Remember kids, according to some Twitter users, NG means that you are a pedophile! Who knew!

note: I know that they are definitely trolls, but this is still just too funny, plus in case they weren’t kidding, well… still funny, ha ha.

Behold the Wicked Witch of the SouthEast: Curlintina! The Chaotic Good Gothic Trickster with a heart of gold!

He, like his cousins, the Wicked Witches of the West and East (may they rest in no peace at all, more like Wicked Bitches, haha), was born in OZ along with his sisters, Dalma, Wacky Witch of the NorthEast, Alphema, Timid Witch of the NorthWest, and Shooyicky, Intellectual Witch of the SouthWest. Growing up with sister, of course, made him break every masculine stereotype you could think of. But I digress.

By age 12, they all decided “You know what, we should leave OZ, and start our own business together and sell a product that could actually help people, instead of whatever shenanigans our cousins are up to to serve their own self interest.” Curlintina, like his sisters, agreed, and as soon as they all graduated from Emerald University, moved to the Land of XI, which in some ways is like OZ, but with a more 60’s America feel to it. Their they started the company we all know today as Every Witch Way, and their at the time impeccable product: the Directory Potion, a brew that gives everyone who drinks it a perfect sense of direction. With, of course, the only side effect being you can only go backwards.

Eventually some Farmer made of Aluminum Foil invented the compass, eventually forcing Every Witch Way to go bankrupt, forcing the siblings to find other careers.

While the sisters found successful careers in Fruit Basket Engineers, Curlintina resorted to Ebegging as an online model, posting endless selfies, making only a meekly $50 a month. It’s quite sad.

Happy (late) Halloween, Kiddies!!!

TLDR: I'm starting over with the animation I've been working on due to unsatisfying execution and inefficient work process.

Hello, fellow clowns! I'm back with an update on what's been going on. Sadly, it is true. I have decided that I will be starting over with Clown College story time video I have been working on. For those curious, here are the reasons why:

• The script was pretty bad. Or at least not as good as I would have liked it to be. Just to come out and say it, the story is supposed to be a completely fictional story set in a completely fictional world, and the script I feel didn't build it or present it correctly. In that regard I kind of rushed into this animation when it came to that aspect. Even designing the backgrounds was mostly off the top of my head, which is really not good.
• Also with the script, the narration was too Tell don't Show. Yeah it's narration, literally a tool for Telling your story, but I was going for having Curly the Clown to be one of those Unreliable Narrators. So while he might say one thing, but the visuals will say another. Visual Storytelling ladies and gentleman. Problem is, I never really gave Curly any real character other than being my mascot. I don't want him to be my mouthpiece, I want him to be his own character with his own thoughts, opinions, and personality.
• The voice acting I feel could be changed up, maybe not terrible, but I used my normal voice for Curly, and again, don't want him to just be me.
• The animation program I used was Krita, and while it's a pretty good animation software, it is not that great when used for such a long cartoon such as this. the audio was all one audio clip, so the animation was one big scene as opposed to multiple, so the program would start getting overwhelmed, glitchy, and slow, and would say "Not Responding" whenever I would try to boot it back up.
• It was a long video and due to all of the above, I just lost all of my passion for the project. I know animation isn't always supposed to, and going to be a fun and exciting process, but why finish if I wasn't going to be satisfied with the final result?

So what I'm planning to do from now on, is use Krita for GIFs instead of big animations, since that's how I personally feel the software is better suited for anyway. And the program I'll use it OpenToonz. I've actually used this program to animate a scene in a collab I participated in a while back, so I am already pretty familiar with the fundamentals of it already. I'll still be looking up tutorials so that I can learn ALL that is to know of the program so it'll be easier and less time consuming to figure things out and find short cuts.

And I'll make sure to split the animation into short scenes at a time before I sew it together into one cartoon sock. So as to not overwhelm the program and to be more efficient. And it can also give me easier leeway to edit any mistakes I come across when I'm far into the animation already.

Lastly, the new animation I'll work on next will be a small funny short, then the first story time will be a different story. Another problem with Clown College is that it doesn't really work well as an introduction video to the world, since most of it takes place in a dull dreary college tent. So the first story will be to explore the world a bit and give a good idea how it works. though hopefully all stories can give the audience a good idea about the world, in case the audience wanted to watch out of order.

Regardless, going to focus on one or two short animations for practicing my animation skills, and so not to bite more that I can chew.

Hopefully this wasn't too long to read, so used to the short baby posts on twitter, feels so freeing to be able to say as much as I want. But that'll be it for now. I shall keep you guys posted, thanks you for reading, fellow clowns!!

I've come down with a sore throat, cough, and sinuses. So I will be bed ridden and be taking a break from animating until I've fully recovered. Apologies for the inconvenience.

I won't lie, progress on the animation has been kicking my ass. Exaggerations aside, I knew this was an ambitious\ video to make, but I've been at it for longer than I thought it would be, and I've started to grow disinterested in the product. That and I've been sick with a cold (not covid, no worries) for the past week so I haven't been productive while I recovered. Still have a bit of a cough, but I'm able to get back into the swing of things now. I still do plan to finish it, even as just a starting point to get to do the next videos that'll hopefully be more interesting to make.

I've been using Krita for this cartoon, which so far has been working out fine, but it will be the rendering that I'm worried about. I'm planning to switch it up and use Blender for the next video, so I might even start getting experimental with the visuals!

Also, to mix things up a bit so that I don't get bored of the same animation, and to give you guys something to read while waiting for this project, I've been making a #twitterquest over on my twitter page, It's my pinned comment so it'll be easier to find!

check it out here: https://twitter.com/CurlyStepper/status/1381308434906296333

anyways, I'll be back to work now, hopefully you guys will like the video, if not, criticize it all you'd like so that the next one will be a lot better!

OK, making great progress with my upcoming animation! Been at the animating stage and about halfway I believe! Granted may still take a while, in a couple days, I'll be going on a trip to visit family, and while I can try to still fit in some animating during alone times, production may be slowed down a bit. Also while animating I've been practicing my keyboard, so while making animations, maybe I can produce music whenever I can! One can only hope. That's all I got for now, I'll keep you guys posted! And remember, never teach a monkey to make a sandwich, the mess afterwards will be uncleanable!

I know that the animations I have so far have not been everyone's favorites, but I am still making animations and feel no need to give up on it! In fact, I am currently in the works of an even longer and hopefully better animation! So far it's writing that I've finished, and now just audio I'm working on. When I'm finished I can move on to animating! It's going to be a parody of story time animation, so you will all know what to look forward to.