Lip-Sync

I have just now completed my Lip-sync flash: a collage of fruit bats singing the chorus of "Wow", by Kate Bush. I chose this seemingly arbitrary topic because it is a long-held belief of mine that Kate Bush herself is a fruit bat. The back cover of her vinyl album "Never For Ever" depicts her in several swooping (swoop, swoop; oh baby rock rock...) poses, pretending to be a fruit bat. She also did a dance routine in the same costume (wired black gauze wings and all!) for her song Violin (from the same album) on her 1979 BBC Christmas special. It's awesome when Kate Bush pretends to be things...like kites...and aliens...and soldiers...and FRUIT BATS!
I was inspired to make the collage of bats enjoying delicious fruit from an illustration from the children's book Stella Luna, about a baby fruit bat, in which Stella Luna tastes fruit for the first time and the delerious ecstasy on that little bat's face... The idea is that all the bats think their fruit is "WOWWOWWOWWOWWOWWOW UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!"
Yes. So. The actual animation was pretty simplistic; I created the bat photo collage in Fireworks before-hand, and made a separate .jpg of one of theirs' jaw, which I placed on another layer and frame-by frame 'd moving up and down with the sound, drawing in a little pink tongue when necessary. The sound was difficult to deal with, since it doesn't behave like a visual layer. It makes me nervous. Technology, up to its little tricks again... I personally think the premise is hilarious, being, like the PLESIOSAUR!!!! animation, an inside joke with myself. However, from the outside it probably is totally nonsensical and entertaining only in a random spam-type way, and I also did far less work than the project actually seemed to entail, by not making little mouth shapes for my batty friend. Not to mention I plagiarized 7 bat images from google and part of a song owned by EMI. What can I say? Cut-'n'-Paste is my very best fwend. And I can't draw. Still, I wouldn't change anything about it, really. I might elaborate on the whole "Kate-Bush-is-fruit-bat" premise at a later date, but the goal of this flash was simple, and I pretty much exhausted all options. I even made a button! Or, I made a symbol and Ms. Banks made a button.

The incredible, inevitable ball bounce.

I have completed my contribution to the great animating tradition of the Ball Bounce animation! My colorful little ball squashes, it stretches, it even has a shadow!
So, this project was actually pretty fun to do. It was simple, fast, easy, straight-forward. I couldn't screw it up! I enjoy frame-by-frame animation, as relentlessly time-consuming as it is, because simply, the more tweeny twicks I use the more glitchy it becomes. So, to be a success at animation projects, I will have to develop my drawing skills. Someday, with enough practice, they may become skillz, or perhaps even (dare I hope?) MAD drawing skillz!!!
Basically, I would change nothing about this project. I did it well, I think, and in a timely manner. Like I said, there's nothing I could screw up!