Episode 5 -
of my animated cartoon series Xylus and Dexter in Space!

Here is episode 5 of my animated cartoon Xylus and Dexter in Space!

Concept

In this Episode: The boys search the castle and meet the "The Ghost".

(Related post: Xylus and Dexter in Space! "Finder's Creeper" Episode 4 - Cartoon animation)

Art

The "ghost" uses a giant ray gun in this episode. The gun is a drawing that was based on an old toy that I have from the Mars Attacks! movie. The toy gun is called the Martian Brain Disintegrator.

Mars Attacks! Martian Brain Disintegrator Ray Gun Toy

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ray gun artwork screenshot from this cartoon</td></tr></tbody></table><p>I also started drawing the backgrounds in the animation software using a Wacom tablet instead of inking them on paper and scanning them. </p><p>I had not really captured the grit of drawn backgrounds yet doing this. I learned from this episode that I needed to work on how to translate the detail from the drawn backgrounds to computer-only drawings. </p><p>The characters themselves are still being drawn and scanned from ink on paper though.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Animation</h2><p>There’s a lot of walking and running in this episode without dialog then it occurred to me…</p><p>How was I going to know when the characters should be doing something without the dialog?</p><p>Here is what I decided to do. </p><p>I put the audio I recorded for the episode in a video editing program that I use called KDENLive. Then I took the storyboard scenes I penciled and imported them into the video editor. </p><p>From there I arranged those sketches in the editor, switching them around to work out the timing with the audio.</p><p>Here is one of the storyboards with the drawings of the running scenes</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Storyboard drawings</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Then I took that video and added it to the animation software. </p><p>In the animation software, I used that video as a guide for the character drawings. When I was done I deleted the reference video from the animation software.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">TV Commercial Joke</h2><p>The episode was actually shorter than the usual 2 min episode I make so at the end I added a tribute to the old Flinstones TV commercials for Winston Cigarettes they used to play during the show when it was first on television.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">

</div><p>And here is a screenshot of the commercial for whiskey and cigarettes I made for the end of this cartoon episode.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Xylus and Dexter commercial spoof screenshot</td></tr></tbody></table><h2 style="text-align: left;">Audio</h2><p>As I said before, with all the running and walking in this cartoon, the audio in the episode was mostly foley sounds. So I spent a lot of time looking for sound effects to use.</p><p>When I was done animating I added a few more sound effects for random character reactions too when I saw that some of the parts needed it.</p><p>Next time: Watch Episode 6 “Mirror, mirror”</p><p>
</p><p>Check out the previous episode 4 “Finder’s Creeper” here</p><p>https://www.tomrayswebsite.com/2021/11/xylus-and-dexter-in-space-finders.html</p><p>
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