Animation Source Forums

I agree, very nice! I'm glad you're interested in the virtual season, we need all the support we can get! Also thanks for offering to help out, it is much appreciated!

Don't worry about workload, you can do as much or as little as you're comfortable with. Really, at the stage we're at now, brainstorming will be the main focus. So if you're at work or doing chores or whatever and a story idea pops into your head, make a mental note and by all means share it here when you have time. Again, the picture looks great!

PS, I'm curious, when did you first see TaleSpin?

Eclipse: Thanks for the kind words. I think the point I was trying to make was that the drawing of Rebecca was very slow and unfamiliar to my hand. I can draw the charaters but moving them and having differnt positons, facial expressions will be another thing. I am not that familiar with the character anymore.

0x7B: I will post anything I think of. I always loved the treasure hunts. How about the TS character getting lost in a labyrinth on the search for a treasure. The could accidently get split up or something. I think "In Search of Ancient Blunders" may have had this kind of theme. I first saw TaleSpin at a friends house in 1991. I was 11 at the time. She had cable I didn't. I would go over to her house to watch it. Later it came to the local channel from 1992 to 1994 ? (Can't remember exactly) and I watched it then but I liked it from the beginning. I spent hours trying to draw the characters and even wrote a few stories even until my early college years.Then I decided that I wanted to go back and look at the old Disney Afternoon shows on YouTube. I have watched Rescue Rangers & Darkwing Duck. I haven't watch DuckTales yet but compairatively TaleSpin has won out. RR & Darkwing are good for a few laughs but seem choppy or immature. The story lines don't quite flow. TaleSpin was my favorite at a kid and even until adulthood it still proves itself. I would say that it is better now than when I remember it as a kid.

Hey! It's very well drawn And it seems pretty much Talespin style, to me.
Seems like we've found a few good artists already


You too?? Actually I think I have heard that sentence a dozens of time already
I even asked Jymn about that...

/talespin ... &nump=1338

It seems more and more to me that this series had the wrong age target...

Nice drawing of Rebecca, PrtyWatrPrincess. The image is a little blurry, but one can see that it is very on-model.
I was wondering if you have open canvas since I’m going to be drawing there in a couple of hours. OC is a freeware program where a group of people can be drawing together in real time. If anyone wants the software send me a pm and I’ll send it to you. I will make the session with a password so if you’d like to join in you may. I’m going to be practicing design of the characters and expression’ to see how it works out. Your opinions are valuable things to have.

Now, about the stories; I’ve read that first story "Tail Winds: Part 1” and I do think is a great story, but it being a cliff-hanger I’m afraid is not a pretty good idea to add it in the season. No offence.
Also, it focuses a lot on characters that are new to us. I truly believe that since we are all beginners at this we should work with what we already know and expand and discover new things with those. Themes like:

- How did Rebecca finally manage to get her degree thru night school? And how did she become the owner of higher for higher?
- How did Wildcat end up working with Baloo?
- Perhaps a little flashback where Rebecca is a little girl, just like Molly’s age, and she is enjoying that snow she wished when adult, but this, since is where and when she was born was for real. What was that like? I think this could easily become a three part series in one episode showing different perspectives. Rebecca’s, Baloo’s and perhaps Louie.
We could also elaborate on characters that appeared only once.
- How Katie Dood got her degree? This could be a very sad episode because from what I have read she was always a loner. Afraid of being taken advantage of.
- Perhaps an episode of how Karnage came up to be a Pirate….
- An episode I would adore is about Shere Khan getting richer and cold- hearted.
- And my favorite fox, Myra Foxworthy. What happened after she started working as a minister of culture? What if she ever came back to visit the crew at higher for higher.

Most of all, I’d love to have some sense of continuity between episodes.

Me too! The adventures were one of the major reasons I watched the show as a kid (and now). BTW, I like the story idea - good opportunities for action/adventure comedy and maybe even a little drama and character development. Keep 'em coming! I also agree that the show is probably better now that when I was a kid, of course, nostalgia may have something to do with that.

It seems many people share the view that TS is an unusually adult cartoon.


