Stephen M. Levinson's Blog

Ace & Aqua is currently a featured, Mytoons favorite on the Mytoons homepage! That’s pretty cool! Here’s the link to the Mytoons A&A page… will have a later post about voting.

SL

Well they just announced the winners of the Best In The SW Festival!!. Ace & Aqua took 1st place in the Best Of Show: High School and I’m especially proud of 3rd place in Best Animated short because my film was considered a professional entry for that place! I’m so excited!! Big thanks to everone for their (your) support and congratulations to all the other winners!

Best,
SL

THE FESTIVAL DEADLINE HAS BEEN EXTENDED! 2 MORE DAYS TO VOTE! PLEASE VOTE!! ALL HELP IS APPRECIATED GREATLY!
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Ace & Aqua is a finalist in the Best In The SW Festival!!!

I NEED YOUR HELP!
PLEASE, FOR THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS, VOTE FOR MY FILM! I NEED AS MUCH HELP AS POSSIBLE! VOTING ENDS THE 12TH OF SEPTEMBER!

Note: You must be logged in to vote. If you don’t have an account please create one here. It takes 10 seconds to do.

How do you vote for my film? ArrayCLICK HERE!!![/link]. On the right side there is a section and it says “Voting Booth”. Under “Favorite Animation” choose “Ace and Aqua”. Please I need everyone’s help! It would mean the world to me if you voted, and wish me luck!!!!

THANKS!
Steve

Ace & Aqua is a finalist in the Best In The SW Festival!!!

I NEED YOUR HELP!
PLEASE, FOR THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS, VOTE FOR MY FILM! I NEED AS MUCH HELP AS POSSIBLE! VOTING ENDS THE 10TH OF SEPTEMBER!

Note: You must be logged in to vote. If you don’t have an account please create on. It takes 10 seconds to do.

How do you vote for my film? ArrayCLICK HERE!!![/link]. On the right side there is a section and it says “Voting Booth”. Under “Favorite Animation” choose “Ace and Aqua”. Please I need everyone’s help! It would mean the world to me if you voted, and wish me luck!!!!

THANKS!
Steve

A young kid show idea of mine that was inspired by the designs of Wow Wow Wubbzy!

SL

Have you ever wish you could watch Ace & Aqua in HD at 961 x 540? Thanks to the engineers over at Stephen Studios Tech, the same studio that brought you hours and hours of endless auto-commenting software, it’s possible! Click here for HD experience!.Then enjoy. Then buy A&A merchandise from the store!

Best!
SL

Hello everyone! Been awhile since the last “My Step” post, and a couple people have been asking when the next step will be available. Well today’s that day!

So after I have the writing down the way I want it, I go into my rough storyboard phase. I draw sketches on little 2”x 3” sticky notes that you can get anywhere. The reason I do this stage is so that I can just put on paper what I imagine each part of the story to look like. I use Sticky notes because then I could easily mix and match different board frames, or remove and redo frames without having to erase the storyboard box. I think it’s very helpful and because you’re not as committed to each drawing, it’s easier to change little things without redoing an entire storyboard page.

After I look over my rough storyboards, I go into more detailed storyboards. The purpose of the second board is to get in more detail about how everything is going to look. The boards that i’ve decided are in the right order are put into regular storyboard paper. You will notice I only put 2 squares on each of my storyboard pages instead of 3. The reason?…No reason. I shouldn’t of wasted so much paper actually.

So now that I have my second pass at my boards, I turn it into an animatic. This will help me with the timing of my short, as well as to give me an idea of how long my short will be. It’s also helpful because if I don’t feel certain scenes flow very well in the story, I won’t animate it. It’s good to do this animatic and cut the animatics before animating. You could do the animating and then cut the film, but then you put in waisted time on animation you could of spent animating on scenes that will actually be in the film. Time is the biggest thing I needed to keep in mind when I created this film. I think strong deadlines really helped me get this film done.

You can watch the entire episode of A&A as the 1st animatic ( 2nd rough storyboards ) here!!! ( 44.2 MB quicktime. Please right-click and download to computer )

So after I make sure things look good to me, I cut the scenes. Remember, each time there is a camera change in the short, that’s a new scene. I divided each of my scenes into different FLA’s because I didn’t want flash slowing down. If I had every scene in my film in one fla, it would take hours to open, save and even function at all normally. Each scene as an FLA is a good thing to do! So I created many fla’s and over 100 to be exact.

