(cache)We Built This City

We Built This City

(08/01/1985)

“We Built This City” was a rock song written by Starship in 1985, written by Bernie Taupin, Martin Page, Dennis Lambert, and Peter Wolf, and sung by Mickey Thomas and Grace Slick. My first introduction to the song was in “The Muppets” film from 2011. I rewatched the film a while ago and the song got stuck in my head, it was just too darn catchy. I listened to it frequently while I went for walks during the summer. I loved the song, and I was surprised to read that it was considered one of the worst songs in history. This song? The worst?! Ha! No, no, no, no, no, this was something that I could animate something to, and somewhere around September 2023, I thought of doing just that.

The jukebox

(10/20/2023)

Back on August 3rd, I decided to write down a list of a bunch of my favorite songs and some well-known songs from the past 100 years (1924-2023), one from each year (“Goodbye My Coney Island Baby” from 1924, to “Like Crazy” from 2023). And being the OCD-LMNOP person that I am, I also wanted there to be at least one song that started with each letter of the alphabet, and since there were no songs that started with “Q”, “U”, “V”, “X”, or “Z”, I grabbed “Quarantine”, “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)”, “Va Va Voom”, “Xscape”, and “Zanzibar”. I randomized the list, and had the jukebox screen scroll down through the names until it landed on “We Built This City”. I also included the name of the band that wrote the song, “Starship”.

The Ducks

(10/20/2023 - 10/21/2023)

First, I have to say, from 07/01/2023 to 10/07/2023, I redesigned the 320 toons and their cartoonist Sylvester, and I also had to change a lot of their names for various reasons. I made Sylvester’s duck toons, Jacky, Zacky, Macky, and Wacky, bellhops. I came up with the idea in the shower one day. I needed a group to sing the opening lines, so I chose them, because I wanted to reveal Wacky as the jukebox. This, plus the jukebox scrolling part, were actually the only parts that I storyboarded beforehand. I also made a sign for the city, and put down “19XX” as its establishment year. Since time is always moving forward, and I don’t know when this show will officially come out, it’s going to be hard to properly establish when the timeline will take place.

The ANIMATED LIFE FORM Printers

(10/22/2023)

I introduced the concept of the Animated Life Form Printer back in an old 2019 animation that I made to show how toons were created. I wanted to show that there was more than just one cartoonist in the city. I came up with over 100 new cartoonists with toons of their own from 2019 to 2022, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to showcase most of them. I also wanted to show how Sylvester was different compared to the rest of the cartoonists. He’s always struggling, has trouble being patient, has an atrocious temper, yet has so many toons that it takes up 53% of the toon population, which is shown when they all pop out of the overloaded printer.

Timmy and Tanya

(10/23/2023)

I wanted to give Timmy and Tanya more focus than everyone else in this video, since this show is mainly about them. I also had them rolled up into balls and bounce around everywhere because one, it’s easier compared to animating walk cycles, and two, it’s a concept that I always had on my mind, but barely ever went through with. Timmy causes chaos wherever he goes and is a proud prankster and troublemaker. I wanted to animate something for “Say you don’t know me, or recognize my face”, so I animated him with question mark for a head. He’s the kind of toon that is a big fan of visual gags. Tanya is a belly dancer and proud of it. She’s been one ever since I made her ten years ago. It took a while to refine that aspect of her since I didn’t really do a good job at it before. I actually had to do a lot of research on the dance, the origins, specific moves, etc. over . (Did you know there’s a whole page about it on Quizlet?) I also gave her zills (tiny cymbals that belly dancers wear on their fingers), I thought they would be fun to work with.

The Hoopla

(10/25/2023)

JoJo, the toon with the highest IQ, is a toon that I plan to work with much more. She’s actually more than just a scientist, I have big plans with her for later on. For this shot, I had her press a button to light up LED letters on the wall that spelled out “hoopla”, and had her stand along fellow scientists, Dr. Xavier Scarletbird, and Dr. Newton Spotneck. This was also my first time having Spotneck’s neck uncurved, he’s 16 feet tall (which is actually a normal height for a male giraffe). For “sinking in your fight”, all I could think about were my StickFigure toons, since fighting is very common between two of them (Henry and Tommy).

