In high school, my friend, Aaron, was on the school newspaper and he'd come to me one day telling me that they were looking to start doing a comic strip. I lit up, "That's awesome! Hey...I used to draw and I love comics!" To which he replied, "Yeah, that's why I told you about it." However, I hadn't drawn in forever and was finding it extremely hard to pick back up. In the school's lobby after school, waiting to be picked up by my mom, I was trying to draw Anything to see if I could bring it back even a little.
Years before, my friend Shane and myself had taken some art classes - the only kids in these night classes. In these classes they were having us draw various fruit and their shading. So, flashforward, I was trying to draw fruit and their shading when I fell asleep. In the short time I was asleep I had a dream of being chased by these creepy robed guys and then someone, something showed up to guide me out of the situation - it was a tall banana with legs; no arms or face. It had the pantlegs of shorts coming From the banana, and old school sneakers on his feet.
My friend Heather came from choir practice and woke me up, seeing if I was okay. I drew what I had dubbed Mr. Banana Legs for the comic strip Crazy Banana Legs - unoriginal title but I was happy the character had come to me. I did more than several comic strips for the school paper with Crazy Banana Legs.
Now, let me interject while I briefly explain my love for animation:
I love, love, love all different kinds of animation. As much as I enjoy CG Animation, I have a thing for really old cartoons, shows and movies. There's something about old hand drawn animated works that attracts me - the rawness, as if you can actually SEE the work put into it due to it not being as smooth as the medium became over time. I always wanted to animate, but I always liked the idea of independent animation vs. being a part of a huge company making these things. I've always had it in mind that if I ever attempted to animate something, I would put a little ragtag group together and create an independent animated film. The years had flown by and I was always distracted by different things life had thrown my way.
Years (Many Years) Later:
I had gotten a bee in my bonnet and decided to try to animate something. I didn't want to use a computer program and wanted to do it as barebones and as basic as possible. So, taking it down to the fundamentals of animation, I got a couple of pads of tracing paper and some pencils. It seemed that, after all the years, the only thing I could actually still draw was that damn Banana so that's what I used. I sat and drew, traced, drew, traced, over and over for 120 pages. It was long and tedious but I didn't mind - I was more excited about the fact that I could actually do it. I took all the pages, scanned them, and put them in order on Windows Movie Maker, trying to get each image down to the smallest allotted time. I played it back and loved what I got, this rough little clip of Mr. Banana Legs. More than that, I loved what it showed me - that if I DID happen to put my little group together someday that we could do it.
Now, after showing it on Facebook, my friend and cousin Scott asked if he could put sound to it. Of course, I said yes. So, in no time at all, he sends me this and I love it.
I took a brief pic of the pages I had done.
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