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I'm Not Mad

A new animated series I'm working on with my brothers.

Featuring:
Animation, lead writing, and some vocals by Eric Mesa
and
Writing and vocals by Daniel Mesa and Davie Mesa

While we work on the first plot, I wanted to test the armatures and meshes, so each of us are supposed to submit a line to be animated.

Here's the one for the Eric character:




Eric Lip Sync from djotaku on Vimeo.

And here's the one for the David character:




"I'm Not Mad" - Dave Lip Sync - "A Boat" from djotaku on Vimeo.

I can see here that I have a bit of fixing up to do with both Danny and David's meshes.

Here's a little essay of sorts of what I intend to do with "I'm Not Mad":

"I'm not mad" is one of those ideas I've been floating with my brothers for a couple of years. It has slowly evolved as we've thrown some ideas back and forth and as I've grown in my animation skills. Originally, I was going to base th emodels off of some anime characters based on drawings by my talented friend Lawrence Kwan. But over the course of coming up with the look for the series, I settled on a more cartoony look.

For the palette I chose different colors based on inspiration from The Simpsons, Doug, and other cartoons where people aren't flesh-colored. Among other things, it saves me from trying to actually figure out what color flesh is. For the animation style I've been influenced by seeing shows such as South Park that are successful despite the fact that the characters "hop" around isntead of walking. Also, their characters are often even depicted without noses or fingers. I also feel that for too long people have looked at 3D animation to mimic a photorealistic style. I want to take it in more of a Looney Tunes/Hanna Barbera minimalistic style combined with, at times, the hyper realistic style of some shows like Ren & Stimpy. Finally, I think there is also rom for mixed media, eg in South Park they sometimes have clips of live action video.

For the plot I've been inspired by surrealist and absurdist sources such as Monty Python, Sinfest, and PennyArcade. I'd also like to approach the political and social satire of other shows mentioned above. And, of course, I want to throw some geek and gamer culture into it.

In the end, "I'm not Mad" is a serialized set of cartoon shorts that, like a Quentin Tarantino movie, is a sendup of all my influences mashed together to produce something unique and, hopefully, enjoyable.