Moon Pie

(10/27/2023)

Since production for this video was going slower than I expected and I gave myself a deadline to finish it (12/11/2023), the toons’ running cycles were a rushed job. I chose 26 toons to run out of the house, each one having a name that starts with each letter of the alphabet. Again, I’m an OCD-LMNOP person. I chose Wacky for “W”, because I wanted him to stretch out to the window, take a bite out of the sun and turn it into the moon for the “eating up the night” part of the song. I also included Sylvester in this scene to show how he is barely able to handle so many creations, and that there’s never a day that goes by where he isn’t surprised by what his toons do. Wacky eating the sun is a prime example.

Marconi Plays The Mamba

(10/28/2023)

“Marconi plays the mamba”. Nobody understands this line, but I wanted to have a moment where Timmy just shows a picture of Guglielmo Marconi and the mamba snake. My dad actually told me that Marconi was one of the inventors of the radio, so that part of the song made a little more sense to me. Stanley, however, is just wondering “Who’s Marconi and how does he play the mamba? Isn’t the mamba a snake?” The question marks floating over his head was a last minute addition when I was working on the scene, and I also added them to show how confused he is at a lot of things. I also wanted to have Professor Qwertyson enter the scene with his “radio-hat”, one of his failed inventions which short-circuits and electrocutes him. This was to show that while he is a genius, not all of his inventions work or go as planned.

The Lawn March

(10/28/2023 - 10/29/2023)

This was a scene that I wanted to animate and could not get out of my head. This was mainly inspired by The Detention Dance from “The Breakfast Club”. Also wanted to use this opportunity to show the redesigns of some familiar toons, Roy, Chicken Wizard, Roland RG-402 Space Gecko, Mr. Incredibone, Donald Trumpet, and Anne Mermaid (in her fish tank, I gave it wheels so she’d be able to get around), and some obscure toons that I never used much (Ernest Cyborg-9 and Iggy Popart). After I animated those eight toons, I decided to include Tanya in the front, dancing and enjoying herself as always. I tried to go for a “shoulder shimmy” thing with her, which was not easy. I also threw in Hardhat McGee at the end with his trusty hammer and a grin, ready to help build the city. Construction is his life.

Magic Penny

(10/29/2023)

For this shot, I put in my rock music toons, Otis Cometrock (1950’s rock and roll), and Elmer Metalthrash (1980’s thrash metal), for “we built this city on rock and roll”, and I decided to have Penny appear right between them. Five years ago, I realized that Penny being Victor’s girlfriend was all that she ever really was, and I wanted to give her something more, so I made magic her thing, and I decided to show that by having her use her magic wand to magically turn the moon back into the sun.

The Evolution Of Toon Lake City

(11/01/2023 - 11/02/2023)

Back when I worked on my old shorts in the 2010’s, before I decided to reboot, retool, and rework the whole story completely and start fresh, the main house was basically the only location that I ever used, mainly because I was reluctant to make new characters outside of the house, and branch out to the rest of Toon Lake City, which was horrendously underdeveloped in the last decade. Boy, what an idiot I was. Expanding the city and making new people and new cartoonists with toons of their own was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I spent the past three years working on world-building, and it has been so much fun. I wanted to express how the city and its population grew by showing buildings rising up, some new toons flying around, Hardhat McGee working with the toons made by the construction family to show that the toons from the house are good friends with others outside of the house, and showcasing some new large toons walking around, plus a blimp I designed three years ago. I also included another shot of Animated Life Form Printers for the last “rock and roll” part of the verse, with a young cartoonist and his rock turtle toon, and an old cartoonist and his wheeled owl toon rolling off.

The brady Bunch Reference

(11/03/2023)

I wasn’t even thinking about doing a Brady Bunch reference when I started working on this video, but then one thing led to another and it happened. I made this scene to show Sylvester realizing that he is not the only artist around, and that he is completely overwhelmed by the amount of other cartoonists in the city, hence him fainting. Timmy and Tanya, however, who are still new to the world, are excited to see these potential friends and allies, and bounce out of their rectangle to meet the rest of the population. This shot took about a day. I loved working with these new city incidentals so much and animating them all for the first time.

