Insect Diary

New schedule, new episode, New Year ...

2007-12-03T06:16:00.000-08:00

After a period of most gross illness, I have revised the rather ambitious release schedule. Episode two went up on December 1st, and ep three will follow on New Year's Day.

From then onwards, episodes four to ten will be released on the first Monday of each month, as originally planned, with the grand finale going online at the beginning of August. Hurrah!

Currently working on ep three, which takes place in yet another new location (the underground base, with its heavily Andromeda Strain-inspired colour scheme), and prepping ep four, which will necessitate the first new voice recording sessions since June. Hope the mic still works!

Thanks to everyone who has watched the cartoon - enough people downloaded ep one to crash the site for five days, but I purchased more bandwidth and we're off again. Please feel free to email with questions, comments, observations and abuse.

Episode One online NOW

2007-10-31T07:12:00.001-07:00

Oh, happy Hallowe'eny day! Episode one is now online at YouTube and at insectnation.co.uk, and the animation for episode two is well under way to meet the Gazpacho Soup Day deadline (25th November).

The Insect Has Landed

2007-09-17T04:56:00.000-07:00

Have finally finished the animation for episode one, and synchronised the sound and music. I took the decision to sub-contract on the music, which has now been recorded by Joe Gooch, who is also the lead actor in the cartoon. Hurrah.

I have also made a decision regarding release dates. The first episode will be launched on October 31st, because it seemed a good idea to go for a Hallowe'en launch. The next two episodes will also be released on red letter days - Episode Two on Gazpacho Soup Day (November 25th) and Episode Three on Christmas Eve. Having hit three 'big date' releases, the remaining seven episodes will be released on the first Monday of each month, with Episode Ten due on Monday 7th July 2008.

Why all the changes? Well, it turns out that even when you are making a very simple, rudimentary animation, it takes a bastard long time. There is a 20-second bus crash sequence in episode one, which consists of over 100 pictures in 40 layers, and it took almost a full week to make.

Now, site details. InsectNation.co.uk has been stagnating for some time, because I've been too busy to finish building it. Now that the episode is done, I am compiling the various sections of the site and hope to publish it by the end of this month (September). I will be providing a big package on the site - scripts, artwork in various stages, character biogs, downloadable art (including desktops, icons, posters and more), an mp3 player full of Joe's brilliant music, and (possibly) a download centre for high-quality copies of the episodes, for which there MAY be a small charge.

It's all up in the air, of course, but I have to keep reminding myself of why I started this project - I wanted to make a horror film, and didn't have the contacts or resources to make it properly, so I decided to do it as a cartoon.

Anyway, the new trailer is on YouTube as of today (www.youtube.com/benshillito) and more is coming, including a music video when I've got some more artwork done.

More to come ...

Trailer online now!

2007-07-17T08:44:00.000-07:00

Here's the URL for the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbffHYmIPXY

The animation in the trailer is not the final draft, and the music is a bit rough around the edges, but it's more or less done.

Rather unfortunately, I treated the picture in Pinnacle to make it look old and scratchy, forgetting that YouTube would degrade the image further, but I think it still looks OK. And the person doing all the swearing is a primary school teacher, so it's not my fault.

Episode one in a month or so ...

July update (1)

2007-07-13T07:28:00.000-07:00

Voices recorded, many pictures drawn, first few minutes of animation finalised - it's all coming together.

Having worked out that Flash is about as user-friendly as a Japanese language website, I have switched to using bog-standard film editing software, with a few little sparkly bits done in SwishMax and converted to .avi for editing. The practical upshot of this is that the animation process is extremely quick now, and it takes about a day and a half for each five minutes of rough cut, and a week to get that up to spec with sound effects, music and overlays.

Despite my two weeks off and my stinking cold, I have now finished the trailer for I.N., which will be on YouTube and Bebo very soon, before I bugger off for another week's holiday. The trailer consists of the first two minutes of the first episode, which I have degraded and scratched up to look like an old 50s movie trailer. The music is also different, a silly little piece called Marcos y Pedro, which is faintly similar to the music used in the episode itself.

Current estimated date for episode one being online; last week of August.

Wilkommen

2007-06-04T06:24:00.000-07:00

Just a brief blog to start with.

I have recently discovered the full meaning of the phrase "solo project". Although dozens of people are recording voices for my cartoon, everything else is an exhausting one-man show.

I've written the scripts (130 pages at last draft), I'm drawing every frame of animation (a mixture of Flash and 25fps cell animation), I'm writing the music and doing all the compositing, editing and authoring.

If I had any friends, they won't be seeing much of me for the forseeable ... unless they come round to record voices.

Currently developing my web presence for advertising purposes, and considering making the script for the first Insect Nation episode available at www.insectnation.co.uk, which at the moment is just a holding page.

More bloggage imminent.