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Rail! Entertainment > Docs >

The Making of "I Like My Women Inbred - Special Edition"
Page 3: Updating The Art

By Michael - 07-06-05

THE VECTOR ART: I had to take each graphic object from the original cartoon and repair it. Very tedious. Some graphics had to almost be completely redone. For example, here are a few before and after shots:

istudio_truckbefore.jpg (108228 bytes)

istudio_truckafter.jpg (99862 bytes)

BEFORE: The first graphic to be updated was Bubba's pickup truck. In the original version above, it was traced from a photograph of a 1956 (IIRC) Chevy pickup. The lines were hand-traced by a trained monkey named Pete, whom I duct-taped to my mouse. Needless to say, the results were below my expectations. Pete the monkey was given up for adoption weeks later. AFTER: I discover vector graphics. I finally figured out that the mouse is NOT a pencil. This magical thing called a "computer" can draw straight lines, which I, as an imperfect human, cannot. So here we have a clipart-quality pickup truck fit for a cartoon redneck. All thanks to straight lines and smooth curves.

istudio_bubbabefore.jpg (61816 bytes)

istudio_bubbaafter.jpg (61061 bytes)

BEFORE: Next, it was time to update the main character, Bubba. He's drawn a little sloppy, that's all. AFTER: I smoothed his outlines and redrew his arm hairs. I gave him a brand new red shirt to replace the gray one with the holes. I think he won it through a cigarette promotion. I added his shadow to the wall behind him to give him more depth.

istudio_blondebefore.jpg (119086 bytes)

istudio_blondeafter.jpg (160098 bytes)

BEFORE: Hm, what's missing from this picture? Oh, I know! A nose! This hot blonde girl (known as gra_Chick1) is missing a nose and proper lighting. My "shading" technique consisted of drunkenly drawing a line down the left side of a graphic and applying 50% alpha effect to it. AFTER: Now she's got a nose, and she dances (actually, her head wobbles around randomly). I smoothed her outlines and gave her a left eyebrow. Left eyebrows add so much extra expression.

istudio_copbefore.jpg (88784 bytes)

istudio_copafter.jpg (147650 bytes)

BEFORE: The cop looks okay, he just needed to be smoothed out a bit. His thumb and hand are also quite misshapen.  AFTER: That's better. He's still got that winning, approving smile. Now his shoulders are perfect curves with no true definition, which is the fashion in vector art these days. His hand is a little more stylized here.

istudio_porkrindsbefore.jpg (128937 bytes)

istudio_porkrindsafter.jpg (156626 bytes)

BEFORE: I would not buy these pork rinds. I don't care if they have my website's name on the bag. First of all, what is up with the puke-green color of the bag? The pork rinds are a Google Image Search for "Pork Rinds" with Flash's "Trace Bitmap" tool. The pork rinds resemble small intestines, or possibly large intestines connected to a colon of some type. Once again, I must recommend against consuming these. Return them to the manufacturer for a full refund. AFTER: Ah, that's an improvement. I actually had to trace the Rail! logo in Flash, which took like a couple of hours. The inside of the bag are actual pork rinds that I photographed from a bag I found at the gas station. The basic shape and design of the bag was traced as well. The starburst design in the background was borrowed from thousands of advertisements. A lot of people can't see this part in the cartoon, since it moves too fast: The bag says, "No carbs, you animals!". That's your trivia question for today.

istudio_redbefore.jpg (141284 bytes)

istudio_redafter.jpg (169708 bytes)

BEFORE: "Baby, you've got the darkest, deepest EYEBROWS I've ever seen." Her pupils are asymmetrical for that good old fashioned cavewoman look. Her knife is a little big, and contains a radial gradient. Her hands are quite malformed. Her shirt says "ELVIS" for some reason or other.  AFTER: Her eyebrows are shrunken down to a manageable size and her knife was shrunken down as well. Her lines are smoothed and/or redrawn. She has a normal five-fingered human hand to threaten you with now. 

istudio_yankeebefore.jpg (102941 bytes)

istudio_yankeeafter.jpg (137423 bytes)

BEFORE: The yankee was originally kicked by Cletus, and Cletus alone (now Bubba joins in the fun). The yankee's head is not misshapen due to Cletus's constant stomping - it's just drawn that way. His body is also shaped more like a dog's, although that really wasn't what I was going for (I was trying to draw a human). AFTER: His head is now fairly symmetrical. His upper torso is actually based on my own body - so in a way, he's me. You may have noticed that his feet are white. It is because his shoes have been knocked off during the beating, and they are lying to the right of your screen (actually, I was too lazy to draw his shoes). I should also not that Cletus's left boot is based on an actual combat boot, and Bubba's left boot is based on hiking boots in my closet. Cletus's right boot is based on a "loop".

HANDS: Almost every instance where you see hands was traced, I hate to say. There was no other way to get them to look the way I wanted them to look.

ARM HAIR: One of the last things I did for the cartoon was to add Bubba's hair back to his arms. I didn't want to go with the sloppy, random hairs I'd used previously, so I settled for the Popeye-style "Lines on the forearms-style" hair, which is far superior. I had to add this hair to each Bubba graphic where arms are visible. Once again, tediousness prevails.

THE ANIMATION: Here's where it all comes together... sort of. The animation was not much different from the original cartoon. There's still a lot of motion tweening, panning, and zooming. I used motion paths for a few scenes to guide the graphics around the screen. The characters blink a lot, since making a cartoon character blink is the easiest form of animation. There's a quick moment of lip-synching where Bubba says "YEEEE-HOOOOO" - but his mouth is actually shaping "YEE-HOE". This is a horrible mistake.

You'll notice that a lot of these "After" pictures use photographs for the backgrounds. For some reason, I decided to dedicate an entire page to describing them: 

Viking LifePage 3: Taking the photos!

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