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Chicken of the Sea - 2D Animated short

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Chicken of the Sea - 2D Animated short

Hey folks...Hope I'm not out of my league here. I have very little training or experience, but I love animation. Two years ago, for my senior project at Tufts University, I took my first shot at animating, and put together a short hand-drawn film. Recently, I decided to revamp the film, trading in my pencil for photoshop, and putting it all together in after effects. I hope some people dig it!
-Jeff
[SIZE=4]Click HERE to check it out on YouTube[/SIZE]

Obviously, compressing the film resulted in some loss of quality. So here are a few stills from the film as well:

Very nice artwork and clever story idea. I'd lose the "Little Mermaid" music unless you paid for the rights. It doesn't really add to the piece anyway and tramples on their copyright.

Alan

Get some "Good Advice" at http://www.decksawash.net

I like it!
I think it would work better without the music personally but that's just a minor nitpick.
James :cool:

Hmmm, looks like MOHO, nes pas? I was expecting something real terrible to happen to the old dude after he cut off the "talking" mermaid's head. Hey, how about a Part 2? Surely there's gotta be some very bad Karma heading the fisherman's way!

chuckle, chuckle, Funny stuff.

Thanks to everyone for commenting!

I actually have updated the link above with a slightly better quality version.

To AlanO and Spoooze, it's interesting that the music didn't work for you, because - as this was originally a student film - much of the critique and praise that I received from professors and classmates referred to it as gleefully subversive in the manner in which the short flipped the Disney archetype on its head. I think obviously this point in particular would be diminished without the music. Many of the lyrics also conveniently and ironically mirror the action in the film, which is another reason it works for me. I don't think the film would flop without the music, but it definitely removes an element that was very much intentional on my part.

Zabrisa - I didn't know what MOHO was, but I just looked it up, and I see it's an animation software - is it any good? I painted the art for this film in Adobe Photoshop, and animated it using Adobe After Effects.

Doubt - thanks!

Also, for people who enjoyed the art, please check out more of my work on my website!

http://www.jeffzachowski.com

Yo, Jeff! I played a bit with what was then known as MOHO by downloading its demo version two years ago---full program but with a watermark. Overall good program and inexpensive, but its graphics tools sux big time. The newest version is now Anime Studio. Other folks in AWN have used Moho. Check out http://www.lostmarble.com for demo reels, user forum. Now it is being sold trough e-frontier. Don't know about Anime Studio, but I can't believe them gorgeous 2D graphics were created in Anime Studio.

Wow, I downloaded a free trial of Anime Studio...it's like a 3D approach to 2D animation...friggin' brilliant! I may need to pickup a copy because I'm drooling at the prospect of what I could do with that. In particular, I'm in awe of the work done by Greykid Pictures...saw those movies and I was instantly sold! In the meantime, I'm stuck with After Effects - which is a nifty program in it's own right.

By the way, I have a couple more brief clips.

Here's a brief clip of a bird in flight:
http://www.intermarket.com/zachowski/flight2.mov

A goofy character with an unusual way of walking:
http://www.intermarket.com/zachowski/nose.mov

Chicken of the Sea in bootiful quicktime:
http://www.intermarket.com/zachowski/mermaid.mov