Noir Wraps and Animation Cats

Over the weekend was a very successful one for writer & co-creator of Watchcat, Gregory J. Bradley, with the help of his producing & co-directing partner Lee Anthony Smith just completed principal photography on of their independent feature, "Noir."
 
We all did different jobs and roles to make this project happen. I was the special-effects make up artist as well as prop master and even filled in as an actor. But now, after two years of shooting, Noir has finally wrapped principle photography and is now headed for the editing room! Congrats everybody!

And with the new year, we at Watchcat Films are beginning to work on a brand new episode. I'm currently in the process of re-designing our animation workflow. I know its a very exciting thing to talk about, but I have been doing a some research into other films about cats.

There seems to be two types of Cat designs.  

1. Cartoony cat characters based on real cats, either on two legs or on four.
2. Stylistic cats in human form who wear human clothing and are bipeds.  

Beginning with a film from 2008 called "Second Wind", Ian Worrel from CalArt, features a very tall legged and stylized cat character who's owner is a tiny white bearded man.  

The cat has very large and expressive eyes with cat like mannerisms. Its a very unique and interesting story about the two characters discovering a windmill spirit character. Very Celtic in its style and presentation.

Another very interesting film is "The Cat Piano" from an Australia studio called the Peoples Republic of Animation. Based on a poem by Eddie White, the co-director of the film with character designs and animation by Ari Gibson and crew. This is a very dark film where I really like the cat designs with human characteristics and the look of night throughout the film. The cats are more human than real cats as if all the cats evolved to become bipeds on an island faaway from mankind.

The classic "Cats don't Dance" is set in more cartoony and upbeat world than "The Cat Piano", featuring the world of working biped animals in 1940s Hollywood.

It features very traditional animation using cartoony cats in period clothing of the era. The story isn't as good as the animation or the character designs, but there are some funny moments.

And then there is Felidae, a 1994 animated feature from Germany which is set in the modern day world. I had never heard of this film before researching this post and after watching it now I know why. This film has a lot of very graphic and adult themes within and I would not show it to kids under 16.  The cats are shown very realisticly in this Film Noir world where cats swear, kill each other and have sex just like real cats!

Spoiler Alert:
The main cat named Francis is the detective cat character who discovers several murdered cats in the neighborhood he's just moved into. Eventually, he meets a blind female cat named Felidae, who is introduced and soon winds up dead. There is way too much dialogue in this film and forget about any musical numbers or humor.

Not for little viewers...

This is film looks like it could have been animated by Don Bluth and could have been retitled, " All Cats go to Hell". After viewing it, I can now see what kind of cat story we need to avoid.   

Do you have a favorite animated film featuring a cat as a main character?  Please let me know in the comment section below.

 
New Year's Resolution
January 2017 = $26.83 from clicks on the ads on this blog. Help boost this amount by clicking on the ads and when its over $100, Google will send us a check which we will donate to a local animal shelter.

Watchcat 04 begins

Storyboard work has begun on our next Watchcat adventure and here is the first scenes from our next episode. 

We have uploaded our Watchcat Holiday episode and Watchcat 02 to ToonBoom's showcase site where we hope more people will see our work.

These are still rough storyboards, but we hope develop not only a new animation look, but also introduce you to a few new characters.

Welcome Watchcat Wednesday 2017

2017 begins and this is the time when New Year's resolutions are made and broken a week later. We hope not to break this one, which is to make more shorter Watchcat episodes this year than last year.

We begin the year, by thanking all our 2016 viewers, many who live in different countries around the world. The top ten countries are as follows:

United States     7964

Russia	686
France	417
Germany	295
United Kingdom	111
India	81
Mexico	67
China	62
Canada	57
Ukraine	50

And we are still amazed that "Famous Felines in Animation 2" got 1127 views, this post appeared 2 years ago when we started on Watchcat 2 and needed something to keep people viewing our blog while I worked on shots to talk about later. The first "Famous Felines in Animation", only received 100 views so far.  

Early Beat boards from Watchcat Episode 2

That was then, this is Now...


Now that we have a few Watchcat episodes under our collars. We want to streamline our productions into shorter episodes and set up scene files, so that other animators can work on them. Once in place, we hope to be able to send scenes to interested animators who they can animate and send back to us to be used in a future episodes. The participating animator would receive screen credit and they could use their finished animation scene in their demo reel.

We also want to take our Watchcat ideas to the big studios around town to see if making these shorts might lead to something bigger. We are continuing to find a bigger audience, really appreciate the growth of viewers over the past year and hope you will continue to support us in the coming year.

Thanks again and Happy New Year!
Greg and Jim