PD Pro and the Return of Fun Animation.

Our goal was to make animation fun again. That's a tall order. The demands and expectation of today's audience are high, and one can get lost in the details of modeling, texturing, lighting, and not to mention, animating and rendering you final output.

Our solution: get rid of all that and tell a funny story.

Cowboy shorts is the story of a boy and his snake, cowboy, that is. We set out to tell a story with a reasonable amount of quality, without getting lost in the details. In fact, we did them on a laptop at MacDonalds. And my we, I mean me.

The new Frame Painter tool in PD pro was employed to sequence a very small number of frames, usually 10-12, into short, 30 second or so, shorts. We (Dan) drew everything with a mouse to make sure we set the bar low enough. We were trying to set a standard, after all.

The software was still being developed at the time, so I had to stop and add features or squash bugs as I worked, but it all came out ok in the end, completing 4 ½ minutes of video at 10 wiggly frames per second.

The process also helped in the development of the PD Pro and the Frame painter as we gained experience in working in a limited animation process.