Episode 3 -
of my animated cartoon series Xylus and Dexter in Space!
Here is another episode of my animated cartoon Xylus and Dexter in Space!
Concept
In this Episode: The boys are still stranded on Mars. When they make an interesting discovery.
(Related post: Xylus and Dexter in Space! "What's that?" Episode 2 - Cartoon animation)
Art
I was still re-using a lot of the character art and backgrounds from the previous episodes. I would also create some new expressions and poses for the boys when I needed them. Doing this along the way adds even more re-usable drawings to the character library I have for the cartoon episodes.
 |
| Dexter with his arms crossed |
I also needed to create more backgrounds for this episode for the inside of the castle.
I used some pictures I had found as a reference for the castle interior from old monster movies on Google image search.
 |
| Castle interior |
I also had to create a new character Phineas Handela for the story. I had only drawn a few sketch ideas for him and wasn't sure what he would look like yet.
So for this episode of the story, I only used a silhouette.
 |
| Alien in the shadows |
Animation
I still feel like I'm being really restrained in my squash and stretch animation technique for this cartoon, so the scene where Xylus gets an idea seems really undramatic to me.
I re-drew the animation several times and the take I used still feels like it could have been bigger.
 |
| Xylus has an idea |
Audio
On top of doing the voice of the announcer, now I got to do the voice of the alien.
I did it in a higher evil-ish tone but it just sounded like I was talking funny. So after recording my parts I added a pitch shifter effect to it. It kinda makes me sound like the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz.
Next time: Watch episode 4 "Finder's creeper"
Check out the previous episode 2 "What's that?" here - https://www.tomrayswebsite.com/2021/11/xylus-and-dexter-in-space-whats-that.html