Newsletter August 2026 - Feeling Animated
It really resonated with me about why I choose to spend my time making art.
Hey everyone,
I made a ton of progress on the animated version of Choosing Fate. I'm doing a test run with the opening scenes to refine my workflow and to give me a chance to choose an art style. There's a lot to tell, so strap in!
First, I polished up the dialog in the script and recorded myself and the kids doing the lines. It was fun directing them: "That was great, but lets do it again with more pompous tech bro attitude." Then, I put in a lot of effort in Audacity, my audio editing tool of choice, to get the ghost voice effect, adjust timing, pick the version of each line, etc. No time to get into it now! Gotta move on. But if you really care, let me know and I can get into the details later.
Once I had my "audio play" of the opening scenes, with the key sound effects and dialog, I imported that into Blender, my tool of choice for 3D modeling, video editing, and now 2D animation. I started a course on 2D animating in Blender so I could achieve my vision, and here's a little taste of my artistic talent:
Once I mastered 2D animation, I redid some of the figure drawing courses I took a while back so I could create storyboards and plan out all the key shots that I'll need to animate. I strung them all together and exported a video so you can get a feel for what I'm creating. Be forewarned that it is in no way finished or polished. It's to help me see how it's coming together so I know what I need to do next.
Here it is, enjoy!
What did you think? Rough, yeah, but I'm super excited about it. Layering on the voice acting and images on top of the writing really lets me bring my original vision to light. A ton of work, to be sure, but I'm having fun.
Looking back at this newsletter, I realize it's not that much detail. I guess I was just so excited to share my progress. I could write a whole piece on any one part of it, but maybe I'll do that at the end once I have my workflow down. It'll be good for posterity.
Instead, I'll leave you with one more video. This one is by a YouTube content creator who makes videos about retro handheld game devices and games. This video though, is about why he makes his videos and does his other projects. It really resonated with me about why I choose to spend my time making art.
Anyway, time to practice figure drawing and finish my animation course so I can make version 2 of my storyboard.
Best,
Todd
