Lately, I have been making animations for the Logan prison cell workout I talked in episode 450:
While making them, I thought back to the first time I tried to do something similar, when making animations for the first game I tried to make, a Tomb Raider prequel of sort featuring a young adult Lara Croft going on her first big adventure, looking for her kidnapped mentor and a unicorn. I spent hours on the running animation alone, figuring it was the most important part, though what I didn’t realize at the time was 1.) more frames does not make for a smoother experience, as it just increases the chance of the the frames will get stuck or not load, and 2.) hand drawn animations scanned into a computer will never be as precise as something entirely digital. But at the time, I had no idea, so hand drew the frames and used tracing paper to transfer it from frame to frame:
This week on the show, I’m talking about a few different things. I finished the Perler bead pixel art Logan I was working on based on the animation stills I originally made for The Thirteenth Hour game I started back in college. This was the frame I used:
And here is how he came out!
The other thing I recently found is a 4″ Gundam light up model that I found in my local dollar store. I made a little unboxing and show/tell video which is below.
So for those of you familiar with Gundam as a cartoon series – where would you start (assuming you are unfamiliar with the property)? Do you think you have to start at the beginning or can you start somewhere in the middle?
Lastly, I have a few updates on the GI Joe style Rocketeer figures as well as the Rocketeer Choose Your Own Adventure story – first draft done; now working on subsequent drafts. I also made a dedicated page for those Rocketeer stories as well.
This week on the show is a bit of a throwback to something I first started doing years ago – pixelart! Up until ow, I have just done it on the computer for video games animations and static images, but I recently realized that you can basically make physical pixelart images you can hold in your hands with these little beads called Perler beads – tiny colored pieces of LDPE (number 4 plastic) that melt and flatten when pressed with an iron, creating a pixelart-style image.
The images I found for the original Super Mario Bros sprites.
When you add the beads, it looks something like this …
Then after flattening the beads with a hot clothes iron, you get something like this. As you can see, the edges are a bit rounded, not square, but from afar, you can’t really tell the difference.
After recently using the small boards we had to make 8 bit Super Mario Brothers sprites, I wondered if I could recreate some of the animation stills I originally made for The Thirteenth Hour game I started back in college.
Three of the Thirteenth Hour characters – Logan, Aurora, and Klax.
One fun thing about pixelart is that since your palate is very small, you have a limit to the amount of detail you can show. So to convey things like emotions, you have to be creative in how you want to do it (or just more overt).
Some action poses …
To do this one in Perler Beads would be very big since is over 300 pixels tall (meaning way more than 300 beds to do the whole thing), so I am going to start next week with a few of the ones above to see if I can recreate some of them.
This week, I’d like to welcome screenwriter, actress, and producer Nicole Dubuc to the show. She is the executive producer of the Rocketeer cartoon that came out about a year ago (which, as of 10/16/20, is now also available on Disney+.) She joins the show under another installment of the Like a Hood Ornament Rocketeer segment to discuss the creation of the series, the music, and some of the ideals she and her team brought to the cartoon. It was especially great to see how they were able to take Dave Stevens’ and the 1991 film’s visions of the Rocketeer universe and turn it into something that young children could easily digest and fall in love with (as my kids did).
My own children started watching the show when it came out. We don’t have cable, so I had no idea how to watch the episodes initially but eventually figured out that you could buy the episodes individually on iTunes (and then, ultimately, as a whole season on Amazon). It’s been great to share my favorite movie with the kids in a form they can digest, and as I mentioned here before and on social media, we’ve done a bunch of things from that love of the show, like reading books about airplanes together, making a Halloween costume for my daughter (almost done, more on the first Patreon exclusive episode coming soon), and making little resin figurines. I also have the Rocketeer comics to thank for helping to keep my three-year-old son on the potty long enough to, you know, take care of business.
If you haven’t seen the show, here is a clip of our favorite song, which has all the 80s pop glory of flying to the sound of synths and guitars.
Can you spot the original Rocketeer film/comic Easter Eggs? Here are a few to get you started …
-recreation of the scene in the original comic and film of the Rocketeer saving a pilot in trouble at an airshow
-Butch the bulldog
–Billy Campbell, the original Rocketeer in the 1991 film, who voices the pilot in trouble (the father of Kit, the new Rocketeer).