The Boardroom

(11/04/2023)

This part wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for my dad. I told him that I was planning to make a music video to this song, which was stuck in both of our heads (more my head than his), and he said that I should have a boardroom setting for “corporation games” with a stock graph being flipped to trick the employees into thinking sales are tanking, and a fight breaking out between all the employees with one employee getting thrown out of the window. I did it a little differently. I had Tanya display the graph (she’s more than just a dancer, she’s also a successful businesswoman, she’s actually a lot of things), and I also wanted to show how much of a conniving troublemaker Timmy is, so I had him bounce in and flip the graph to trick the workers, who fall for it, panic, and run out of the room. One of them jumping through the glass window was actually inspired by the hysterical man from The Simpsons episode “The PTA Disbands”, who jumps through a glass window after thinking that the PTA has disbanded. Timmy finds the whole thing laughable, while Tanya gives him an angry look, and Timmy gives off the “What? It was just a prank!” expression. My dad loved this part when I showed it to him.

Mug O’ Joe or Mug O’ Moe?

(11/04/2023)

I hate admitting this, but Moe and Joe were toons that I sometimes keep forgetting even existed because of how rarely I used them, but I found the perfect moment for the conjoined two. For the “Who cares? They’re always changing corporation names” part, I wanted to have a part where part of a building name was changed, like an IHOP/IHOB kind of thing. It was hard trying to think up a building to change the name of, but I eventually decided to do a coffee shop, title it “Mug O’ Joe”, (since “Cup O’ Joe” was taken by dozens of other coffee shops), and have Moe and Joe appear on the roof with Joe approving of the name, while Moe disapproves and kicks the “J” clean off the sign, and replaces it with an “M” (that he carried around with him for some reason), much to Joe’s distaste. The letters for the sign were actually letters that I designed a while before this.

hieroglyphs

(11/05/2023)

For “We just want to dance here”, I had Tanya belly dance in an Egyptian pyramid setting with lit torches on the walls, since it’s 100% her aesthetic. I tried to have her doing a belly roll followed by hip circles with shoulder shimmies again. She’s also a huge fan of Egyptian culture, and is very fluent in hieroglyphs, so I decided to include hieroglyphs spelling out the lyrics above her. I had to do some research on hieroglyphs myself, and it was actually pretty interesting, again, OCD-LMNOP, but I had to redo the scene a few times because I was unsure about which hieroglyphs to use, because I kept getting confused with the symbols for the letters “A”, “E”, “H”, “U”, and “W”. I think I have more studying to do for that, to be completely honest. “Rosetta Stone” was the font used for the hieroglyphs. For the “Someone stole the stage” line, I had the walls and the floor completely vanish into thin air, and had Tanya look at the camera and give a pathetic wave goodbye before she fell. I loved gags like that whenever I watched Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry.

/ˌi(r)rəˈspänsəb(ə)l/

(11/05/2023)

This scene came out differently than I had planned to make it. The scene from The Simpsons episode “Homer Defined” kept coming to mind. It was originally going to have Timmy juggling dynamite in a black and white picture under the word “irresponsible” in the dictionary, with the page getting torn out of the book right before the dynamite blows up, but I am terrible at animating juggling, so I had him balance himself on a bomb while balancing three sticks of dynamite. If there’s anything that Timmy loves, it’s explosives. I also included Sylvester in the scene to express his disapproval, and had Timmy bounce away, leaving Sylvester with the dynamite, barely giving him any time to react before it exploded. I also had to look up and write down a bunch of synonyms and similar words for “irresponsible”, as well as the pronunciation of the word, (/ˌi(r)rəˈspänsəb(ə)l/).

