[DIY TV] Background Check

This is a post in an ongoing series where we share the process behind our show. Check out the other DIY posts here and here.

For the majority of my life, I disliked animation and was certain I would become an architect. One of the reasons I didn’t like animation was because I found the design of so much popular animation to be ugly. Although The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park are brilliantly written. I still have a difficult time watching them because of the design—particularly the garish and flat use of color. When designing Post-Nup, I was determined to make it more visually complex and so I drew on my interest in design and architecture that predated my interest in animation.

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[DIY TV] Four Pieces of Inspiration

This is a series of blog posts about the inspiration, business, and process of making our little show, Post-Nup. Our goal is to share experience and help anyone who wants to make a show (or really, anything).

If you’re an artist, consider yourself officially out of excuses.

The cost to produce your material, distribute it widely, and reach out to potential fans is no longer a real barrier. Sure, you can’t start with Avatar, but it’s easier than ever to make the little films that could eventually get you there.

But, that’s probably not what’s really stopping you (or me). What stops us is fear: that our work will be rejected, that it won’t be as good as what we’ve done before, that we were never good enough to do it in the first place, etc., etc., blah blah blah.

If you need some inspiration (or a sharp kick in the ass), here are 4 pieces (interviews, speeches, and books) that have inspired me (or kicked me in the ass, sharply).

1. Ira Glass on the Taste Gap
Ira Glass is the creator and host of the radio show This American Life. In an interview with CurrentTV, he tells us that the only way to bridge the gap between the stuff you like (your taste) and what you are capable of (your skill) is to work really hard, for a really long time (inspired yet?). I really appreciated the end of this segment, where he actually plays some of his earlier radio work, which as he says, is actually kinda crappy.

You can watch the full interview on storytelling ...Read More 

The DIY TV Series: Character Design

Many of you know that PostNup is written, illustrated, animated, performed, published, and marketed by two people working out of a small office in Berkeley, CA. With the exception of audio editing/processing, we do everything.

Our goal is to create a wildly successful animated show on a tiny budget.  We’re making do-it-yourself television, and we’re learning as we go.

This is the first of many posts where we share our process with you.  Our hope is that other people who are thinking of making something like Post-Nup will benefit from hearing about our experience.   We also hope that our fans find our daily trial-and-error interesting!

In today’s post, Katharine will share the evolution of our character design.

Realistic Beginnings

My illustration background is rooted in realistic drawings, not cartoons.  This is why Gaby and Omar started out looking very realistic.  I wanted to capture their personalities and expression first; I figured we’d make them cartoony later.

Both Sandeep and I had a fairly clear vision of Omar from the very beginning of this process, which is why he actually started fairly close to his final design.  Gaby was a different story entirely; we were totally lost with her!

Getting Cartoony

The next step was to make the characters more cartoony.  I had some fun with this and tried making them look like birds (don’t ask me why) or like characters out of the film Coraline (particularly the woman with the cat on the top left). ...Read More