-gum in a white wrapper (a la Beeman’s) that saves the day
If you don’t have Disney+ or another streaming service with the show, you can, of course, buy episodes or the season individually like I did.
However, you can also watch an episode for free (which has a nice cameo by the original Rocketeer) on Youtube:
Although I wasn’t able to get it to work since I think my phone is too old, there was a Rocketeer game with the same bright color palate the series has that used to be part of the Disney Now app. I’m not sure it’s still available since I wasn’t able to find it this time around, but you can check out the gameplay below. Looks like fun! I hope it gets released to be more widely available!
Thanks, Nicole, for coming on the show! You can find out more about her on Twitter and Instagram.
Look for more Rocketeer cartoon content in future episodes, and if you’re a member of the Thirteenth Hour Arts Patreon group, look for more updates on the costume we’re currently making. Here’s a preview:
As I mentioned last week, I wanted to finish the short story, “The Last Rocketeer” (which tells the story of what might happen if a 71-year-old Cliff from The Rocketeer met up with Centauri from The Last Starfighter) by Halloween since the story ends on Halloween, but also because, when writing it, I wanted to pay homage to the timeline the Rocketeer cartoon established for Cliff and Jenny later in life. Although the IDW comics had stories that went up through World War 2 (and that was with Betty and the Dave Stevens version of the rocketpack), I don’t think there is anything that discussed what life was life for these characters after that. That is, until the cartoon! So, there are some cameos and mentions of Ambrose, Cliff’s son, and Dave, his grandson in “The Last Rocketeer.” Here are a few of the illustrations, mostly done with the kids in daddy day care art time:
By the way, proceeds from the next Thirteenth Hour LP, Once Upon a Dream, will also be donated to the organization Corazon de Vida (see episode 268). If you are also interested in helping to support their mission, learn more at https://www.corazondevida.org/get-involved. Join me and others at the virtual event that Corazon de Vida is throwing on 10/29/20 at 7 PM PST by clicking on the picture below or here.
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There are now Thirteenth Hour toys! If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.
If the past few months have got you needing a break, you may want to chill out to this 80s synth throwback track for a upcoming LP with the accompanying music video:
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
This week, we’re continuing work on an old track from episode 115 that I never really finished that we returned to last week. Entitled “There is Magic Inside,” it is supposed to be quiet yet hopeful, building in complexity as it progresses to reflect Aurora’s growing appreciation and understanding of magic in one of The Thirteenth Hour sequels. Today, we add a synth lead. I ended up shelving the guitar part I had originally.
If you haven’t checked out “Arcade Days,” the song and video Jeff Finley, Brent Simon, and I have been working on the past year, click on the link below to do so!
You can find more pictures and preview clips of “Arcade Days” on IG as well as this podcast’s FB page.
Lastly, the podcast is now on Spotify! Check it out.
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Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Away is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube. This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
Perhaps by the time you’re listening to this show, “Arcade Days,” the song and video Jeff Finley, Brent Simon, and I have been working on the past year will be out (it releases 1/1/19 at 12:30 AM). Happy 2019!
Check out Jeff’s portfolio here. See the links below for more of his work. If you’d like one of his Starseed patches for your own, check out his etsy site.
You can find more pictures and preview clips of “Arcade Days” on IG as well as this podcast’s FB page.
I also started work on an old track from episode 115 that I never really finished. I’ve always been meaning to get back to it since it never quite sounded right. I did some retooling of it on Auxy as well as experimenting with a lead on the keyboard. Stay tuned for more next week as well.
Lastly, the podcast is now on Spotify! Check it out.
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Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Away is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube. This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
Way back in episode 101 and 102, writer and musician Jeff Finley came on the show, and today he returns to discuss a project we’ve been engaged in for the past year. It all started sometime after we last talked – when he, Brent Simon, and I decided to work on a music project together (see Episodes 109, 110, and 111 for Brent’s interviews on this show). Brent had sent us a bunch of old unfinished tracks, and we eventually took ideas he had started and created a song inspired by a few of the demo tracks. This podcast episode is mostly about that process, as well as the creation of the music video that accompanies the track. Both will be released 1/1/19 on Jeff’s Starbound Renegade profile (see links below). We also touch on a number of other topics besides music and the creative process, including the state of social media and finding oneself.