Cyberspace

(11/06/2023 - 11/09/2023)

The background for the cyberspace setting was actually generated with AI. I was experimenting with Bing’s AI image generator for a while before I started working on this video. I generated the image for the background, and it was just laying around in my camera roll, so I decided to use it and turn it green for the shot. I thought it would be fitting, since it takes place in cyberspace. The numbers are the digits of pi, of course. And I finally got to animate a moment with Victor, my computer virus toon. He’s the 318th toon that Sylvester created, so I had his file name be “Toon_318”, and I did the same with the rest of the toons and their numbers. I made the still images of the toons into “jpg”s, and the toons that were animated (Victor, Penny, and Station Dragon) into “gif”s. I had Station Dragon appear in the “Toon_107” window with a radio for the “listen to the radio” part, since he’s a radio DJ and toon talk show host, and I had an arrow drag his window off-screen to reveal Penny in the “Toon_315” window. Lovers, soulmates, significant others, what else is there to say? Victor and Penny are very much in love with each other. I missed animating these two lovebirds so much. Happy to see each other, they dance, and Penny merges their windows as she jumps over to Victor, fully prepared to kiss him. However, as much as they are a couple, I wanted to remind the viewers that Victor is a computer virus, so I had him sneeze adware pop-ups all over the screen right when Penny was about to kiss him. I actually used the Procreate app to distort the background with the adware pop-ups. It worked wonders. I wish I had known about it before. I also wanted to include more JoJo, so I had her ride in on a computer window to delete all of the adware, I actually had to look up an image of a Windows 8 adware removal window for reference. The “j” stands for “JoJo” because why not? She pushes the [OK] button to remove the adware, but everything disappears, including herself in a “Toon_317” window. And yes, Stanley is the 316th toon for those wondering.

Mount Quackmore and The Sidewalk March

(11/10/2023)

Desperate to come up with another moment for the ducks to sing “We built this city”, Mount Rushmore just randomly came to mind, so I just went with that, and I decided to have some onlookers, including the mayor, watch as the monument rose up. Jacky, Zacky, and Macky look at Wacky because they know he’s responsible for turning them into a mountain, they just can’t figure out how. You can tell that the mayor isn’t upset in the slightest, she’s one of the biggest toon advocates in the city, that’s how she became mayor to begin with. The man next to her, the governor, is also a toon advocate, but is not as used to such unexpected toon behavior as she is. One quirky cartoonist even gives the ducks a thumbs up for the display, while his two-bodied toon looks at him confused. For the next shot, I had Timmy and Tanya bounce into the scene alongside some humans that I designed from 2020-2022 marching down the sidewalk. I wanted to show that not every human in the city is a cartoonist. Most of them are just new human friends and allies that they meet throughout the show. Only one of the people in that shot is a cartoonist. I also wanted to show the four employees from the earlier shot, mainly to show that the one that jumped out the window wasn’t dead. I’m not the “killing characters off” kinda guy right now.

Chompy, The Basic Elements, and The Metalthrash

(11/11/2023)

Chompy is Sylvester’s biggest toon, and the biggest toon in the whole town, so I had to include him somewhere, he’s a big guy, you can’t possibly miss him. I also included some more incidental toons flying around, a Chinese sparkler-horned dragon, and an 8-ball fortune teller type bird. I also included Sylvester’s basic element toons in a transition, Earth Andrews, Air Danes, Water Monica, and Fire Lansky, who I only used for my old movie I made back in 2017 after creating them in December 2016. I also brought back my 1980’s thrash metal toon Elmer Metalthrash to perform the guitar solo part of the song with his axe, along with some more familiar toon redesigns surrounding him, such as Rufus, Plaidypus, and Austin Alligator. A challenge was animating Elmer smashing his axe repeatedly like a madman. Don’t worry, he has more guitars, thousands actually. Sometimes he just smashes them for no reason. He’s that kind of toon. I also had to tweak the design for the outside of the house for this shot.

SundAY/ae

(11/12/2023 - 11/13/2023)

I love calendars, so I thought I’d include one for “It’s just another Sunday”, and have Timmy open one of the Sunday squares like a door with an ice cream sundae in his hand. Sunday. Sundae. Wordplay. Ha. Also included Stanley in the scene for Timmy to toss the sundae to. I really wanted to include more Stanley in the video, and show that he loves food more than anything. He has five stomachs (one man stomach and four camel stomachs), so he eats a lot.

