IP Incubator!: Ray & Clovis

#1

Hey everyone, I’m excited about RobertoOrtiz’s concept of an IP Incubator. I’ll post updates here as often as I can about what me and my team are doing at Theory Animation and how it’s coming along.

The basics:
I run a studio called TheoryAnimation with some wonderful and talented artists. Our goal was to make a short film, so we did. At the time no tools existed, so we made them.

Now we’re working on a web series called Ray & Clovis. This is entirely made up by our team; voices, scripts, animation, you name it!

Our goal:
To make people laugh.

Want to know more? Email me at info@theoryanimation.com or visit our YouTube Channel
You can also find us online at theoryanimation.com

We plan on running a kickstarter or indiegogo campaign in the spring of next year, until then we’ll be releasing episodes monthly and making people laugh.

Ok, enough blabble, here’s our latest episode :slight_smile:

//youtu.be/tmsujGLeWAo

#2

Hey everyone, here’s another update of what’s going on. We’ve been silent, but trust me, we’re working our asses off :smiley:

Right now we’re deep in animation on Episode 6! This episode comes out in December. We just finaled Episode 5 and it felt great! It was by far the longest episode we’ve ever animated. It’s off to the sound editor for final sound design and music. Because it’s also Halloween we decided to make this image:

These images are fun because it gives us the opportunity to test out render techniques and optimizations. The biggest thing was mixing multiple and add layers. How can changing color temperature enhance the storytelling? We’re learning and playing with it.

I wish we could spend more time animating. We certainly need the animation help too, but being an all volunteer crew we can only ask of so much from people’s generous time. Right now we’re slated to finish Episode 6 a week late (putting us just over two weeks with a lead time for render and sound tweaks until release.) Right now episodes take us about a month.

Woohoo! On to more animating :slight_smile:

As always you can find us here:
youtube.com/user/theoryvisiontv

#3

STATUS NUMBER: 3!
TEAM MEMBERS: 15 (Voluntary)
START DATE ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE : Next episode on November 21, 2013 at https://www.youtube.com/user/TheoryVisionTV
WIP THREAD: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=153&t=1129549
WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS WEEK:

We just finished Episode 5’s sound! Woohoo! This is great because some of us are going to the Creative Talent Network’s animation festival in Burbank this weekend. After that we’ll be off to the Austin Comic-Con and showing off more Ray & Clovis; we even have a little session we’re hosting!

WHAT WENT WRONG:

With all the excitement about next week, I’ve slacked on my animator duties and on my production manager duties. This is a “wearing many hats” thing that I’m sure a lot of you have run into as well. We need to finish animation by next week on our next episode to stay on schedule. The added stress of preparing for the convention has it made it harder to stay on that target.

SHOW AND TELL:

This is from our latest episode. I thought it came out cool ;D

Ok… back soon :slight_smile:

#4

I’m glad there is a link to this thread in this thread.

In all seriousness, I watched a few of your episodes and they are pretty good. Looking forward to more.

#5

I thought it would create a forum like inception of a thread within a thread… hehe
Thanks for the support PaulEMcLaughlin :smiley:

#6

No problem. Keep on truckin’

#7

STATUS NUMBER: 4!
TEAM MEMBERS: 17 (Voluntary)
ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE : Released Episode 5, working towards Episode 6:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VesMbeK3guY
WIP THREAD: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=153&t=1129549
WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS WEEK:
Episode 5 is released! Watch it here!
Or in order here

What went right is a lot! We had an amazing showing at CTNx ctnanimationexpo.com with over hundred people packed for the “Future of Online Collaboration” panel that Bobby Beck hosted. Even a nice rounding clap for our work! However at the Austin WizardWorld we had a huge room… and 10 people.

Not bad! We were going up against a Stan Lee panel and it was opening day of the con, I won’t fault people there. Plus that is 10 more fans that didn’t know anything about us, but are now people we know in person :slight_smile: That’s awesome. We also met with some of the artists that volunteer for us. Love it!