Check out Jeff’s portfolio here. See the links below for more of his work. If you’d like one of his Starseed patches for your own, check out his etsy site.
Here are some of the pictures making up the pixelart music video accompanying the song. Making these pictures actually turned out to be a lot of fun! I was influenced by a number of 80s films and cartoons, like The Last Starfighter, Voltron, and Robotech (more below in the credits section).
You can find more pictures and preview clips on IG as well as this podcast’s FB page.
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Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Away is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube. This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
Today’s episode is all about flipping! Although it’s pretty common to see acrobatics on TV and in video games today, at the time The Thirteenth Hour was written (1998), the whole extreme martial arts tricking community was still in its infancy, and it hadn’t really permeated popular culture to quite the same degree yet. There were a few exceptions – video games like Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Tomb Raider (plus its many clones) that came out around then had flipping protagonists. And there were Jackie Chan movies, plenty of older kung fu classics, and Gymkata showings on late night TBS. But if you wanted to see traditional gymnastics, you generally had to wait four years for the Olympics.
I wanted Logan and the other Imperial Rangers from The Thirteenth Hour to learn acrobatics not only because of my own personal interest but because I thought it would make them more agile and help them push their limits. In the book, they grumble about it a lot, but it’s hard to ignore the element of danger in learning movements that turn you upside down and occasionally have you landing on your rear, head, or neck if you’re not careful. And although it’s totally anecdotal, I think finding your personal limits and working through the fear translates into better focus and confidence in yourself.
Here’s a representative excerpt from the novel:
“…That’s how we ended up in the tall, airy room that’d been built to train the Army’s special soldiers. The large room with mirrored walls was carpeted with thick, vaguely carpet–like mats. On those mats we were taught how to transfer the momentum of a fall to a roll without getting hurt, how to stand on our hands, and how to spring from our hands to our feet and back again. We were also taught how to flip in the air and how to run up a wall, flip backwards, and land on our feet. In the process, we were introduced to a new language, one born of bodies in motion.
So, it was awkward at first, but exhilarating in a way, and looking back, a lot of it had to do with conquering fear, so in that sense, it really was essential to our training. After several months of trying, I was able to fling myself over backwards and kind of land on all fours with all the grace of a drunken ape. And then one day, I succeeded in landing without putting my hands down on the floor …”
Sketched animation of one of the Imperial Rangers doing a front flip – note he gets plenty of air and does not bust his ass on the floor (that happens a lot, though).
Pixelart animation of Logan doing a backflip. This was from The Thirteenth Hour game that didn’t get finished.
As always, thanks for listening! Next week, part 2, focusing more on martial arts.
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Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s instagram pages: @the13thhr and @the13thhr.ost for your daily weekday dose of ninjas, martial arts bits, archery, flips, breakdancing action figures, fantasy art, 80s music, movies, and occasional pictures or songs from The Thirteenth Hour books.
Now you, too, can throw playing cards like you favorite superpowered mutant. Like I mentioned in this previous post, it’s not hard to learn to throw playing cards like Logan does in The Thirteenth Hour. But it does help to know a little about the technique and have the right cards.
Wait no longer. Thirteenth Hour throwing cards are now here. You throw heavier, more rigid cards first in order to get the technique down, then work your way down to lighter cards until you;re throwing regular playing cards. This kit is essentially a pair of “training wheels” to jump start your throwing while keeping your confidence up and frustration low. They’re handmade and contain pictures from The Thirteenth Hour and come in different weights:
1.) laminated cards with Thirteenth Hour illustrations (weigh 5 g each) x 2
2.) unlaminated cards with Thirteenth Hour illustrations (weigh 3 g each) x 3
3.) regular playing cards (weigh 1 g each) x 3
So you start with #1, then go to #2 when you have the throw down, then go to #3 when #2 is too easy. At that point, you’ll be able to use a regular deck of playing cards you can find anywhere.
Comes with a set of instructions showing the basic throw and grip variations.
You can get them on the eBay store here or on my Square online store here.
