Voodoo Vids - #3 The ClawE

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VOODOO VIDS EPISODE 3: THE CLAW!

Well here we are with the third short! This one was a lot of fun to work on this past week. I'll go into more details below as there will be spoilers if you haven't watched it yet. But thank you so much for the support! Newgrounds saw potential in the first episode and gave it a front page position. Truly thankful for that opportunity, and i'm really happy that the short has found some fans. I've been receiving some great messages and really am enjoying meeting others in the indie animation scene. OK, on with the the details. Spoilers from this point on.

THE STORY

This third short is based on true events. I was out celebrating a friends birthday and there was an arcade, a claw machine contained these capybara toys, I just really wanted to win one but the machine wouldn't hand it over. My partner decided she would make it her mission to get it for me and i'm happy to say she returned to the arcade the next day and did get it as a surprise, and i'm now a proud owner of a capybara holding a smiling pineapple.

FRANKLIN

We saw Franklin in the 2nd short briefly. But this time he's made his debut. Franklin is a positive happy guy that just wants to help in anyway he can.. sometimes, he makes mistakes but that's ok. I find BIG characters are a fun contrast to the smallness of Thalia. Having a range of character sizes makes for a more visually dynamic cast and I love how Franklin is essentially Frankenstiens monster wearing bowling shirts and sandals. He's a lovable dude and I can't wait to make more with him.

WRITING COMEDY

Probably the hardest thing to write because it's just so subjective and i'm not a super confidant writer of anything. The first two shorts required the viewer to have some external knowledge of films like Twilight and Terrifier 3 to really land as intended. So this time I wanted to make the comedy as self contained as it can be. This ones for everyone, or at least I tried my best to write it that way. Some of the greatest comedies ever written stick close to what most people can relate to, Faulty Towers with its husband & wife running a business angle, IT crowd with its office antics... THE OFFICE itself! all of those are relatable character driven sitcoms. As well as referencing popculture from time to time, I need to remember that the writing will land best if it serves what people KNOW. So going forward I hope to lean into that more. and when all else fails? slapstick... Tom the cat getting hit in the face with a frying pan never fails.

THE SHOP

The Voodoo Vids building itself is somewhere I want the viewer to desire to go. it's warm, inviting, filled with interesting things. It likely smells of stale coffee and hot CRT's and plastic video cases. I've seen every inch of it because I built everything in it, but the viewers haven't, So I try to get a few establishing shots in there to show the place from different angles. Getting that feeling of "I wish I could go to a place like Voodoo Vids" across more without sapping the pace. I just love strong establishing shots, combined with a nice piece of music, it sets the tone for the rest of it. There is a lot more to see inside, but we'll get to that in a future episode.

SILLY VOICES

I've done voice work before but for comerical purposes. Yes... I've literally been the guy that says

"BUT WAIT! There's more" and I still do that, but I've wanted to get into character work for a while, so I'm using my own project as an excuse to have fun and explore that side of things too.

I promise i'll get new voices in for future episodes... i'm no Hank Azaria and i'm looking forward to working with more people.

SOME TECHNICAL STUFF

The Capybara world machine was fun to make BUT it was a headache at times. Between the claw rigging, and parenting to the control box, and the fricken CORD on the claw OMG... That was a fiddly thing to get looking right. A lot of trial and error but I settled on a bezier curve and used "hook to" constraints. It does the trick and that's good enough!

The Capybara toy itself is a real toy, so I used my own as reference to make the model. I drew the machine artwork in Photoshop and brought it in as an image texture. and to finish off the machines aesthetics I composed its chiptune jingle using a website called "beepbox", if you want to make cool chip tunes and muck about with it, it's a great tool!

I was going to model some coins for Victor to use, but I decided it was a detail I could cut to save time, and I don't think it would impact the visual impact by not having that in there. ON great tools a friend told me about WIGGLYPAINT which is the tool I used to draw the squiggly doodles of the characters in the credits. I love how fun they are.

FINAL NOTE

Aside from my partner doing voice work and helping me recording foley sounds I'm working on the animation alone. It's tough but seeing the end result is so satisfying. And if others are enjoying it too then that's even better! Doing this lets me take on all aspects of a production and being indies, we get to just MAKE stuff without having to pass it around a boardroom for sign off on the dirt texture on the glass of the capybara machine.

Thanks for the support, thank you for watching, and I look forward to hopefully making you laugh again real soon.