Pony writeup

When I first moved to Los Angeles to find a job in animation in '08, I had a lot of time on my hands. You can only cold-call so many companies in a day. So, I decided to make an animation out of a comic I liked. That comic was "MORE SHETLAND PONY ADVENTURES!!" by Kate Beaton:

First I recorded myself doing funny voices for the characters,  broke the comic into panels, then timed out the panels in Flash to what I had recorded. However, before I went any further I actually e-mailed Kate and asked for permission. She graciously said yes, and I could begin.

A big reason I chose a Beaton comic was because she has no consistent style. At least, not a strictly consistent style- characters change proportions from panel to panel. For me, having just completed an animation education, being "on-model" was supposed to be the most important thing, and here was an artist that simply drew and didn't worry about that stuff. It was invigorating.

Trouble is, I wasn't a very good artist then. Here are some of my pitiful '08 attempts:

The project went well, until I found a job. I pretty much stopped working on it from then on. Fast forward to 2012 and I was working at Animal Logic on the LEGO movie. One of our editors, Doug Nicholas, had the idea to have a crew film fest where we could showcase our ideas. I had no idea what to do, but then I remembered my Pony animation. I dusted off the old files and began again.

Starting again after 4 years was pretty surreal. At that point I had been storyboarding for about three-quarters of that time and I noticed my draftsmanship had really improved. I also employed habits I picked up along the way. I adjusted the frame ratio from 4:3 to 16:9, and I even made a few model sheets, despite my earlier idea to go without

Having model sheets really helped, and as I drew I didn't worry about staying perfectly on-model anyways, so I felt I sort of matched that Beaton-style in essence:

Eventually I was able to draw an approximate Pony that looked close enough:

After 12 hours of labor spread over a couple of weeks, the animation was completed. Here's a compilation video showing the work at different stages:

And, finally, here's the completed video:

The video was received very well at the crew film fest (and everyone else's videos were great too). It felt awesome to be done with the project after four years of "development," and I'm very glad that Kate Beaton was ok with me making it.