UPDATE (2/15/16): Well, the first time I posted these on eBay, they were removed since eBay doesn’t allow weapons to be sold, and I guess “throwing cards” were flagged as potential implements of destruction. It probably goes without staying, but I’ll paraphrase what’s said on the packaging on the cards themselves:
These aren’t intended as weapons! Even in the book, Logan uses them as a distraction. The idea that could you could seriously injure someone from thrown paper playing cards is not without its legends (see the original post for a book by magician Ricky Jay about it), but if you have any doubts, check out this Mythbusters episode where the myth of the lethal throwing card gets busted. Ricky Jay actually makes a cameo as well). However, you should still exercise caution, since if you get really good, you can cause small paper cuts, and walls and doors may get chipped. That said, these are primarily novelty items. If you’re seriously looking at them as a way of defending yourself, I wish I could say different, but there are many, many more effective ways!! Throwing cards for self defense is probably best left in the realm of fantasy unless done for distraction, like Logan did in the book. Of course, a handful or dirt or some coins to the face would do the same with much less practice, too.
This clip, posted on Instagram and on the Youtube channel, shows the creation of the drawing used for the label:
UPDATE (2/18/16): There’s now a video showing the cards in action!
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Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast and a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour!
After hearing enough people say I should find out more books like The Princess Bride and The Last Unicorn, I finally sat down with my daughter to listen to an audiobook of The Last Unicorn, read by the author, Peter S. Beagle. Later, I watched the cartoon, which, by the way, has a great voice acting cast. So in this episode, I talk a little about this fairy tale fantasy classic. I thought it would be an appropriate follow-up for last week’s discussion on what makes a fairy tale fantasy.
Quotes:
You have all the power you need if you dare to look for it.
Then what is magic for? What is the use of wizardry if it can’t even save a unicorn? … That’s what heroes are for.
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On a different note, as mentioned, over the next few weeks, I’ll be featuring the same New Year New Books 2016 blog tour authors I talked about on this site. This week, we’ll hear from author Lo-arna Green. Please see her feature from last week here.
Interestingly, she wrote that her books started as a story she began mainly for a writing contest: “I entered chapter 1 as a short story to a competition with a publisher and couldn’t stop thinking about what I could write next after I sent it off. So I decided to give up my place in the competition (I know, I know) and finish the book so I could get some peace.” Isn’t it funny how that works?
Before I forget, I’ll be appearing on local radio show (1380AM WNRI) this Tuesday, 9AM EST. In a twist or ironic humor, I’ll be talking about a podcast on a radio show, and it should all be good fun. You can listen live over the internet as well.
Lastly, for anyone (but especially you aspiring authors out there), from here on out, I’ll occasionally talk about some ways to make a few bucks online. There are many sites out there that basically pay you to watch videos (in reality, watch ads), and they tend to pay in gift cards. It can be handy to have some money in your Amazon account to be able to send books to friends, family, reviewers, and giveaway winners and offset the cost of buying the books yourself. One such site is earnhoney.com, which you can use on your computer. If you’re interested in learning more, check out this channel on youtube for more info. Good luck!
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Vimeo, a video sharing site like youtube, tudou, and facebook, to name a few, has a quite a few independent films in its catalog. So I thought it might be a nice place to add content created for The Thirteenth Hour. So far, I’ve uploaded the book’s trailer, the music video, and the bow creation video. They’re already on youtube, but the more the merrier.
I have some ideas for a promo of A Shadow in the Moonlight which ties in a bow I recently made (the hunter’s bow from the story) – some shots of a hunter cloaked in black aiming his bow at an ethereal deer in a forested background. I don’t have any actors to use, so I may just end up using myself in a homemade costume, but there is magic in Adobe Premiere, me thinks, that may give even potential poo a glimmer of gold. And I think a little movie (well, more like a 30 second commercial) might be fun to make. So, when that’s done, I’ll upload it to vimeo as well. As always, thanks for watching.
There was a time when my brother and I decided we were going to make video games. My brother had discovered this graphical game making program called Klik ‘n Play on the internet and a small community of people using it to make a wide range of computer games. The advantage of it was that it allowed someone without a lot of programming experience to make games fairly quickly. The developers were in France, I believe, and the program was somewhat hard to find. But our father managed to find a copy somewhere on the still nascent internet, and my brother went to town. I was a little late getting on the bandwagon but eventually threw my hat in the ring, too, with my ultimate goal a rendition of The Thirteenth Hour in video game form. Although that never entirely happened, looking back on what we did ten, no, wait … (does mental calculations) … sixteen years ago is something I hadn’t thought about until I recently found a bunch of old notebooks showing sketches and game play notes.
