Watchcat Production

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and now we are on our way to the Christmas holiday season. We've begun animation on this year's Watchcat Holiday, hoping to finish it before the big day. Here's a quick shot, don't blink.

Rough Hit from Toondini on Vimeo.

Our Holiday episode will feature a little guy ringing a bell to collect money for charity when he is interrupted by a big bad guy, then Watchcat will interrupt the bad guy. I am laying out the scenes and will animate on paper. To speed up the production, I am planning to use some of my interested animation students to help inbetween and clean up the work. Everyone who helps out will get screen credit and a copy of the finished product to share and put on their reels.

Name this Bad Guy and win a Watchcat Official Collector's Pin! (see below)

The final animation will be imported into Toon Boom Harmony for the cleanup and the color process. We are also going with a more Film Noir look than usual and hope to introduce a new voice for Watchcat. If you would like to help out this last minute production, please let me know. Here are a few Holiday episodes we've already done.

Please send your feedback, comments or suggestions. We really hope you will share this with your friends and family when we are finished making it. Until then, please help us get to our $100 goal by clicking on the ads. We got only 1 click last week, generating .29 cents, getting us up to $56.00 so far. 

We need people to click more to help us pass our goal before the end of 2017. The money will go to an animal shelter and will be shown in a future blog post. Adsense won't give us a check until $100 or more ad clicks are reached. Every little click helps.

Name our bad guy contest! Name our the big guy in Comments. Best name wins an Official Collector's Watchcat button!

 Thanks again for reading.

Watchcat at CTNX 2017

This year's CTN animation expo began with cool and sunny weather as I stopped by a table where I met a storyboard artist from Israel. During our conversation, another storyboard artist from Oregon approached the table. I said, "Wow, you are both storyboard people!" introducing them to each other. 

As things turned out, the person from Oregon followed the Israel artist's work and now, they were meeting for the first time in person. And that's what I love about the CTN animation expo, it really brings artists from all over the world together for one weekend.

So many people from the animation community attend this expo every November. And this year, we introduced our Watchcat postcards onto as many people we could meet. We also were looking for other animation artists to help us on future episodes.

Saturday was very crowded inside the massive white tent as people entered, some carrying their portfolios, others carrying their kids and some even had both. While there, I met 3 guys in a row, one was a animation teacher in Denmark, another guy from Scotland and the third was from Costa Rica. 

We walked around handing out postcards to people and

talking to artists about their work. Moments before calling it quits on Sunday, we decided to visit ToonBoom's booth

to find out more about the new version of Harmony. We ended up meeting someone who could direct us to a few studios that are looking for content, content like Watchcat. Cross your fingers for us.

In the meantime, work has begun on the next Watchcat Holiday episode. Storyboards are being revised and will be posted next Watchcat Wednesday.

Have a good and Happy Thanksgiving!

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Thank you!

 

CTNX 2017 this weekend

This week, Watchcat Films will be in search of animation and background artists for an upcoming Watchcat Holiday short. We will be prowling at CTNX 2017, if you see us, please stop us and say hello.

Did we mention we have a new holiday episode in the works? There will be a few new changes on this one, all I can say is that we are going for a more Film Noir style.

But now, a commercial...

Our Viewers are clicking!

The beginning of November, 43 cents from 2 ad clicks raised our total to $55.94. Our goal is to raise $60 or more, but we need everyone viewing this blog to click on the ads.
It will take us 10 months to reach $60 if we only get 2 ad clicks per month, but if you click everytime you visit this blog, we can reach our $110.00 goal by the end of 2017. 
Click for an Animal in need! 
The whole point of clicking is to donate the check from Adsense to a local Animal Shelter. Google won't send us a check until we reach over $100 in ad clicks. We have been doing this for a few years now and are halfway there.
Click the ads!
We've been getting a large number of views every post we put up. If every viewer clicked over the next 3 posts, we should be able to past our goal amount.

Thank You and now back to the blog!


Here's the rough beginnings of a storyboard for our Holiday tale.

 A bell ringing for Charity...

 The Bellringer is interrupted,

 by a Bad guy who attempts

to take the money, but is also interrupted

by Watchcat ...

 who returns the hat and bell to the Bellringer.

So what do you think? We want to hear from you! Feedback helps us
Any comments or suggestions? We are still revising the boards and will share with you the animatic next time.

We are up to 18,363 all time views

and 

have 111 subscribers to Watchcat Films on YouTube! 

Next Watchcat Wednesday! 
Watchcat at CTNX 2017 coverage

Movie Makeup Magic!