After that I went into my “Animation-Animatic Rough”. This rough will be exactly what the animation will look like. I drew out all the keyframe positions will be. If you don’t know flash talk, keyframes in this case would be each position. For example, Ace’s hand being up then the next keyframe Ace’s hand would be down. I also timed it so that when I’m animating I already know how long actions should take. Again, this is a great step especially when you’re working in flash because knowing what each frames action is leading to, is smart. It’s not like you have no clue what the next action will be. I think working without blocking passes ( timed poses ) is not a smart way to work in flash.

You can watch the entire episode of A&A as the 2nd animatic ( Animation-Animatic Rough ) here!!! ( 25.9 MB quicktime. Please right-click and download to computer )

I actually created each of the Animation-Animatic Rough’s inside each scenes FLA. Then after I got it timed the way I’d like, I removed the first animatic layer. I will now be animating on top of the Animation-Animatic Rough. Animation…next step! Stay tooned!

My Step 1: Characters and idea.
My Step 2: Writing.

More soon… Stay tooned!
Best,
SL

PS. If these posts of mine are helpful, please tell me below. I don’t know if I’m just blogging stuff no one wants to hear…

Slacker Cats premieres tonight at 10/9 central on ABC Family! Be sure to check it out! I didn’t animate either of the episodes that will be on tonight, mine will air (hopefully if the show does well) around February. Be sure to watch Slacker Cats tonight! I’ve seen the first episode and it is pretty funny! Check it out! Tonight 10/9c!

-Steve

Oh man, did I have a good time!! I did so much in just a week and met people I’ve been in touch with for awhile. Living here on the east coast for me, sucks and because I feel separated from the people in the industry and the industry itself. California is the place to be! So anyways, my flights were great and I arrived there and back safely and this is what I did in a week.

MONDAY:
I went to Cartoon Network for a pitch. I met with Lisa Jones and pitched her Ace & Aqua. It was really great and it was my first time pitching in person. I was a little bit nervous but before I actually pitched to her I was relieved of a bit of my nervousness. I was waiting on the couch in the lobby, when all of a sudden MUKPUDDY walked in. They were chatting with Lisa and another guy I didn’t get the name of, but I walked up to them and it was awesome! We made plan’s to meet but I didn’t think I’d run into them at CN! What an awesome surprise! We had a good laugh!

After CN I ran over to Frederator to meet up with Eric Homan. Eric invited me, my brother and my mom to a tour. What do you know, MUKPUDDY was there too and then we toured around the studio! These guys are ALL OVER THE PLACE!! Towards the end of the tour I got to meet Jorge Gutierrez and Steve Lambe. I had a special surprise for the Muk’s though! I originally was going to give Mukpuddy a cameo in A&A but time became less and less and there wasn’t enough time for it. I DID draw them as characters though and gave each of them their picture. Little did I know the Muk’s had a present of their own! Their sketchbook! And how could I leave without having them signed? I couldn’t! You can see the sketchbook below! It’s really awesome by the way! The drawings are incredible and it’s really one awesome treat!

After the tour, I pitched to Eric and I wasn’t nervous this time. Eric gave great advice, was very critical but VERY helpful! His advice is definitely going to help me when I develop a new cartoon, idea, or *short film*.. I also gave Eric two soundtracks on CD to listen to for my action idea, that a great musician named Fletcher Beasley created for me. Eric also told me about the Nicktoons Animation Festival Party but it happened to be on the same night I was leaving to go back home. A quick call to the airline and I’m ready to party!

TUESDAY:

I went to Animax and I got to meet the people I’ve been in touch with over the computer. It was great meeting them and it was great checking out the studio! I also pitched them two of my ideas! Pitching is fun!