The street

(11/13/2023 - 11/16/2023)

This was a tough shot to do because I had to animate eighteen toons for this shot. I had Stanley, Officers McBovine, Cyrus, and AJ, and fourteen sleeping toon incidentals from the city in the middle of the road. For the first half of animating the incidentals, I had to animate them breathing in and out to show that they were sleeping, and also added the classic “ZZZ”s above some of their heads. I also took this opportunity to show the officers of the Toon Lake Police Force. I designed two of these officers in 2020, one in 2021, and the remaining four in 2022, I was experimenting with head shapes in 2022, so that’s why some look more different than others. I still have more touching up to do for designs, humans especially. The real challenge was animating the eighteen toons dancing. I had to animate them all in a separate document and add the layers into the scene. The first time I tried it, it crashed, so I had to start over, and I reused Stanley’s dancing animation from the first “Marconi plays the mamba” scene. I also included a reference to “Peanuts” with my Christmas incidental dancing. He’s the first thing that I animated on twos for this video, because I usually animate on ones. I included the pelican drum incidental for “we just lost the beat”. I also included Tanya belly dancing yet again for the transition into the next scene, but this time, she’s blending her dance with Michael Jackson’s moonwalk. She likes to be creative and experiment with the dance by blending it with other types. I actually had to look at several GIFs of Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk for reference. It’s easier to animate than it is to do, for me at least.

Accountant Victor and The Soda Bar

(11/17/2023)

For “Who counts the money”, I wanted to have another Victor moment with him and a Lemon laptop. It’s like an Apple laptop, but with a lemon wedge design instead. As much as Victor would be a great accountant calculating the town’s funding and whatnot, his glitchy virus self being around technology would only cause major problems. I also included a cartoonist literally counting coins on the table. If you don’t get the reference, you’ll figure it out later. I also tweaked and reused the $5 bill design that I made for a mixed media segment for Tornada’s “Eric” cartoon back in August 2023, with the Abraham Lincoln design that I made in January 2021. I also took this opportunity to design the town’s soda bar and animate the patrons. I didn’t wanna have a bar with alcohol, alcohol’s gross. Soda is where it’s at! That’s why I included a big neon sign that says “SODA BAR”. I also included a Japanese cartoonist with her anime toon. This was actually my first time animating anything anime-style, which is another something I need to practice more on, I had to keep looking at anime GIFs and also going back to animes that I’ve watched in the past for reference for her expressions and her thumbs-up, such as Kill la Kill, Sgt. Frog, and even Kappa Mikey, which wasn’t really an anime, it was more of a parody of anime, but it was fun to watch that again too after such a long time. Peni Parker was also an inspiration. I mainly animated this incidental toon on threes, except for her ears twitching, I animated that on twos to keep up with the beat of the song. But this scene was mainly to show more of Penny doing magic and duplicating the lone can of soda on the bar, and to remind everyone that while Victor and Penny are still very much in love, they both have lives and hobbies outside of each other.

The Wrecking Ball and The Guitars

(11/18/2023)

I was originally going to have Hardhat McGee operating a crane for this shot while Timmy rode on its wrecking ball about to hit a building, but it failed because I was having trouble with the chain, but I was able to include the crane in a later shot. I loved showing how much of a destructive troublemaker Timmy really is. He loves wrecking balls, but not as much as dynamite. As for the following shot, I needed some guitar-based and guitar playing toons. I reused Elmer’s animation, and also the punk rock duck incidental from one of the earlier shots. For Otis Cometrock, I based his guitar on Elvis’s. I also included Tanya and designed a red guitar with her name spelled out in hieroglyphs for her. I actually had to remove the zills from her fingers for this scene, because I don’t think anyone can play the guitar with zills on their fingers.

