Zedrin

Negative. We don't know how long it'll be, but 20 minutes for a single cartoon isn't easy, and if we do what we want to with it 20 minutes at a time won't be feasible. We'll actually go more into detail about what it is next week, so be sure to catch the livestream on Youtube :Y

hah, we were just talking about questions like this, actually. :Y Personally MLP doesn't even count as a hobby for me anymore. I'm so far removed from it, I haven't watched it since the end of season 3. I do a lot of personal art in my free time. I run a webcomic-style askblog featuring my robot girl among various other OCs. I sometimes draw nsfw as well (which I'm not shameful of at all because I'm trash). I've experimented a bit with game design here and there, nothing substantial. I've had a small platformer on the backburner for a long while.

This video https://vine.co/v/e9nxJubttIE 11 characters

I'm planning on keeping all of you in my people zoo once we robots take over.

I play vidya gaems mostly. Showers Boxers. (orpantiesifwe'retalkingaboutwhatweliketoseeinsteadofwearhurhurhurhur) I'm such a shut-in I don't even know which of my habits count as 'weird' Cheesy things. Chocolatey things. I'm so healthy. Fall of the Crystal Empire.

My personal favorite, two cosplayers made some awesome cosplays of Luna and Celestia based on Fall of the Crystal Empire, weapons and armor and all. Ah, this is a good question, and I really want to try and help other people learn how to deal with issues like this, not just with Hasbro but with ALL companies. Just a little background: Copyright pertains to visual media, audio, and writing. And I'm very specific with that: When I say visual media, I mean a specific piece of art or a specific clip from a show. Fanart and fan creations are NOT a violation of copyright. Ideas CANNOT be copywritten. The lowest level of these issues on Youtube are the content ID claims, which can be done by interns or mismatched from auto identifications. These actually can be disputed usually with succcess if you point out that it's fair use, because while it may be based on something else, it's still original art, animation, etc. (Style variations further help this argument). DMCAs also can fall under this category, even if they're more impacting. Another aspect to this is whether or not your usage of an IP is conflicting or competing with the original work. This is less of an issue with animation, since it's usually original scripts, and they don't replace the original works at all. Some plushie makers and fanartists have ran into issues though for selling trademarked characters, because often those characters are already being sold by the company in question. A higher level issue is trademark dilution. This is where people sometimes get into more trouble: If you're using a company's icon, and people think you created that icon, that can cause significant problems and poses a risk to the trademark holder. In animation, you can help avoid these issues by making sure it's clear what you do or don't own. Style deviations again help with this and are an added level of security, but ultimately when people see a licensed character, they should think of the actual owner, not just the person who is using it. The most we've really had to deal with were a few false content IDs by Hasbro on some of our videos, and all of those were resolved when we pointed out that they were original animations and counted as transformative works. Technically I'd argue that Fair Use isn't even an issue with fan works, cause again, the only thing similar are the ideas, not the actual media, but that'd be a bit of a stretch. Plus Canadian law includes ideas under copyright (but internationally that's no the case)

Photoshop - expensive but very versatile, can do almost anything, from video editing to drawing to photomanipulation. This is what I primarily use, and is also what I started with. Sai - cheaper, prefered by a lot of people. Geared towards drawing alone. Firealpaca - Free, can be built to look like Sai and actually function similar. Probably a good starting point. Gimp - Also free, can be customized to look like Photoshop. Manga Studio/Clip Studio Paint - this one is one of my favorites. It's about $70-100, can't remember, but it's REALLY good. I do a lot of linework in this. Krita - Free, geared towards drawing. Pretty much any program that has tablet pressure sensitivity will work as a starting point. Just one piece of advice: if you use a stabilizer, keep it as low as you can. High stabilizers lead to lack of line control long term. Fast, confident lines are both more efficient and look better.

well it kinda varies. SFS isn't conventional. We more kinda operate like a giant collaborative effort rather than a singular studio (which is kinda necessary since we're cloud-based). If we're in downtime between animations, I personally often dedicate myself to my personal stuff, from commissions, streaming, side animations, or running PV02. I usually dedicate a sizeable chunk of time to this as well normally, just cause I don't need to spend every hour working on animation, so long as I get done what needs to be finished by its respective deadline. However, if there's a deadline I usually am still dedicating at least a few hours each day. It's usually a bit easier to think of things on a week-to-week basis, though, rather than day-to-day. We meet up once a week over skype so that's when we decide what tasks need to be done by next meeting. Other people have jobs and stuff so they can't reliably commit their full attention to the group, and one policy we have in the group is RL comes first. Make sure your finances and work and the like are taken care of.

I aint stoppin' anytime soon. :Y What we collectively and individually work on gradually changes over time, but at the end of the day I'm still arting and animating, and that's what I plan to do.

The tl;dr: the execution. There are no bad ideas (but that's not to say 'ideas guys' don't earn my ire), how you spin and present an idea is going to determine how successful it is. This obviously can be easier to do with interesting premises, but again, execution is still key. Take for example, One Punch Man. It's about a guy who's so strong he can beat anyone in a single punch. He sounds like a total Mary Sue. Except, in practice, the manga and anime are really funny and they introduce faults and challenges to him that have nothing to do with his ability and power. As far as art goes, when it comes to cartoons, I'd say stylization is the ability to represent anatomy. Most novice artists think that style can excuse anatomical choices--style is actually how you represent anatomical choices, not mask them. Cartoons need to clearly represent a character's form while still being simple enough to draw repeatedly and move around without looking awkward. I guess tl;dr, focus both on learning anatomy and also how to represent it.

TBH we're not really planning any new MLP projects atm, so it's not likely. We'll be revealing more about Starsign next week in our youtube livestream. It'll be at 5pm pst/8pm EST next saturday. We've also got a small cartoon planned for Christmas, nothing really major.

Mulan, I guess. :Y The two options seem to be either tuck your head down and just do it, or reassess your scope. Scaling a project back, or switching to do a smaller one that's more feasible and less overwhelming is probably the best choice. For VA work, the ideal is gonna be an XLR condenser mic. You'll need an audio converter to translate the signal to something your PC can read, but XLR mics work awesome. A step below that is one of the higher end USB mics, which can still be good if you treat them well. You'll also want to make sure your space is treated to dampen any reverb and noise. Bags of laundry can help a lot with that, just pack em along the walls of your room. For me, Fall of the Crystal Empire. There were honestly some complications with it, partially dealing with timing and effects. One animator was really good with visual effects in flash, but the way they were structured was outside of what I had specified, so they were inseparable from the rest of the layers. Removing the effects would mean reanimating everything. As a result, that's why the trailer has some shading, while the full animation doesn't. There was a lot I wanted to do with it but it started to get less and less feasible. It didn't help that I was getting disenchanted with MLP at the time, and we were having headaches with Youtube's overzealous content ID system.

Probably the best thing has just been be supportive. E.g., sharing our videos with friends, subscribing, etc. It seems small, but it's something anyone can do, and there's a lot of different ways to do it, both small and large. And at the end of the day, the support does help a lot. I was just starting to learn how flash worked thanks to some tutorials by OneyNG. Since then I've made it my main source of income and my job.

Head down and plow through it, usually. I have to force myself to commit to things frequently. Snowdrop required 5 12-hour workdays straight during the home stretch. This is a lot more of a risk for bigger things. It's usually better to avoid this problem all together by not biting off more than you can chew. Of course that's not always feasible.