Welcome to TVPaint Community forums !

Dear Community,

FINALLY.
After three years of foreward steps and backward steps here we are. Sauna Tango is a 4 min (incl entitles) animation film entirely made with TVPaint Animation Pro 9 (starting with 8, I think) except Background and Steam animation.
Both artists might be able to create comparable solutions in TVPaint but are used to manual Aquarell ore After Effects.

Please understand that I cannot show the full movie for free in the internet.
After paying all the others money ran out and I have to wait for licence fees.
But you can watch a trailer at my website

http://www.toonsisters.de/sauna.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

and even buy it at:

http://www.onlinefilm.org/-/film/34970" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

SAUNA TANGO has started applying for festivals right now. You can be updated about screenings in your country by checking my website.
First fesivals might be Stuttgart, Dresden, Zagreb, Annecy, Edinburg. Lets see.
Vera

Congrats Vera, the result is quite good. I hope you will win some prices in Animation festivals !

We had a lot of fun while watching it, I now know why you needed that custombrush, it was the broom !

Thanks for adding the TVP logo at the end.

Yes, I can only repeat it. You saved me a lot of time and made possible a better quality!
Thank you very much again!

Hi Vera,

I think its very difficult to get your film on DVD, because you need a torrent software to get it. I stopped my purchase of your film when I had to configure my firewalls and my router to get the software to run. Maybe I will try again later ... Sorry.

Yes, I know this is a procedure of jumping hurdles.
But it is the only reliable way at the moment with a sharing of 51 % for me and 49% for them.

Creating an own online shop would be crossing a jungle of german laws, lost without payed guidance.
I applied for iTunes and createspace but they are not interested in Films under 20 min.
As soon as somebody finds a more common way to sell it please tell me.

I am about to string together a 4 Toonsisters short films DVD compilation for selling it right at the festivals.
Maybe I also offer to send it by mail after previous bank transfer.
ebay just pops into my mind. Why not selling it there?

Please suggest another way if you find one.
Or you just wait to see it at the festivals.
Vera

Hmh? Take a look at this shop. You can download and/or order DVDs. It`s the shop of "kurzfilmagentur hamburg", and it works fine. But I don't know anything about their terms and conditions.
http://shop.shortfilm.com/index.php

As far as I know they only offer films which have a comprehensive ditribution contract including Cinema, DVD, and "new media" disribution with Kurzfilmagentur Hamburg.
AAAH, I thought they are selling compilations only but I just found a single short film for 3 EUR.
So its worth a request so I'll send them an email asking their conditions.
Thank you for suggesting.
I'll keep you updated
Vera

Vera,

Your little gag films are ideal for gift cards -- why do you need other animators and four years to make them? This is what I mean by finding the "Right story, the right style and the right technology". Draw them paperlessly in TVPaint, find a style you can be quick with (it looks like you already might have it) and with all your spare time not cleaning your house, practice drawing fast. It's all just practice and many of my students are surprised how quickly their drawing speed improves when they set their minds to it -- sometimes within just a couple of hours working in my class. You can start the film as a cartoon strip on the few pages of the book, leaving the cliff-hanger on the last page, printed right onto the disk with the words (more inside) under the picture. You have something useful to offer people -- a funny gag, not a festival film, just a little wonder to brighten someone's day. The other German Mark already makes those kind of films for subway cars -- make lots of them for little books and sell them. Stop looking for movie producers and start looking for book agents is my mantra of the year.

Not sure about the book-market, far as I know illustrators don't earn much. Coffee table books have a rather small audience but this may be different in the U.S. as it is with comic-artists in Belgium compared with their colleagues in Germany.
I am little bit skeptical, thinking that the times of print media is coming to be difficult and maybe you can make more money with selling cool T-shirts with your drawing on it.

And I think it also depends on one's style. The works of animators are for motion and not everyone's style fits for single image illustrations which have it's own quality standards.

Amazon will start it's own "Apple-like App-store" for their e-books very soon, maybe clever ones starting an animation film-app-store for the mobiles.

I am talking about two kinds of books. The one I am working on now will be the coffee type; fat, abundance of illustrations from light sketches to full color plates and crammed with information and period trivia (turn of the century -- 19th to 20th). It'll quote Thomas Edison who said things on the subject of energy that are valid to this day... did anyone know that in 1907 New York City's entire fleet of taxis was entirely comprised of Edison's electric cars? That the opening of the Erie canal in the mid 1800's marked the beginning of America's national economy? It all goes with the Joshua Slocum story and it should be the kind of book that sits on the coffee table and is leafed through over, and over again by children and adults alike.

A book like that might be expensive and have a long lasting shelf and coffee table life. It'll be an ideal present for Christmas and if done right will sell in schools as well. The only way to find out if I'm right is to do it.

The little books would have to be DVD size and comprise of just a few pages, perhaps 6 or 8 and would sell for around $ 10 in any place where greeting cards are sold. Here in the U.S. ealmost every supermarket devotes an entire isle to gift cards. There is no reason to expect these books to not sell, particularly if the art is the art of well loved comic strip artists... these too would have a long shelf life. Hallmark cards is a multi billion dollar industry in the states and these books would be just a modern update of the same items.

Don't make the mistake of equating these books to belletrist items -- these are all DVD picture books.

I was told when I was a kid, and then a young man, that it is not possible for one person to make animated films all by himself, and look what happened: I became the first person to ever do this for both TV and the theater (see if you can prove me wrong -- I made my first film for TV in 1958) and now this is what most of you here are doing or aiming for and independent animation is taught in thousands of art schools all over the world.

"Right story, the right style and the right technology"

I absolutely agree. After three ambitious short film projects with making lots of mistakes I will try the next one avoiding these.
Drawing in a too complex style and becoming dependent on others doing it are the first to avoid.

About the book market I am as skeptic as Klaus.

I pray, Paul, you will stay alive to pioneer this part of the business for us, too!
Vera

I'll live forever and if that proves to be untrue, I won't be around to be embarrassed for making such a stupid claim.

why do you need other animators and four years to make them?

Paul, you have to take into account the background of "Sauna Tango".
As far as I can remember, there were four people at the beginning, and two people have more or less left the team.
During the four years, Vera has welcomed a little baby ... so doing a such work was not an easy task for her.
(vera please correct my post if there are errors)

Btw, I'm admirative, especially about the animation of the strong guy.

I can't see how having a baby can prevent someone from drawing more than a minute of animation in a year -- I think the reason lies elsewhere.