:46 PM because I have a wonderful screenshot for you all this evening. I didn't realize that part 1 was coming to a closed and I am honestly sad this part is the final piece to Part 1 of Next Door Nemesis as well all of my screenshots I will be posting only a description of the events and not any additional information in regards to the production of my series. With that being said let's get into what the heck is going on. Okay, so do you know those older cartoons when people actually put effort into things (cough unlike me) and the character gets very, very, very pissed off and starts to turn red? Yeah that's what's happening to William. He DOES not like Simon aka Stick who is the main antagonist for NDN. Even though Sally likes Benjamin [as covered in previous screenshots] he doesn't mind because Benjamin doesn't have a clue [romantically] what's going on. He absolutely hates Simon though with a passion and of course Simon uses every time he can to poke fun at William. [BTW they are all between 12-14 years old despite cartoonish apperance]. The hologram was fun but challenging to make as I had to make a beam [which can be seen in my twitch stream] and animate the head coming down which I have to refine more unfortunately. I also converted after merging all of Simon's head pieces together into a bitmap so I can easily erase the pieces as they are framed. Also William is in a dog suit lol because I like drawing characters like this for some reason lol i.e. cherenne. Anyway I did William like this because in the previous scene Sally invites William to go and turns into a puppy and wags his tail because Sally tries her best not to talk to him :( So I decided to keep the puppy William for this shot a little bit longer because it's a contiuation of that scene so it would look weird if he wasn't in puppy form. The only thing that changed is I removed his red cheeks. The challenging part of this scene was the fact that I had to show all three houses Cherenne's, William/Benjamin's, and Simon's so it's running a bit slower than normal which is sucky :( Other than that I feel like I rambled like I normally do so I hope you don't mind I try to cover as much information as possible. Anyway thanks for reading my rambles and I will see you Friday for the next Production Update!

Billy & Willy Screenshot #3: "PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE!"

Billy & Willy Screenshot #3: "PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE!"

Hopefully by the time that this is posted [writing on the 12th of March] I will be in the process of rendering this scene. For some reason it is slow as heck and I don't know why the characters are barley moving yet. Anyway in this scene the notorious frame by frame text scene of scene 1 Billy & Willy are talking to Conny, Cherenne, and Sally. Conny is obviously talking here and Cherenne is basically like "leave them boys alone" but of course Conny talks to much. Anyway back story on the relationships a bit [despite their young appearance they are all 13 years old Sally mentions this in later episodes]
William likes Sally/Sally likes Benjamin/Conny likes William/Simon likes Sally/Filbert likes no one currently/Cherenne doesn't like anyone currently/Benjamin doesn't like anyone currently.
Lol see you on Monday for the Twitch Stream [hopefully]

Production Update #3: Why I Hate This Type of Scene

HELLO EVERYONE! And welcome to the new blog well it's the same old blog I just did a bit of remodling as promised and it is a very blue theme inspired by Billy & Willy of course. Any who I am currently in the middle of editing the final touches to the most recent scene that is taking me a week to do and as the title says I hate this type of scene. This scene is a scene with a crap ton of dialouge. In this scene in particular [i am not uploading a screenshot because it is going to come out on Saturday 3.16.19] Sally, Cherenne, Conny, Billy, & Willy are all talking about the upcoming "Virtual Dreams" concert and Conny is trying to convince Sally who detests William to come to the concert. She also as a side comment invites Benjamin as well. What really ticks me off about this scene and the following scene is the frame by frame text animation. It's just a lot of words and a lot of letters that I have to add individually and this scene is also big [35 seconds in total]. I also had to make a lot of different facial expressions such as Sally sighing, Benjamin shaking his head [which was easy] and of course Puppy William which is a wonderful new outfit of William that I am going to have to make into a wallpaper when I get the chance. Other than that I should be done with the first part by the end of March then I am going to move onto the opening of the episode and I will be ready to upload sometime in April of course I am going to continue to with this project until it's completion. Even though the date says April 27th, 2019 I may end up uploading it earlier since the theme song is pretty much stills. I also don't know if the theme song is going to be uploaded individually or included with the episode and put into the playlist. *Sigh* so many production questions! Also I do have one screenshot I can show you it is kinda creepy;

It's called "putting a face back together" lol switching around a face is not that hard you just have to remember which parts go where. Even Cherenne is like "Sally what's wrong with your face xD"

See you on Saturday for my screenshot post and see you next Friday for the 5th update!