My Linked In work anniversary states; 2 years working at Watchcat Films, funny it feels more like 3. Thanks for all the congratulations and please click on the ads (see below), each click varies from .03 to .05 cents. Anyways...

The day after our annual Halloween party, I had to do some makeup to turn actor Michael Hatch into a Vampire character for Greg's feature film project called Noir.




We wanted a Nosferatu type of vampire which was suppose to look more like this.

However, when we saw the actual package only included foam pieces of a forehead brow, cheeks and a nose; no bald cap, no pointy ears and no fangs, we had to make a change. We ended up using a foam ape face instead, with separate bald cap and larger pointy ears.

After attaching the bald cap, I glued on the ears. I had to add tissue paper and liquid latex to reinforce the ears to the bald cap and hide several holes. I was considering adding some wire to secure the ears so they wouldn't wiggle as much. Luckily, the vampire is shown very briefly in this sequence, so ear motion wouldn't be seen.

The day before, I painted the mouth area, gums, foam teeth and added the long fangs to save time before the makeup session. Those are plastic fangs are from a pumpkin carving kit, which I glued into where the foam fangs were. The ape mask was then glued into place, blended to the face and bald cap. I used tissue paper and liquid latex to create skin all around his neck and hands.

Once the head was done, I had to makeup Michael's hands and apply sharp false nails to his fingers. The entire makeup process took about 3 or 4 hours to complete. 

Michael was very patient throughout the whole process and in the end, gave a great performance. Here's a clip.

Vampire King from Toondini on Vimeo.

Michael was so good as a vampire, we had to use him in another part of the film as a Nazi Demon after slipping him into a German uniform and helmet.

One more pose before returning to the world of the humans.

 
Where's Watchcat? Do you want another episode? Leave us a comment or better yet, click on the ads to help an Animal Shelter in need.

We enter November with a balance of $55.51 in ad clicks, nearly halfway to our $110.00 goal. Google will give us a check after that amount is reached, but its a slow process if only 1 or 2 people click every once and a while. To date, we've had 18,237 viewers and they've only started clicking ads this year. 2 viewer clicked equaling .40 cents, every click helps.
For those of you who are clicking, keep it up, its working! If you are new to this blog, Please help us reach this goal before 2017 ends. 

Thank you!

COMING UP: Watchcat at CTNX 2017

Halloween Baseball

This happens the same time every year. People get weird by walking streets with their children on this one and only night. They walk down my block, ringing doorbells or knocking, some even yell "Teeky Teet"!  Everyone is dressed up as comic book superheros, ghosts, witches, killer clowns and even royal princesses. The scared people inside, run to their doors with a bowlful of something that makes the little Zombies go away, some even yell, "Thank you." as they leave.

Last night, this same scene happened once again on the night of game 6 of the World Series between the LA Dodgers and the Houston Astros. My only night of rest and I'm already to enjoy the big game on my favorite couch at Nick's place. Nick's a young guy who move here a few year's ago to become an actor in Hollywood, but now is working at the LA Historical museum.

Tonight, Nick enters the room wearing a skull face mask as he answers his front door. I can hear the "Teeky Teets" have arrived again. Nick gives them handfuls of candy to make them go away and soon they're gone. Nick then turns to look at me on the couch and says, "Sorry Smoke, I'm going out and so are you."

Nick calls me Smoke, which is fine by me, but I'm not very happy when he turns off the game. The next thing I know, I'm back on the street and Nick is walking away down the sidewalk. I decide to walk down the other way to try to figure out what to do next. Why did Nick have to go out tonight, the big game was on, I thought it was our game night together. My thoughts were running around in my mind until met Zoltar.

"Here Kitty, hey there my friend" Zoltar called to me from his mystic box. He carefully removed himself from the box and stepped towards me. "Come on, here Kitty." I had never seen this place before; an odd circus of sorts featuring a fortune teller man in a glowing box with the name "Zoltar" above it. If this guy was a fortune teller, perhaps he could help me out. I slowly approached him as he bagan to pet my head.

"Who's this." asked a bearded lady as she slowly approached us. "Someone's cat, he looks hungry" said Zoltar, "What's the score?" The bearded lady started to pet me as well. "Dodgers are up by 3."

Instantly, my Watchcat powers alerted me, "Dodger fans, TV nearby." I quickly do my best cuteness roll to the ground which soon gets me a bowlful of milk, a lap on a fellow Dodger's fan and a chance to watch the rest of the game. Dodgers won game 6.

Everyone reading this post should click on the ads to help us send a check to a local Animal shelter. So far, we are up to $55.51 and Google won't send us a check until we reach over $100.00 or so in ad clicks. Thank You!