WHAT WENT WRONG:

Releasing Episode 5 was a blast, but it also put us behind on 6. Six has just two weeks to final render and music. That’s a very tough schedule and some shots are still in animation (eek!) With the holidays just around the corner I know it’s going to be very close. We’ll do our best, but it will be tight.

Also on our panel: We could have done such a better job at advertising it and naming it. The title was borrowed from our SIGGRAPH talk: Managing Remote Creative Projects. Not the sexiest thing when you want to appeal to parents, kids, and general animation fans. I commend all those who braved such a strange panel. The focus of the panel also could have been better. In the middle of it I switched the format and turned it into more of a conversation with people. This was a positive I feel because it made people be more responsive.

SHOW AND TELL:

Us presenting at WizardWorld
the poster for Reading is Magic Part2

#8

STATUS NUMBER: 5!
TEAM MEMBERS: 17 (Voluntary)
ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE : Releasing Episode 6 in two weeks!! http://www.youtube.com/theoryvisiontv
WIP THREAD: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=153&t=1129549
WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS WEEK:

We rendered (most) of Episode 6! It’s really relieving to see progress. This process can really mess with your head and make you think that you won’t make it. Taking a step back and looking at your progress subverts these worries though. Now we need to take a nap, but we’re not, because we’re doing something cool for Christmas.

WHAT WENT WRONG:

We had a nasty bug where shots were crashing and refused to be rendered no matter what we did. Already sapped energetically by animating and social marketing, having these renders pose such frustrate problems only greyed my hair further… :slight_smile:

It took a nice herculean effort with three artists to figure it out, but we did it and then celebrated by having a coke.

SHOW AND TELL:


Ray singing

#9

STATUS NUMBER: 6!
TEAM MEMBERS: 20 (Voluntary)
ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE : January 30, 2014!
http://www.youtube.com/theoryvisiontv
WIP THREAD: You’re looking at it :slight_smile:
WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS MONTH:

We didn’t talk much to the world in the past few weeks as we’ve been focusing on getting the latest episode done. We kicked ass too The whole team knocked out the animation and most of the rendering in just a few weeks. We’re now on sound & music :slight_smile:

WHAT WENT WRONG:

Not enough outreach and talking to our audience. Working on the show is one thing, but the marketing to let people know something is coming is also just as important. Missing the last few IP updates is a good example. Just been too busy working :slight_smile:

SHOW AND TELL:

Not done yet but…

#10

STATUS NUMBER: 7!
TEAM MEMBERS: 20 (Voluntary)

ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE : Right now!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFK16Hz4Bxk

WIP THREAD: You’re looking at it
WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS MONTH:

In the last 24 hours we rendered the final shot, composited and uploaded our animated episode! A lot of things came together: marketing, the rendering, our shop, and new website design. I coordinated and hand a hand in all of it. But the best part? We did it and met our deadline! It’s online now, go enjoy :slight_smile:

WHAT WENT WRONG:

I was involved too much and didn’t direct as much as I should have on release. We also caught some serious render issues too late that, with due diligence, I could have caught much earlier. We could have saved ourselves an all-nighter had it not been for some careful eyes. Still, I am glad we had a full episode review on Monday where we found most of these problems.

Money doesn’t directly buy happiness, but it can buy you peace of mind. We offloaded design , our web-store and some advertising by paying for it. It gave the rest of the team more time to focus on what matters and not on backend, Javascript, etc.

SHOW AND TELL:

Tell me what you think:)

#11

STATUS NUMBER: 8!
TEAM MEMBERS: 20 (Voluntary)

ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE : Right now!
http://theoryanimation.com

WIP THREAD: You’re looking at it
WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS MONTH:

It has been almost six months since my last update! Since then we’ve been hard at work on a brand new website, a new look for the show, and a lot of improvements on the back end.
All this work culminated into this:
http://theoryanimation.com

Be a kid again and go play with our website :slight_smile:

WHAT WENT WRONG:

We had to learn a lot of PHP, JavaScript, Video codecs, and HTML5. Some of our biggest struggles came in supporting the myriad of devices out there. Ultimately the site works well on devices about a year or two and newer + most desktops (Sorry Windows XP :|)

SHOW AND TELL:
http://theoryanimation.com

#12

Be a kid again and go play with our website

Hah. Now I get what you mean. That’s a fun site :smiley:

#13

STATUS NUMBER: 9!
TEAM MEMBERS: 20 (Voluntary)

An animated cartoon featuring a chill, guitar playing, iguana named Ray and a high energy, low maturity, cat named Clovis. With jazz music.

ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE : Right now!
Learn more

WIP THREAD: You’re looking at it
WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS MONTH:

We finished All That Jazz!

WHAT WENT WRONG:

We had miscommunication between director and the team and had last minute re-renders that could have easily pushed over deadline. Plus our editor and effects artist both were at SIGGRAPH so there was a huge chance we couldn’t have uploaded any final changes. A lot of hard work and patience with hotel wifi paid off. We uploaded a day before :slight_smile:

SHOW AND TELL:

//youtu.be/72SunXFBLZE

#14

Hey,
Good stuff there. My kids came into the room to watch it pretty quick and thought it was pretty funny. That’s always the real test I think. I’ll definitely be checking out your Siggraph panel and Q&A later.

Just out of curiosity, have you guys ever heard of Buckshot? It’s an online collaborative tool, very similar to shotgun, but it runs on google’s backbone via google docs, google sites, youtube, etc. You might find it helpful if you haven’t checked it out yet. The main guy there, Marcus LeVere, is super helpful as well.

http://buckshot.vfx2.com/

#15

@Jspoon: Yes I have actually! I’m good friends with their creator :slight_smile: I like it. We have our own internal software that we’ve been working with for almost a decade now (we’ve been doing shorts for a while!) Buckshot does look great though!

Ray & Clovis

CATEGORY : Animation
STATUS NUMBER : 10
TEAM MEMBERS : 20 (Voluntary)

Welcome to the world of Ray & Clovis starring Ray, a laid back iguana, and his high-energy, low-maturity cat roommate, Clovis. Just trying to make it through the day, Ray’s world gets turned upside-down with Clovis’ monster-summoning, bad-joke telling, daily mischief.

ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE :Right now! Holiday Episode!

WIP THREAD : http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=7958718#post7958718

WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS MONTH :

We finished our holiday episode! Woohoo! It’s been an incredible ride :slight_smile: We put this together in over a month and a half. It was definitely a sprint for a our volunteer team.

WHAT WENT WRONG :

Renders stalled for a bit, we had some strange memory problems, and were worried that we wouldn’t make the deadline. I feel that YouTube (or maybe exporting from Premiere) red shifted some of the colors. They just seem different than in Premiere, though the only major change was upgrading to CC 2014 (from 2013.) Theoretically all of my settings copied over…

Files and folders were named funny. We need to work on internal organisation better to make sure everything is aligned nicely. We had some confusion when updating files because scenes would not update correctly. Turns out we had duplicate files being linked! Doh!

SHOW AND TELL :

Click to watch video

#16

@Jspoon: Yes I have actually! I’m good friends with their creator :slight_smile: I like it. We have our own internal software that we’ve been working with for almost a decade now (we’ve been doing shorts for a while!) Buckshot does look great though!

Ray & Clovis

CATEGORY : Animation
STATUS NUMBER : 10
TEAM MEMBERS : 20 (Voluntary)

Welcome to the world of Ray & Clovis starring Ray, a laid back iguana, and his high-energy, low-maturity cat roommate, Clovis. Just trying to make it through the day, Ray’s world gets turned upside-down with Clovis’ monster-summoning, bad-joke telling, daily mischief.

ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE :Right now! Barbecue and Boomerangs

WIP THREAD : http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=7980123#post7980123

WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS MONTH :

Now we’re really pushing the look and refining the design. We’re trying to make it prettier, more like playdoh for the characters, and more painterly for backgrounds. We’ve got a long way to go but I think this new look is a step in the right direction.

WHAT WENT WRONG :

The tree and leaves don’t look that great. We could really have pushed the look there. The grass is a nice step in the right direction, but it’s too big and chunky. It’s kind of distracting too.

SHOW AND TELL :
[Click to Play!