Billy & Willy Screenshot #2: "WILLIAM"

Sally: "William"

If you couldn't tell and I honestly don't blame you Sally has changed a bit from Winter Wonderland but this is my beautiful creation of Sally Sparrow who as you'll see in the first part of Episode 1 will get very sassy and evil when it comes to William. And if you did watch Winter Wonderland you will know that William has had a crush on Sally since forever [like forever, forever] and in that particular music video he tries various ways to get Sally to notice her. HOWEVER, she has a crush on Benjamin who has no clue that she likes them. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Production Note: The hardest thing to do was her facial expression what I ended up doing was cutting her sphere eyes in half and erasing the top parts if you were wondering. And I do realize her mouth is darker than the rest of her facial expressions. I used a 6 brush instead of 4 I normally use a six it doesn't look as bulky. Also those yellow splotches in the background where a pain to color in lol I am so greatful I have a graphics table because there is no way in heck I would be able to do that with just a mouse pad.

Side Note: I plan on uploading more screenshots a I go along as I did Friday and depending on if I have a sketch I will do a side by side comparison. Final note, I would like to say I probably won't be doing a Twitch screen this week ONLY because I am animating some convo between Sally/Billy/Willy using previous scenes I already animated. Other than that I should be back the Monday after and I am finally going to be introducing you all to the ever annoying Simon "Sticky" Collins....hehehe and Filbert Finnigan of course! 

DEVIANTART    TWITCH      YOUTUBE

Production Update #3: Quicker than I expected

Production Update #3: Quicker than I expected!

And this is the third Friday in a row that I am keeping up with these yay me! However, like last week [if i recall] this one is going to be short and sweet and to the point. As you can tell by the header image I am already working on Scene 1.4 for Next Door Nemesis and if you also recall that I planned on releasing the first part in the end of April! Well it may be quicker than that because I am animating these scenes really quick. It's more turning out to be an animated comic rather than a full on animations because I can only do simple things right now and I am still learning. Which I don't mind I actually like the style. I still do lip synching as you can tell from the rendered animation of 1.4. One of the factors that is a result of  my quick animating is I don't spend that much time trying to figure out poses and such when I sit down and animate. Instead what I do is sketch it out as you can see on the right. That's also what I do in in theory when it comes to my video editing as well. I almost always due test shots everytime I add a new part to see if it actually works and I get to catch certain things especially since Sony Vegas Pro 15 is so slow when I add a bunch of clips together. Another thing that I started doing this week is rendering my videos out as Windows Movie Files to make it easier on the program because for some reason you need a plug in to run quick time videos which is what adobe animate renders their videos as. Other than that I am currently working on one of my favorite scenes which is Scene 1.5 and you'll probably see some stills from my progress next week. In total I worked on two scenes 1.3 & 4 which were pretty much easy even though lip synching can be a huge pain! Uploading notes: I am going to be uploading part 1 before the theme song because I am going to have to go back and upload that and I am going to do it at the end because really there is no rush. Other random notes: I am thinking about uploading comics on either deviantart or New Grounds within the next couple of weeks obviously Billy & Willy. Other than that nothing new I will be on my weekend off day starting today at 3:30 and will continue to pick up animating back on Monday! And with that being said I hope that you all have a fabulous weekend!

Billy & Willy Next Door Nemesis Release Date Announcements

I am interrupting the usual schedule of post and twitch streams for a very exiting announcement! Billy & Willy Next Door Nemesis has an official release schedule. As mentioned in the previous post I was planning on breaking the episode up into parts because I have a hunch that it is going to be above 10-20 minutes.  More like 20-40 minutes. Last night I was editing together the official Billy & Willy Wikia Page and I finally decided to sit down and think about the release schdeule for this episode. (Yes, we have an official wikia page! Not much is on it though...) Anyway without further ado and based on the parts this is the official schedule;

Part 1: April 27th, 2019

Part 2: May 18th, 2019 

Part 3: June 22nd, 2019

 Part 4: July 20th, 2019 

Part 5: August 17th, 2019 

Part 6: September 21st, 2019 

Finale October 19th, 2019

 Special Musical Edition: December 25th, 2019 

As you will read on the wikia page this will be the only show to take up my Saturday Morning Cartoons slot on my Youtube Page. I will post more about that on Friday!

Production Update #2 3.1.19

Alright everyone and as promised this is production update #2 for Lauren Animations. For those who are new to the blog these Friday posts are dedicated to explaining where I am on specific projects. But sadly today I have some very, very, very bad news! My external hardrive died along with all of my animation files. Luckily however, I had only recently started Episode 1 and I was not that far along! So I am currently finishing up Scene 1 Part 2 and if you recall from last week I am going to be uploading the episodes in parts on Youtube because upload/rendering time would just take for freaking ever. Winter Wonderland literally took half the day to upload on youtube. I like to render in high quality because it's just better. In this week's livestream I animated scene 1 part 2 on my twitch page which you can find somewhere on the blog. I am almost done with it I just have to do a few more things then I am rendering it out and adding sound effects and that will be that. Then I am going to be moving on to scene 1 Part 3 today. Scene 1 is not that long only six slides [I write my scripts in powerpoint btw]. I think that is it :( I know I am so sad that this production update is short. UNTIL next time! See you next week on twitch and next Friday with a production update.