The New Podtoid Adventures

[Cutie Honey]

HEY KIDS! It’s the official production thread for The New Podtoid Adventures!, which are the animated adventures of Jim Sterling, Jonathan Holmes, and friends. Following the popularity of the last video made early this year, I’m making Podtoid into a serialized cartoon companion to the popular podcast.
This forum topic will track my progress from week to week and will give Dtoiders the chance to chime in.



Who are you?
I am Thomas Truong, aka longtime member, Cutie Honey from Destructoid since the days of infamous posters like Electro Lemon and WiiSucks. I work as a media designer for a training video company, but I also occupy myself work on a number of game and animation projects as a freelancer. I also dabble well as an independent but licensed journalist, painter, amateur voice actor, cameraman, crossdresser, and avid hat collector.

What is The New Podtoid Adventures?
These are a set of animations based on various discussions in the popular Podtoid podcast. Featuring (mostly) unedited conversations between Dtoid staff members, animated ala The Ricky Gervais Show with added background music, wonderful visuals, and hidden easter eggs abound. Scenes are selected from a giant database of segments from the podcast. The title comes from The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, a television show from the late 80s, early 90s. There are reasons for that which will come to fruition within time.

Where can I watch it?
Jim will stick them up as posts on Dtoid and you can eventually check them out on my Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/truongasm.
A preview of the first episode will premiere at PAX Prime 2012 during the Destructoid Panel on Friday with the blessing of Niero, Dale, and Jim. That’s about as far as we’ve planned. The full episode will go online in late September or October.

When do they come out?
I’m a fairly busy guy with my own video projects to promote, but I’ll try do everything in my power to release out about 5-10 minutes every 2-3 months. So there will be at least a good and thick 30 minutes of entertaining and ranchy video every year.

Why are you posting about it here?
I (and many others) understand that Destructoid is a site based around its community. So instead of holing myself up and posting on twitter every few weeks that “I’m doing stuff!”, I’ll be completely open about this project. I’ll post almost everything I’m working on from WIP storyboards to assets. AND, I’ll post opportunities for people to contribute stuff that will get into the episodes (more below). By following this topic, you will get EXCLUSIVE links to video previews and music as well. For my own self-promotion, I’ll also be posting the updates on my blog at: http://www.truongasm.com/

I’m more than happy to listen some constructive criticism or suggestions, whatever makes the show better. My goal is to entertain everyone, not just self-inflate my own ego. Having said that, try to limit the amount of segment suggestions, not because I don’t want to hear what you really want animated, but because…
I’ve listened to every Episode of (new) Podtoid at least three times. I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily a positive thing. Every tic and habit of the hosts is echoed into my memory. I’ve logged nearly every possible segment I’ve (personally) found interesting into the equivalent of a bible in this document. But If there’s a Podtoid segment you personally want me to prioritize, go ahead and voice it, but note that I’ve heard it all, so no need for an extended description.

And How can I contribute?
The New Podtoid Adventures is not just about me, Jim, or Jon. It’s about Destructoid, the community. So periodically, I’ll make a new post on a chance to get user submitted content into Podtoid. Whether you’re an MS Paint artist or the next David Cage, you can get something into Podtoid AND get your name into the credits, for the price of absolutely nothing!

Several cool people have already volunteered contributing to the series:

• Dale North has volunteered to make covers of the music in the show so we don’t get sued if we ever want to monetize on this in the future.
• SirTobbii’s popular Willem Dafoe posters will make it into any episode that features our favorite actor.

And you can join this list of two visionaries with opportunities every episode. And Dale is a busy guy so there may be room for secondary composers.
Now that’s the formalities are over with, let’s get to development.

Details on the first episode and how you can help for this first episode are in the next two posts.