Superheroes and Pirates

(11/19/2023)

I haven’t had Sylvester in the video for a fat minute, well, a fat minute and seven seconds since the explosion back in the “irresponsible” scene, so I just had him randomly fall with Mr. Incredibone catching him for “Don’t tell us you need us”, and I had Mr. Incredibone give off the “No need to thank me.” expression. I’ve been itching to have a moment with him because I haven’t used him for a while, aside from the lawn march shot. I have a lot planned for him. One character that I have been dying to have a moment for in this animation was Captain McMallard, because I love pirates. Leonard Rhino, Spencer Aardvark, and Jaffee Jackal were three of the 320 toons I had that I didn’t know what to do with aside from crowd shots, so I adapted them into pirates for McMallard’s crew years ago, and Stanley’s there because I plan to make an episode with him on his crew one day. I had to redesign McMallard’s ship again, the S.S. McMallard, and have it sailing down the road with onlookers, the 320 toons from the house in the front, and the incidental city cartoonists and toons in the back. The young cartoonist with his seven-headed hydra toon(s) was a last minute addition to the crowd of onlookers.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

(11/20/2023)

Another thing that I’m excited about working with more is JoJo with the new chemical element based toons that I made back in 2022 after getting Tom Lehrer’s element song stuck in my head again. Since the line is “Looking for America”, I had JoJo, with her trusty pencil and clipboard, study Americium, whose element was obviously named after America. I grabbed the list of element facts (electron configuration, relative atomic mass, etc.) from “The Royal Society of Chemistry” website, because I did not know anything about americium aside from the fact that it’s used in smoke detectors, which is why Americium has one on his chest. I also had him do his salute in the name of America. Another inspiration for him was Sam Eagle from The Muppets, they would definitely get along great. I also animated the waving flag background for this shot, and on twos. Putting the stars on the waving flag was a real challenge. I was considering getting stock footage for the flag background, but I really did not feel like doing so. I’m actually really glad that I animated the flag because I got to reuse it for “coming through your schools”, when twenty-three students dart out of the classroom right when the final bell rings at 3:00 p.m. and carry Americium off, and the twenty-fourth and last student, Charlie, being the show-off that he is, holds up the American flag to stand out from the crowd. I also included his toon, Pip, standing on his head. He carries him everywhere. Charlie and Pip were characters that I came up with back in September 2019, and they were the first new cartoonist and toon duo that I made for the city. Their names got leaked years ago, so I might as well say their names.

Gorgeous Sunny Saturday

(11/21/2023)

When I heard the voice in this part of the song, I immediately thought “News Anchor, I need to have News Anchor for this shot, he would be perfect for this shot, commenting on the weather and the traffic and whatnot”. I decided to have him comment on the Golden Gate Bridge, which was in Toon Lake City instead of San Francisco for some weird reason, but then have Chicken Wizard, who I have also rarely used, turn it into an ACTUAL golden bridge with magic. I plan to have Chicken Wizard be Penny’s mentor. I also brought back the calendar for this part, inverted the colors, and had the sun-horse incidental toon come out of one of the Saturday squares and wave for “on another gorgeous sunny Saturday”. “But wait! I thought it was ‘just another Sunday’! How did it become Saturday all of a sudden?” Maybe everything that happened since Sunday (the toons dancing in the road, the guitar show, the pirates, etc.) all happened within the span of a week? That’s my take on it anyways. For “bumper to bumper traffic”, I had Timmy and Tanya in bumper cars, with their toon numbers on them, Tanya being the 319th toon with the hieroglyph designs on the red bumper car, and Timmy being the 320th toon with the explosive designs on the blue bumper car. I also had some wheeled toons for the traffic, such as Mortimer Wheels, Ichabod Train, and other incidentals from the town, and I also finally included Hardhat McGee and his crane. I drew it, I wanted to put it somewhere, so I did, even if it was brief.

The Chemical Elements

(11/22/2023)

I know I had JoJo in a scene six seconds earlier, but I wanted to have more of her. She’s over here dancing like a total dork in the middle of the road (dancing is Tanya’s area, science is JoJo’s area), and you can tell that she has absolutely no idea what she’s doing and she thinks she’s embarrassing herself, but everyone around her enjoys her dancing. I reused Mendelevium and Samarium’s dance cycles from earlier shots, and made new ones for others such as Krypton and Zinc, and also had Indium drive into the shot (since he was in the previous one), it was a last minute addition. I also included all of their cartoonists in the crowd shot. The 118 chemical element toons have ten cartoonists, one for each chemical element classification (noble gases, metalloids, halogens, etc.) I also included Sylvester’s four basic element toons again, and his scientists Scarletbird, Spotneck, and Qwertyson, and another incidental cartoonist and toon duo from the town.