One of the first games I completed was a Tomb Raider fan project called “Tomb Raider – The Unicorn Quest.” All the animations were hand drawn, then scanned in. I have no idea where it is now – possibly still floating around on the internet, but to be honest, that’s probably for the best. It was my first attempt at making a game, and … I’ll leave it at that!
Some time later (a year or two?), I decided I would use an updated version of the Klik ‘n Play software, called The Games Factory, to make what I envisioned would be a proper 2D Tomb Raider sidescroller, kind of like the ones that came out for the Game Boy Advance a little later.
I progressed pretty far but eventually got stuck with the game play mechanics. It was hard to make Lara control well consistently. For a game that required at least some vaguely precise targeting for shooting and platform jumping, it ended up being more an exercise in frustration than anything. It probably had a lot to do with my design or maybe the software, which was quirky, not to mention buggy, at times. In any event, other life events got in the way, and as much as I hated to admit it, I kind of “lost the spark,” to use a phrase my brother coined to describe what happened when people started projects (like games) that never got completed.
However, after rediscovering the notebooks, I located the files that had been sitting, gathering digital dust for all these years and wondered if I should do something with the animations. Looking at them now, I reckon I must have spent hours on them, and even if the game never came together, I must say that the animations came out not half bad.
Maybe one day, I’ll use them in a little movie along with the cutscene illustrations that I drew and still have (here are a few).
Or, who knows, an updated version of The Games Factory, called Multimedia Fusion, is available on the web, and it’s quite powerful. I used it to create the animations for The Thirteenth Hourtrailer and music video, as well as to touch up the Lara Croft ones which I’ve embedded below. But I think to use it for game design, I’d need a refresher, since, alas, I’ve basically forgotten most of the programming that I knew.
In any event, if you’re a game developer and are interested in using these animations in a fan game of your own, please feel free to do so (all those below are animated .gifs made on this site using stills from the original game file. They were saved with an alpha channel so they superimpose easily over things – in other words, the background is transparent). They’ve sat unused for so long that I feel at least someone should use them. I only ask that you reference this webpage in your credits and let me know when you’ve done so I can play your game!
Here they are:
basic breathing animation
same as above but in a hooded cape – I’d envisioned a level where Lara was running through city rooftops dodging ninjas (yes, very 80s) in the rain, hence the hooded cape getup.
running animation
running in the cape
shooting twin pistols – you can’t see the ejected bullet casings since they were a separate animation, though if you kept your finger on the shooting button, a shower of shells would erupt from the guns 🙂
running while shooting
doing a one arm handstand to shoot down – in real life, she’d be firing into the ground, but I figured for a 2D platformer, the bullets could bend reality a little.
shooting a machine pistol – modeled after Robocop’s auto9
shooting a submachine gun
jumping/falling/climbing
sliding sidekick – I wanted Lara to have at least one move to defend herself if she ended up without weapons (since, in the early games, there was usually at least one level where she ended up without weapons).
flying sidekick
backflip – saved my favorite for last
In the future, I’ll post more animations like this of other unfinished games, including ones from The Thirteenth Hour.
Thanks to all the developers from Core and Crystal Dynamics for the Tomb Raider games over the years and making Lara Croft do backflips (my favorite part and the main reason I started playing these games in the first place – the flipping has been notably absent lately; please consider bringing the flipping back if you’re reading =)
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basic breathing animation
same as above but in a hooded cape – I’d envisioned a level where Lara was running through city rooftops dodging ninjas (yes, very 80s) in the rain, hence the hooded cape getup.
running animation
running in the cape
shooting twin pistols – you can’t see the ejected bullet casings since they were a separate animation, though if you kept your finger on the shooting button, a shower of shells would erupt from the guns 🙂
running while shooting
doing a one arm handstand to shoot down – in real life, she’d be firing into the ground, but I figured for a 2D platformer, the bullets could bend reality a little.
shooting a machine pistol – modeled after Robocop’s auto9
shooting a submachine gun
jumping/falling/climbing
sliding sidekick – I wanted Lara to have at least one move to defend herself if she ended up without weapons (since, in the early games, there was usually at least one level where she ended up without weapons).
backflip – saved my favorite for last
The Thirteenth Hour 