I could probably find more examples, but this post is already getting out of hand. This 'TS as a more adult cartoon' idea could probably be a separate topic altogether.

I didn't actually intend to use any of the HighFlight stories in our VS, mainly because HighFlight itself is intended to be a virtual season and I was only using it as a prose-translated-to-screenplay example. And I agree, we definitely should stick to stories about the core and supporting cast, but I think it might be best to avoid stories that deal solely with characters' back-stories, at least for a time. Of course there can be some stories that deal with characters' pasts, as long as a good ratio of adventure to back-story episodes is maintained. 'Cause I have to admit, I am partial to the adventure episodes.

About your story ideas:
#1: I would need more details on this... What type of episode would it be? Action? Adventure? Drama? Comedy? A mixture? Sell it to me.
#2: It could work... it probably has a good amount of action-adventure and comedy potential.
#3: Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by the three perspectives idea. Would the whole story about Rebecca's past take place in the past, or be told in a momentary flashback? I need more details on this one as well.
#4: Similar questions as #1, though I assume that since you referred to it as a 'sad' episode that it would be primarily drama driven. I like drama, it's just that IMO Katie Dodd lends herself better to action/adventure situations. I think that if she's used in stories with action/adventure driven plots, the drama and character development will happen spontaneously. (Like it did in "For Whom The Bell Klangs" where she learned to trust Baloo and Louie. And BTW, she is a great character who should return!)
#5: I like this one! Lots of opportunities for action, adventure and comedy, plus Karnage is a very popular character.
#6: This one could be good too... It could feature some nice opportunities for character development... like if Shere Khan were to do something for profit that verges on cruel or criminal and then regrets it and tries to undo the damage he did. It could show that he is a redeemable 'villian'. I say 'villian' because he is really more of a free agent, siding with whomever stands to benefit him at the time.
#7: I like this one too! Myra could act as the action/adventure enabler; she is also a great character who should return.

Good so far everyone! Keep those ideas coming! I'll be working with steet to hopefully get a dedicated section in the forums set up for the VS soon so we can move the discussions there to have more overall organization. Stay tuned!

Steet, I'm working on a plan and I will get back with you in a day or two.

I just realized I can help with dogfighting scenes in the action episodes that require it

On my end I think Talespin was really the epitome of "for all ages" that Disney always went for. Heck I'm seeing all sort of stuff now that I didn't see before XD

Personally I'd like to see that Shere Kahn idea. It leaves me to wonder just how good/bad he is. At times in the show he seems to be evil and other times does others a favor(only with a catch). I think that shere kahn idea would be a really good chance to explore more of his personality

I do not have "open Canvas" I have never drawn on the computer before. Does it require special equipment? Besides a keyboard and mouse? I am not very computer literate which is funny b/c my two younger brothers are both work in IT departments. I do not know how to PM you. I tried.

That will be a HUGE help. The dogfighting scenes were always some of my favorite parts, and having 3D toon shaded models that can be used directly would vastly speed the production of dogfight scenes and really any aerial scenes that we may do. Since you're familiar with anim8tor, how easy/fast is it to create fully animated (video only) sequences? I hope it's not too difficult because I would love to have lots of aerial sequences since that's one of the show's hallmarks.

The Shere Khan story certainly does have potential. The trick will be to show just enough character development to give a window into his true personality while still having him retain his aura of mystery and mystique.


It is designed for pressure sensitive drawing tablets but it can be used with a mouse as well. BTW, the last freeware release was v1.1, then it moved to trial/retail. You can get the free version here: http://wistinga.online.fr/opencanvas/#downloads
A little information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCanvas
Here's a pretty decent quickstart guide: http://www.angelfire.com/anime/Jessjessica/oc/oc.html
OPUS probably knows of a better one though, seeing as how I just downloaded and tried the program today.

The easiest way is to click the "PM" button at the bottom of the person's post of who you want to message.

Depends. The animation itself isn't very long. I have tried animating a dogfight sequence before, though it was when I was noob so it wasn't as great as I wanted it to be, but perhaps if I had the exact script/camera angles and/or idea already then it will only be a matter of hours. It's normally the tweaking and rendering that takes long.

