And just like that…

…8 years later…the movie is 

DONE!

I’ve submitted “The Adventures of Baxter & Clyde” to about 20 film festivals for the 2023 season. In 2024, In accordance with festival rules, I will be allowed to share it with the public. See you hopefully at a festival near you in 2023.

~ John Michaud 

Animation!!!

See clips from "The Adventures of Baxter & Clyde" in progress, due to be completed by the end of 2014:

https://vimeo.com/johnmichaudanimation

Directing an animated actor.

I just finished about a week's work of reanimating Clyde the duck violently waking up to Percival yelling. I was underwhelmed by his first take. The first attempt wasn't dynamic enough, didn't convey the extreme reaction I was looking for. So I animated it again, and this time I had him stay up in the air and flap his wings through to the end of the shot. Lastly I add a camera shake. I liked it much better!

As I was was finishing up the in-betweens I happened to look at the first take, which I hadn't seen in a week. It's perfectly good. As a matter of fact, I love it. There was really no reason to redo it, except to add a camera shake.

I might be able to use some of the 2nd take in a later shot. But not much. Good thing I don't have a deadline.

Lesson: Walk away from it for a week next time.

Has it really been 3 years?

since I added anything to this blog? Whoa.

The storyboards haven't changed much since my last post. What I have been doing since then is designing characters, recording dialogue with Byron Wagner and Kate Michaud, learning ToonBoom Animate Pro software, making model sheets and a Clyde Sculpey maquette, animating Percival, Clyde and the multiplane camera, and incorporating background art from Rhonda Conley into the scenes.

And as of today 7/10/13 I have the first 2 minutes of the film rough-animated including minor dialogue, all layouts and camera movements finished. The multi-layered backgrounds by Rhonda for this first two minutes are 90% completed, and are beautiful.

I'll add some of preliminary drawings to the blog one of these days. Until then, enjoy the first 2 minutes of "The Adventures of Baxter & Clyde" Episode 1, in progress:

https://vimeo.com/69946203

- John

Storyboard - "Episodes Intro" 2nd draft

9/10/10

I rewrote the Intro, for 2 reasons: Since they grow up to be do-gooders it made better story sense to have Baxter do something chivalrous for Clyde when they meet, rather than merely applaud his amazing powers. Now Baxter sees a hungry cat ready to pounce on Clyde and he sacrifices his rattle by throwing it at the mailbox post (updated to mailbox 7/7/13) where it shatters and scares the cat away (I will show a "target" in his mind superimposed over the mailbox so there will be no mistaking that he is aiming for the mailbox, and not the cat. I love cats, even imaginary ones). I also thought that I had too much going on in the first draft (i.e. too many characters to animate!). The ending is still the same as before.

Storyboard - "Episode 1" 2nd draft

4/1/10

A more thought-out, fleshed out storyboard for the main story which I'm now calling "Episode 1" (to set it apart from the "Intro" which would run before every episode if this were a series).

Storyboard - "Intro" 1st draft

11/13/09

Clyde the Wonderduck (here called Flip) now has the ability to transform into helpful objects, which makes him an invaluable partner to Baxter (and Baxter can speak and has opposable thumbs so he's an invaluable partner to Clyde).  I also wrote this back-story to show how Baxter and Clyde met, why they are friends and where they live, which will precede the main story.