Sketchwave Toon Tunes

(11/23/2023)

For this bit, I had to make five quick shots. I needed to come up with a radio station name, so I came up with “Sketchwave Toon Tunes”, and had News Anchor speak again with radio DJ Station Dragon by his side. I had to design the outside of the radio station with some buildings and other toons surrounding it for the next shot, along with the blimp yet again. Then I had to design a bay, with some aquatic sea toons around, with Anne Mermaid sitting on a rock in the bay. I gave Anne a rainbow tail when I redesigned her this year, I thought it’d be cute. Then I did a shot with Otis Cometrock and his Elvis-inspired guitar again. It was at this point where you can tell that I was desperate to come up with shots on the spot, because I just had a moving red background with guitar shapes. The last shot for “the city that never sleeps” was actually from concept art that I did three years ago for Toon Lake City at nighttime with all of the buildings’ lights on. That’s actually when I first made the blimp as well. Another note, synchronizing News Anchor’s mouth with that fast DJ voice (Les Garland) was absolute madness because of how fast the guy talks. Like, dude, slow the heck down.

The Challenging Crowd Shot

(11/24/2023 - 11/26/2023)

Of all the shots in this video, this was the hardest to do. Animating Timmy and Tanya was a cinch compared to the rest of them, animating those two only took a few hours. Animating everyone else was the biggest challenge of all, and for the part where all of the toons turn to the camera, bob their heads, and sing “Don’t you remember, we built this city”, I started working on the shot at 11:30 a.m. on 11/25, and I didn’t finish until 5:30 a.m. on 11/26. It would’ve taken less time if I hadn’t had everyone sing, I had to make new mouth charts for all of them (except for 7, 8, and 9, I reused their mouths from my “One Singular Sensation” animation). That whole experience left me tired and my eyes extremely sore from staring at a screen for 18 hours, but I was able to finish the next part that night by having the hydra incidental(s) add the city name to the hill, a reference to the Hollywood sign. You can tell that the head that burped out the word “CITY” is “the hungry one” of the group.

The Slot Machine and Familiar Faces

(11/27/2023)

All that could come to mind for the next shot was a slot machine, so I did just that, and included some familiar faces for the slots as blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shots. And of course, Wacky was the machine. I also had quick shots with The StickFigures (mainly to show they weren’t fighting anymore), The Morningcrows (formerly known as The Rooster Twins), Roland RG-402 Space Gecko, and Donald Trumpet. I used GarageBand for the trumpet sound effects. The western saloon-themed background used for The Morningcrows’ shot was actually a recycled background of the 34th floor from an old document containing concept art of the original 100 floors of the main house that I made back in Summer 2018. I plan to redo them all one day.

Back to 2002

(11/28/2023 - 11/29/2023)

The cartoonist that was counting the coins on the table earlier is the creator of the organ/choir incidentals. This cartoonist and his toons are a reference to Count von Count and his singing pipe organ from Sesame Street’s “Number of the Day” segment from 2002. I loved that segment way too much to not reference it. I used JeuxdorgMini for the organ sound effects. This scene is also a callback to my “One Singular Sensation” short, which also had audio from Sesame Street. The whole time I have been working on this video, I have been itching to make this shot, and I had Tanya bounce to the top and belt out the high note by Grace Slick, one of the lead singers of the song.

Mickey Timmas

(11/29/2023)

I decided to have Timmy dressed up as Mickey Thomas, the other lead singer of the song, hairstyle and everything. Had to look up images of him for reference. Also, another explosion followed by lights spelling out “ROCK & ROLL” as the explosion lover rolls off. I honestly really love animating the tigers bouncing and rolling around. This is also the fourth time I reused the puff of smoke animation for this video (the first three uses were for Penny appearing on the lawn, the pyramid tile Tanya was standing on disappearing, and the soda cans duplicating).