I'l test out this model and try animating a flying sequence. i'll upload the animation here when I'm done (could be in the ff days because I still have to prepare a project today.)

Oh and this is where I put what I learned in physics to good use

I figured that the modeling/rendering portion would be the most time consuming... About how many hours did it take you to model the Sea Duck? It's great to imagine that fully animated aerial sequences are within reach! I' very excited over the possibilities!

In other news, I've converted a small portion of "Tail Winds: Part 1" into screenplay format to compare and contrast the different formats to try and help people decide which format would better suit the virtual season.

Screenplay sample: http://www.mediafire.com/file/ywjynyizw ... lay-sample).pdf (10.35 Kb, PDF)
Original narrative prose: http://home.earthlink.net/~eilonwy/highflight/tw1.txt

Besides the format, I changed verb tense from active past to active present. I removed similies such as "like the distant thud of the Cape Suzette cliff guns", "like a pilot on lay-over who had one too many at Louie's" and "like the hollow belly of some great fish". I also removed internal thoughts such as "Ms. Cunningham's not going to be happy...Kit thought".

Basically I altered or removed anything that didn't fit or wasn't necessary in the screenplay format; while being sure to keep the story intact. So my question is: What format do you prefer?

As you said, the screenplay version is more "formatted" and it feels a little more like watching an episode. I have a little problem with it though : the description parts are big blocks of text when they get lengthy, maybe you should add line jumps / paragraphes.
Also, I believe the main big difference is that for screenplays, you don't explain the thoughts of the characters - for now I can't decide if it's a good thing or not. It seems better to feel like watching an episode, but at the same time we don't see the character faces/animations so it's making it more difficult to guess what they have in mind.

Apart from that, there aren't too many differences to me and I would enjoy any version we decide to keep.

It took approximately 11 hours spread out over a week. That was only the base model, the first version you guys saw. add maybe 3 or so hours with the additional tweaking to get it to its current state.

Breaking up the action blocks into easier to read paragraphs is no problem. As for expressing thoughts and feelings, that's not too hard either. Thoughts and/or feelings are expressed through action and/or dialogue, so in the example, I replaced "Ms. Cunningham's not going to be happy...Kit thought" with the action "Kit sighs and shakes head at the sight of the soggy cargo". I could have gone the other route which would've been to express that internal thought as dialogue, such as "KIT / (softly to himself) / Ms. Cunningham's not going to be happy...".

The easiest way to express thought/feelings is to pair up two or more characters and simply have them talk to each other. For situations where a character is alone, thoughts/feelings can be expressed with actions or by having the character (briefly) talk to himself/herself. Much like Rebecca does in A Star Is Torn when she's alone at the cafe: "Baloo's some friend! Something fishy's going on and he won't even listen." She spends a lot of time alone in this episode so she does the 'thinking aloud' bit quite often. The 'thinking aloud' trick works well as long as it's not overused to the point where it becomes a distraction. Thoughts can also be expressed with a voice over, but I can't think of a single time that method was used in the show.

This is a screenwriting guide that's helped me understand and appreciate the format:
(This guide is also helpful to anyone writing standard prose fanfiction, because many of the screenwriting techniques are beneficial when applied to writing prose.)
- http://www.fathom.com/course/21701762/index.html
Some of the examples on the guide are shooting screenplays, which are more compressed, stripped down versions of the final drafts. For our purposes, the fuller, more descriptive final draft version would be used.

eclipse: I envy your patience/diligence.

Alright, I played around with the propeller of the cartoon sea duck. My intention was to copy the style like in the show. But afterwards I think I ended up making a more 'realistic' style instead. I also adjusted the properties of the materials so that it wouldn't look as 3D as it used to. And yet still having some potentials for shadows.





Hopefully I can start with the draft flying animation tom after I review for my finals XD I will try to feature Baloo's signature stunts in it as well and the other scenes modelled after the intro just so that I can see how fast I can work with an existing storyboard or in this case animation.

Probably the only thing lacking in these renders is the backgrounds. I'm not yet that efficient in making backgrounds too look like the one in the show XD

that amazing, eclipse. I wonder if you could make an inside of the seaduck, so I could draw some characters in there, just to see how it looks..