[Cutie Honey]

Episode 01: Nintendo, Abortion, and The Amazing Spiderdman

This first episode will (be planned to) include:

• The first half of The Amazing Spiderdman from Episode 209: Toxic Love Holes
• Megaman Legends 3 Abortion from Episode 187: The Rosa Parks of Pensises
• Hamza is Meg Griffin from Episode 210: I’m Nightwing & I’m Gonna Sex Your Ass
• Max Scoville is a Dick from Episode 154: Willem Dafoe in The Breast Man
• How Sakurai Made Smash Brothers Brawl from Episode 199: Goose Penis

Starting off with a bang, there’s at least 9 minutes of fun-filled cockery for everyone to enjoy.
At least the four minute Spiderdman segment will make it to PAX, the other (much shorter) segments will be animated at a later time, and added into the final product. If you’re aching from a lack of “Willem Dafoe Movie Pitches” or “Is It Pedophilia Or Not?”, fear not, those will come out in future episodes.
I’m trying to find clips from Podtoid that are universally timeless, so the relevance of the jokes won’t diminish or become irrelevant. In other words, topics unrelated to current video games offer the best material because they’ll still be funny 3 years from now, whereas a Gears of War 3 or Duke Nukem Forever joke may not be as funny then (or now). I’ll still try to fit some in though.

Character Creation

My entire last month has been spent creating character designs, which have taken several hours each, mostly because I’m a perfectionist for getting things right, meaning I’ll spend minutes just getting the pupils in the right spot for the eyes. My philosophy is to patiently get things right the first time, then release a half-hearted project that I’ll have to clean up later. This point is slightly counteracted by the fact that, as many artists will agree, when I’m done with a project, I’ll think it was shit and move onto the next one in hopes of self-improvement. This mentality has helped me grow as an artist and stay humble about my skills, which I still (and always will) think are rubbish.

So enough introspective, how are characters made? Well, in Flash, character libraries allow animators to reuse existing assets and keep them organized. This often lends to the “copy-pasted” stuff you see in modern animation and many webcomics, but this “cheap” method allows for quicker turnarounds, and is harder to spot when one makes good variation and puts in high detail to the base character. Creating character libraries also allows you to edit just one “master” image, and it corrects itself whenever it’s used in the rest of the video.
When designing the characters, each has a simple shape to follow when I designed them, and whenever I have to redraw their silhouettes:

• Jim: Egg
• Jon: Upside down Egg
• Tara: Two Ovals
• Max: Downward pointing triangle
• Hamza: Rectangle
• Conrad: Short square

The characters are portrayed in ¾’s perspective similar to Simpsons and Family Guy. So while they aren’t realistic, they can look forward or to the side without having to drawn completely different assets (as well as the animation for moving between stances). Characters are broken up into layers, in which each limb will rotate off of in simple animations. Dynamic stuff or anything with strange camera angles will require completely newly drawn assets, but break up the monotony of the cheaper character designs.
Shown below is the mouth reference for Tara Long, allow me to animate mouth flaps much quicker (gets done in seconds) than redraw each mouth (takes over a minute). For me, lip synching is the most boring step in animation, but done right, it’s one of the most important steps to bring life to a character. By setting up all the mouths first, and creating a key to reference which frame is which, I cut down the time it takes immensely.



Now that you know a little about how episodes are created, stay tuned for more posts as well as the first Contribution Campaign below.

Additional Trivia about the different characters that will help you pick up chicks:

• Max has a little bird drawn on his neck stump
• Hamza has the words ALSO and COCKS written into his arm hair
• Hamza’s arm hair is in its own layer

• In terms of little things with the most detail, Hamza’s glasses take the cake
• Jonathan is wearing a slightly “off-brand” Beemo T-Shirt (so we don't get sued)
• Hamza is wearing a variation of his vibrant purple and blue shirts that he is known to roll up
• Three character wear ties, to add variation to them:
  
  • Jim’s is tucked in
  • Max’s is a thin tie with a loose end sticking out
  • Hamza’s is a thick tie with a profession neck job
  
  
• Conrad’s shirt design is set in its own layer so the design can be changed on a whim
• Although all the characters have proportions that give them big hands and heads, Tara has the largest head.
• Tara has two different designs depending on the direction she faces in order to keep her hair consistent. (See Sagat in older Street Fighter games to see consistency issue)
• Hamza, Tara, and Conrad have exposed arms/hands which change the hierarchy on how their arms/hands are stacked

• Compared to the E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy animation, the characters are drawn with Vector lines instead of brushes, in order to keep them uniform and cleaner.
• Jim is the only character without a neck
• Jim is the only character without an eye layer embedded into his face since he’s always wearing aviators. He does have different eyebrows depending on extreme circumstances.
  