The Toon Lake City Group Photo

(11/30/2023 - 12/01/2023)

This shot took two days. The first day I worked on this shot, I had to get 87% of the characters that I had designed for the city from my size comparison charts and put them all in a giant group photo. It took a whole day because the program kept crashing because I had 836 characters in the shot and the program could barely handle it. I also had to make sure that I didn’t include any characters that were too much of a spoiler risk for the series, this includes the antagonists of the show and characters that debut in the second season. I also had Sylvester walk into the shot before the picture was taken, because he is just absolutely exhausted from all of the chaos that he was experiencing throughout the whole video, but then he sees the camera and immediately stands up straight and smiles. If there’s anything he does not like, it’s looking stupid in a photo. Then I had to make a postcard design for the back of the group photo, and grab various backgrounds from the video for the letters. Then I had the scene zoom out from Wacky’s eyeball just like how the beginning zoomed into it.

Going Home

(12/02/2023 - 12/05/2023)

This is the part where everyone goes home. I wanted to have the townspeople and all the cartoonists and their toons go west, and Sylvester and his 320 toons go east to their house. I also had Wacky just randomly floating in the air because, well, he’s Wacky. Charlie and Pip was a last minute addition to the first crowd shot. For the second crowd shot, I wanted to include Sylvester’s conjoined barbershop quartet, Ed, Ted, Ned, and Fred, and have them sing, as well as more singing from the choir incidentals. Another last minute edit was having the even-numbered (female) choir members sing Grace Slick’s vocals for this part of the song. For the last shot, I had Stanley, JoJo, Penny, Victor, and Tanya enter the house, alongside some others. Plus, I kinda felt bad that Penny didn’t get to kiss Victor earlier due to his adware sneeze, so I made up for it at the end by having her give Victor her classic kiss attack, with Victor welcoming it with open arms of course. As for Timmy and Sylvester, I had them stop in the walkway because I wanted to animate one more moment with the two.

The Ol’ Shook Up Soda Gag

(12/05/2023)

I guess you could say that this is a reference to the end of my old movie. Soda, one of the best drinks in the world, is something Sylvester can never say no to. But Timmy, being the mischief-maker that he is, shook up the can, and soda sprayed all over Sylvester’s face the second he opened it. He falls for the gag every time. As much as Timmy loves dynamite and anvils, he also likes to go for lighter mischief at times. The soda spray animation was difficult to pull off. I wanted Sylvester to have an angry expression and then just have an “Ehh, toons will be toons” attitude about it. And hey, at least he got a soda.

The Final Shot

(12/06/2023)

I made this shot to show that despite the main house being one of the most notable buildings because of how big it is, it’s still in a large city with other people, other places, and other things. The buildings around the town was based on a concept sketch I had for Toon Lake City that I made back in Spring 2023, with many districts, (magic district, time district, science district, music district, outer space district, etc.). There were too many gradients for the program to not crash, so I had to convert the picture to a large JPG, and then have the blimp fly over it. I knew I was overusing that blimp, but I just wanted to include it one last time for the final shot. The relief that I felt when I finally finished this animation, oh my goodness.

Sound Effects

(12/07/2023 - 12/10/2023)

I had to put all of these sound effects into the video by using the Videoshop app on my iPhone, because it was the only device I could use in order to do so. I tried to use my iPad, but there’s some sort of bug on it and it keeps messing up the volumes for each sound, which absolutely frustrates me. Most sound effects were from YouTube, mainly the classic Hanna-Barbera sound effects, you can never go wrong with those, and some sound effects, such as explosions, came with the Videoshop app. I also had to provide the voices for Timmy, Sylvester, Victor, and Captain McMallard. I actually reused Timmy’s laugh from my animatic for Disney’s 100th anniversary. It took days of adjusting volumes and synchronizing to the video, but I managed to finish adding the sound effects, and I finally finalized the whole thing. I felt so proud of this video and so proud of myself for finishing it.

Peer Feedback

(12/11/2023)

I had some associates who watched me work on this entire video since I started production (10/20/2023), I showed them all of the scenes one by one as I was working on it, they gave me positive feedback, and even provided some constructive input. I also showed it to my family members, including my parents. They all loved it. My parents were wondering what I was up to the whole time.