](hhttp://theoryanimation.com/watch/rnc/happy-australia-day-2015?utm_source=CGTalk&utm_medium=WIP%20Thread&utm_campaign=Barbecue&20and%20Boomerangs)

#17

IT’S FINISHED - Watch it here!

Ray & Clovis

CATEGORY : Animation
STATUS NUMBER : 11
TEAM MEMBERS : 20 (Voluntary)

Welcome to the world of Ray & Clovis starring Ray, a laid back iguana, and his high-energy, low-maturity cat roommate, Clovis. Just trying to make it through the day, Ray’s world gets turned upside-down with Clovis’ monster-summoning, bad-joke telling, daily mischief.

ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE :Soon

WIP THREAD : http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=8000920&postcount=17

WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS MONTH :

Well we blew up the renders. I detailed it in this blog post ( http://theoryanimation.com/blog/why-most-projects-fail ) but the gist of it: we kept having different render problems. When we solved one, we uncovered another, and another. It turned into a massive headache. BUT! That is what went right! Had we not gone through so many iterations, we wouldn’t be where we are right now. We’re much stronger now because of it.

WHAT WENT WRONG :

Communication. Again, that blog post details all of it. Communication lumped with Strategic overview. That is, everyone did their job right, but when you put all the pieces together you realize that it didn’t come out right at all! Crap! This happens and you have to be willing to grow up and work on a solution together.

It didn’t help I had a bit of migraine too :0

SHOW AND TELL :

Here’s an image. I update our newsletter quite frequently too :slight_smile:

#18

IT’S FINISHED - Watch it here!

Ray & Clovis

CATEGORY : Animation
STATUS NUMBER : 12
TEAM MEMBERS : 20 (Voluntary)

ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE :Now

WIP THREAD : http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=8000920&postcount=18

WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS MONTH :

We finished the short… some how o_O

WHAT WENT WRONG :

We… kept screwing up with renders. This was tough - we have a great crew doing rendering and lighting however we kept missing small things (material ids, object ids, incorrect blurring). But the best part was having a character update that blew up all of our renders (documented here).

Anyways, we got it done, some how :D! Go watch

SHOW AND TELL :

Here’s an image. I update our newsletter quite frequently too :slight_smile:

#19

Watch it here!

Ray & Clovis

CATEGORY : Animation
STATUS NUMBER : 13
TEAM MEMBERS : 20 (Voluntary)

ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE :Now

WIP THREAD : http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=8000920&postcount=19

WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS MONTH :

This short was a challenge because of the time we had. The studio is getting busy with contract work, artists getting new gigs, and a big push for next month’s 2 year anniversary! So… somehow we got this one done too. Admittedly a lot of the team is being stretched thin these days. You’ll nice a few graphical glitches in this too… we only had one shot at rendering with our rented hardware this month, so we just took it and went with it.

WHAT WENT WRONG :

Graphic glitches. I’m not too proud of them honestly. They are there, and we just went with it. Also one artist forget to publish updates so we had to re-render another pass. This wasn’t a huge issue, but they got it done and we comped it in. Overall, when you’re limited on rendering resources, you make do and just put something out there. That’s often better than waiting around to make it ‘perfect’.

SHOW AND TELL :

Here’s an image. I update our newsletter quite frequently too :slight_smile:

#20

Watch here!

Ray & Clovis

CATEGORY : Animation
STATUS NUMBER : 14
TEAM MEMBERS : 20 (Voluntary)

ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE :Next Week

WIP THREAD : http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=8000920&postcount=20

WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS MONTH :

We surprisingly got our animated short done! This month was brutal with the launch of Patreon, a couple of talks, and contract work. This pushed animation behind on our new short, but somehow, we got it done! Somehow :slight_smile: It’s in rendering now, aiming for next week to release.

WHAT WENT WRONG :

Time management could have allotted more time for animating to buy us more time for render. Still, here we are, cranking through post and doing what we can to get it done. Just need to throw it onto the farm and hope nothing melts…

SHOW AND TELL :

Here’s an image. I update our newsletter quite frequently too :slight_smile: