It came as a ring of energy. Blue fire with flames that licked hungrily back to it’s point of origin, instead of upward to the sky. The event was worldwide and the panic it created was as well. Mere seconds after the event an explosion occurred. It was so powerful that from 10 miles away it shook the very foundations of Denver Colorado. It was there, just minutes before, TV Reporter Jeffery Houser had received a strange and cryptic note. It read only “Get to 887 White Beach Lane. HURRY!”. Jeffrey and his cameraman, Jason Smithy, fly north to the blast site. As the helicopter approaches the scene takes them by surprise. They discover a large oval black scar cutting through a large neighborhood on the valley floor. The charred remains cover an area a mile wide. Where there had once been houses, streets and backyards with barbeques, now lay only brittle charred remains of earth and ash. As the pair descend they start to question their hold on reality, for in the center of the scar sits another circle contrasting its larger charred relative. The grass in this circle is lush and green. Part of the street and a driveway can also be seen. A fire hydrant and lamppost lay near its perimeter. But there is something more shocking that has their gaze fixed like a look of incredulity. It is a house, perfect and untouched, colorful and pristine, standing in the center of this circle. There is another detail that comes into view as they approach. This detail impacts Jeffrey in a way much differently from the others who are with him. It is the address on the mailbox outside this perfect little house…887 White Beach Lane.

This is the backdrop for Zero The Series.

Writing | No Comments »

Greetings fellow web-heads, bloggers or whatever cybernized term you wish to attach to yourself. My name is William B Strickland writer, animator and content provider. I have earned my mutant ability to snow-blind the unfortunate passersby “I’m very pale”, from 10 years of Web, Video and Animation development. Some of the projects and sites I have worked on are JabTV.com and the now defunct Hecklers.com as a writer and flash animator. And I am still writing with “5 Guys in a Garage” a comedy writing and animation group.

So what is zerotheseries.com? Well that is a larger question, Lets start with “What is Zero?”. “Zero” is a story, I have had running around in my head in pieces and parts for 5 years. After writing comedy for the last seven years, I am ready to explore a much more involved character driven type of writing. One that is at moments funny, to be sure. But also draws the viewer into these characters desperate world and keeps you guessing about them to the end.

zerotheseries.com, It is a production blog for Zero. When thinking about doing this story, I looked around for examples of people who have done the same thing. If your like me you have seen a lot of great animation on the web, but I didn’t see anything that told me how they did it. What was the writing process, how was the animation production done? What programs were used and what strengths and weaknesses did these programs have. So I have chosen to take this great blogging technology and use it to give others a leg up if they should choose to do animation production. It’s been my experience that the best way to do things and to get good at them is the teach them to others and discuss them as much as possible. We will focus more on the process and less on the creative. What I don’t want to do is have a situation, where someone tries to lay claim to my work, because they had a similar thought and posted it on the site. But in a endeavor like this one, you must talk about the creative to a certain extent. So I will, for the most part, talk about it in a very general manner.

This is the list of processes I think we will be following:

Writing the outline
Character development “Visual”
Writing the Script
Story boarding
Audio Work “both Voice and SFX”
Rough Animation
Final Animation

William B Strickland

El Presidenta speaks | No Comments »

In the telling of this story I wanted to accomplish some things in my writing.

1. I wanted to tell a story from a single location or room with flashbacks telling the back story as the characters were dealing with their situation in the here and now.
2. I wanted to tell a story of what might happen if a person was endowed with abilities “Super Powers” if you will. Set in a far more real world perspective than what I have seen done in the past. What prices would be paid by a person in that position.
3. I wanted a ensemble cast of characters between seven and ten to tell a rich story.
4. I wanted the story to be far darker and intense than what I have attempted in the past. And when you started with fart jokes let me tell you there is a wide array of dark you can go into.

Writing | No Comments »

I was over at a friends home the other day. He was just starting to do flash based animation and wanted to show me some things he was working on. While I was there he also showed me, a set of tutorial movies he had bought and really liked. Called Cartoonsmart I have to admit I was pretty impressed with what I saw. The tutorials were good and not so polished like a Lynda.com tutorial or as boring as a VTC tutorial. “VTC tutorials are informative, but require a pot of coffee to get through.” But I digress, the content that was there had many of the time saving tips that I have had to discover for myself over the years. So upon arriving home I checked out the other tutorial offerings on website. The tutorial I had seen at my friends had been on drawing in flash. But I found that the author had other series on Flash Animation and Flash Game Design. He also has web design and dreamweaver tutorials but these, at least to me, seemed out of place. Giving the strong animation slant of the site. I would recommend these for the beginner to intermediate flash animator.

Tutorials | No Comments »

If your job in the context of creating animated, is to write the script. Odds are you are very familiar with Final Draft or Movie Magic Screenwriter the two most well known applications for that job. But if your on a tight budget, these applications are out of your reach. What to do. Well do what I do turn to the world of open source software. Celtx is an freeware app that was made for you. It has all the basic formating features to produce your animation or movie script. The applications main features are Script Writing, Production Breakdown and a Web Services feature, so that you can collaborate with others over the internet.

If you look at the above screenshot you can see all the basic tools you’ll need to layout your script.

Production Apps, Writing | No Comments »