  
• Several characters went through some complete revisions over the last month in order to “not make them look like B^U.” Max’s faces was pushed inward more, Jon’s eyes became more sleepy, and his entire body was pushed to resemble something akin to a gorilla, instead of a middle-aged man.

[Cutie Honey]

Ever wanted to throw a personalized spider at Jonathan Holmes? Well now is your chance!
Just download the following .png and draw all over the spider however you’d like, in any program.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/72150804/Ma...ers%20Draw.png

If you’re a flash user, vectorize the design with this .fla file.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/72150804/Ma...ers%20Draw.fla

These Rhythm Heaven Fever themed spiders will get thrown at Jonathan Holmes at an alarming rate until he turns into the Amazing Spiderdman.

Design them however you’d like, the templates linked just give you the body of the spider with a hinting of where the eyes get overlayed, so keep in mind that the eyes will cover those areas. Below is just a few examples of ways your arachnid achievements can be made into animated art. So whether you want it to resemble the color scheme of a real spider, or the eclectic Easter Egg stored inside your imagination, go for it. Just nothing terribly offensive (at least by podtoid standards) please.



After you’re done, post your images (or links if you’re using the vector) in this thread. Try to keep them in a lossless format like .png. The deadline is August 24^th, the weekend before PAX, giving me a possible chance to edit them in. The customized spiders may not get edited into the PAX Panel showing, but they’ll be in the first episode for sure. I don’t know how many submissions I’ll get and how many I can technically fit in, but I’ll do all I can to get them all in, if not just credit everyone anyway. Each person is limited to two spiders.

Good luck!

[Jon Bloodspray]

You're from Portland.

[Cutie Honey]

Removed Duplicate Post

[theweirdn8]

LOL to the Kirby music in the bg.

[Tobbii Karlsson]

Here's my Pimp Spider:

http://a.yfrog.com/img213/3296/phqt.png

Also, would you mind just fixing the spelling of my name in the opening post? It's Tobbii, not Tobii. ^^

[Cutie Honey]

Beautiful. Also, fixed your name.

[Dexter345]

I will make this the Forum Thread of the Day on Friday.

[Johnny Justice]

Please enjoy this comb over spider.

Edit: Sorry for the crappy quality. Would an Illustrator file be of use?

[Cutie Honey]

Thanks Dexter for the promotion, and thanks Johnny Justice for another spider for the horde.

Here's some new images to look forward to. I'll make another reminder blog with them tomorrow or Wednesday.

[Mr Andy Dixon]

This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

[ZombiePlatypus]

I don't listen to Podtoid, but this legitimately interests me. I watched the video up there and will check whatever comes next. I dig the idea and the effort you're putting in.


Fact: I only stumbled on this thread after seeing your username at the bottom of the Forums in the "currently online" area and saying to myself "He's on the Forums?"

[Cutie Honey]

True Story, while I've had an regular account for years, I only joined the forums JUST to make this thread.

And feel free to submit a spider if you would like.

[Mr Andy Dixon]

Posted this on your cblog but here it is again:



I'm OK with it only having six legs since they're all penises.

[ninjapresident]

I hope I terrify you all:

[Cutie Honey]

Okay, guess I'll have to spend 5 hours making custom penis legs for your custom spider.

[Mr Andy Dixon]

Oh dude you don't have to use that shit at all. It was mostly for my own amusement.

[Tarvu]

I might need to start paying attention to this, Podtoid is a weekly laugh therapy of mine after all.

[Cutie Honey]

I'm too busy to post much more until AFTER PAX, but enjoy this last image before the PAX Prime premiere.