Behind the Scenes: "Meow Meow: For Unto Us" by @Coadytnp
"Meow Meow: For Unto Us" is finally here! Learn what made Meow Meow, well, Meow Meow. And watch as sibling rivalry is taken to another extreme.
Meow Meow 1: Family Values
Meow Meow 2: For Unto Us
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"Meow Meow: For Unto Us" was a major undertaking for me. Having only made a handful of Flash props and a couple characters, What I had envisioned for MM2 was a little more work than I originally thought. Matching the pace of the animation and the script with the music was quite the challenge, but ultimately it's something I love. And it's a story that is very personal to me in a strange way.
Writing the story.
Having known the outline for this video for months, I figured it would be a breeze to write. But for some reason I hadn't counted on how short I had to make it. Telling this part of the story while limiting myself to the time of the song was quite a challenge. A challenge that I failed by a few seconds. But that's ok. :) It kept me from losing my mind from Shockwave crashing. It only started crashing here and there near the end.
Music To Animate By
Carol of the Bells has
been my favorite Christmas song since I heard it as a wee lil boy. It just has this great energetic melancholy behind it. I love the incongruity of the sad feeling of the
song and the cheery lyrics which is why I thought it would be perfect for this animation. I wanted the whole feel of this video to be a celebration of advancement, change or evolution, but with the idea that troubles can and often will happen.
The Trans-Siberian Orchestra's version just amplified all the emotions and strength that made it perfect for "Meow Meow: For Unto Us". The song also hints at where the Meow Saga will be going.
At the end of Meow Meow 2, you may have noticed at the end of Reddplague's speech the song changes... That's where I failed on the song for a few minutes. the speech was a little to long, so I decided to throw in the end of the caroler's version of Carol of the Bells.
Animating
Animating to this song presented a little challenge. The song is really short and GoAnimate's characters take their time with their actions. I wanted a little more control with this video, so I decided the fight scenes with Death Hammer and the StickFighters I's use KoolMoves to remake GA's characters to customize the fight the way I wanted. I wanted to be able to change the speed on the characters jumps midway to be able to show the impact of the hits in a different way. I wouldn't say I failed, but I don't think it's perfectly the way I had envisioned; that will come with practice. I do like the slow motion effect, but it still needs to be perfected.
I thought if I could make the fight with Death Hammer in KoolMoves it would free up some time on the GoAnimate studio. It wouldn't crash as much and it would make the whole thing a smaller package (as far as computer memory goes) so that people like TET and Mojochi could watch it without problem. What I didn't realize was how huge the set is behind them. About half way through the fight I asked some people whose computers are known to not be able to make it through animations to check it out. Already it was facing the problem of messing up people's computers. I was not happy. I thought I had made it more carefully. I decided to change my plan on how to make the ending.
Enter Reddplague
Reddplague is a character I'd envisioned almost as soon as the character of Meow was thought of. Reddplague has some symbolism behind him. The obvious one is he's an ode to a GoAnimate (GA) user called Reddplague. An excellent animator on GoAnimate who uses Flash to provide the community with new characters and high quality props. It's amazing how his stuff just keeps getting better and better. And when you think it doesn't get any better than what he's already given. He ups it even more.
The user Reddplague is one of the few popular animators who uses "bad guys" as his avatar, which I kind of admire. I figured I'd ask him if I could use his name as my character's name, and he thought it would be ok. I figured it would be appropriate to name my first major unique character after the person who inspires me most on GA with his flash work. I wanted my Red character to reflect Reddplague's steady improvement by making him a scientist who is creating this massive machine that will change him into a monster that will be able to transform and make things subject to his will (much like the GA user does with Flash). Hopefully, I've been able to pull that off. And with Showtime's voice skills, I believe it provided the right finishing touch on the introduction to the character.
The Final Scene
On the final scene, where Red transforms into ReddPlague, I didn't want to make the same mistake as I had at the beginning. My original intent was to use the Stick Theme props to build most of Red's lab and just have to create Reddplague, But I figured with the way Flash is made, it may be easier on viewers' computers to just upload two-second-scenes at a time. So I decided to just build everything in KoolMoves (besides Meow and Death Hammer), and animate it until the end. Hopefully, this provided a smoother viewing for everyone who watches it on GA.
The Haunting Beauty of New Life
The End of Meow 2 was difficult for me. I wanted the right cliff-hanger. I needed to end it quickly, but still leave the audience wanting more. I debated actually starting the fight between Reddplague and whoever, but I believe the introduction to Reddplague was strong enough with him tearing apart the lab and then promising to be a threat to Meow. I wanted the scene to give the idea of the birth of a new creature, like a reptile from a shell, the emergence of Reddplague was, hopefully, enough to show the potential upcoming threat and the haunting excitement of this adversary.
Meow Meow 3 promises to be an exciting episode that will bring the stick fight to a new level on GoAnimate. I hope to be able to finish it by mid-2010. Until then, expect to see a comic book style version to show up on http://www.ToonPub.com.
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