This week 22 – 28 September I mainly played Wasteland 2. Racked up 28 hours of traipsing through the Arizona wasteland, even. That’s 28 hours in the past week I haven’t spent working on gags and music for A moment in the sun until the usual 8 hours of stuff today.

Every so often I let myself get stuck into a game for a little bit. (Kerbal Space Program was July’s week-long indulgence.) But Wasteland 2.. I don’t know.. it’s seriously good. Too good.

It goes without saying that long-form video games are shockingly bad for creativity. Perfectly good time and energy can be poured into them pretty carelessly.

Today’s job was to do some temp music and get Gronky to convincingly cross the screen in less than 48 frames using roughly the same framing as the final toon. This meant having another go at Gronky’s walk cycle. I haven’t managed to get the big bounding run I want yet but I did get a nifty walk which you can see above, assuming Tumblr isn’t being an arse and breaking animated GIFs like it sometimes does.

To get to the point where I could render that walk.. well.. there’s more videos coming where I start to animate, notice a glitch in the rig, fix it, go back to animating and notice another glitch in the rig.. and so on. Eventually I fix the rig enough that I can just get on and animate that tilty stompy walk. 🙂

Despite my resentful nostalgia at the thought of narrating yet more screencasts, I recorded most of it anyway (here’s this week’s catch-up point in the playlist):

• I started animating, noticed that Gronky’s head was flipping upside-down, so it was time for Rigging Gronky 43
• Time to take Gronky for a walk: Animating Gronky, part 2; part 3; part 4
• In the fourth animation video, Gronky’s rig started playing sillybuggers again and growing spines; time for Rigging Gronky 44
• With all that out of the way, time to do some more animation! Animating Gronky, part 5 and part 6
• Gronky’s face explodes in part 6 so it’s time for more rigging: Rigging Gronky, part 45

Elsewise I’ve been doing my homework about cartoon music and procrastinating about coming up with a first round of ideas for the gag storm – that part of the short where the set-up has been established and the silliness is well underway when things kick into high octane silly before the grand finale. I’ve got my finale, I’ve got my set-up, I’ve got… one gag. Just have to write some more. Then throw them away and write funnier ones. Then throw the funnier ones away and write even funnier ones.

I really don’t have time to play computer games then. Not even good ones.