After Animax, I headed over to Fletcher Beasley. He’s an amazing musician and is also one hell of a guy! He created two scores for one of my ideas. It’s called Charlie: A Young Hero. He did a theme song for Charlie, the good guy and for the Evil army, the bad guys ( obviously ). You can listen to them below!
Charlie Theme
Crimson Army Theme
He showed me, my brother and my mom how he does his thing and it was really awesome. I’m very interested in how musicians like Fletcher create such great music! My brother is an aspiring musician and was really interested! He had a great time! I should of gotten a photo with Fletcher for the blog…Me and him will definitely be in-touch so I’m sure I’ll see him soon! After Fletcher’s me, my brother and my mom went over to Guitar Center. Boy was my brother giddy! He got to rock out in the store, he got to see the hand prints of his favorite rock stars and he got a shirt! That was a good day, and for all of us!

WEDNESDAY:

I got to visit Cal Arts! It was awesome checking out the place and I CANT WAIT to apply. Gotta keep my options opened though, but it was definitely awesome to see the college I would like to go to!

THURSDAY:
We had a free day. We decided to go to the WB Backlot Tour. We had seen it before and the second time it was pretty much the exact same thing. Nothing new, kinda boring. We should have gone to the Universal tour. Movies filmed at the WB place weren’t really interesting to me. I went to the Universal tour. once before, but I REALLY enjoyed it! Movies I really liked were filmed there. I guess you can check them out for yourselves and decide which one you like better. Next time I go to Cali i’ll check out the Universal one again!

FRIDAY:

What a great day! At 11am I had a meeting with Dave Thomas over at Animax. He is the President and Creative Director there. I was suppose to pitch with him in the room on tuesday, but friday did just fine. I showed him the Ace & Aqua video. He had already seen the pitchbook for that and my What A Prikk idea since I left it on tuesday. He is a great guy and said some really positive things. Not about my ideas, but about me as an artist/animator/creator. Dave and I are definitely going to keep in touch and there is a lot of work to be had between me and him and Animax.

After Animax we relaxed in the room for acouple of hours. The sun is really so tiring, I had no idea. I was exhausted after only a couple of hours! Gonna have to get use to that when I move to Cali!

Later at night the festival party was on! It was huge! Nor me, or my brother or my mom, realized Nick would throw such a HUGE party! It was really great and the screening thing they had was awesome! I think they got me and my brother on video a couple times and pictured here and there…wonder when it’s going to be put online! Such an awesome experience! I also got to meet people I’ve been in touch with online like Floyd Bishop, Aaron Simpson, ….Mukpuddy, I spoke with Pen and just had an overall good time. These guys are so great and meeting them in person was terrific! It’s a shame though that I don’t know what most of the people I’m in-touch with look like. I’m sure there were people there I would have loved to meet but don’t know what the look like. Probably people there I know but just didn’t see. Would have liked to meet more people but those who I did meet were great! I also got to meet a few new people and passed out my business cards here and there

Thats me and Floyd. I’m using his picture since my mom’s picture didn’t come out good lol

That’s me with the Muk’s!. We just had to have a photo together! It’s rare to see them out in the wilderness of the US and this opportunity doesn’t come around all the time. They’re on the other side of the world! Maybe one day a tele-porter will be invented to make it much easier for people to travel anywhere and at anytime, anywhere on the globe. These guys are really great. Talking to them individually was just awesome because over the computer it’s like they’re one person. You don’t know which one you’re talking to! Getting to know them as individuals rather than as Mukpuddy, was probably one of the best parts about meeting them!They’re great guys and we’re definitely going to stay in-touch! They’re one hell of a group!

SATURDAY:
I flew home in the morning and got home safely… Well that was my crazy awesome adventure.. See the things I do in just 1 week being in Cali than being in NY…tisk tisk lol. But hey, if NY is for you, cheers to that!

-Steve

My pitchbooks ( brochures ) from lulu.com came today and boy are they sweet! Lulu did an incredible job putting the pitchbooks together, they look great! I’m 100% ready to go on my pitch-a-palooza next week. I’ll be pitching to tons of different studios ( as you can see by the amount of pitchbooks I have ). If your studio is interested in a pitchbook or would like to know more about what these pitchbooks are before requesting a pitchbook, please email me. It will take a couple weeks to receive since I will have to order more, but it’s not a problem. Can’t wait! I will also take lots of pictures to the places I go! Stay tooned!

-Steve