"The Missing Ham": An Original Flash Animation Featuring Toroth Dragon Struck
It's oddly amusing how little bits of creativity and jokes and the like, along with little happy coincidences, can end up forming something that sticks around for a long while and become an integral part of a final creative product.
For example, the Toroth character today is quite different from how he started out. In fact, even his position as Website Mascot started as a joke that wasn't intended to last more than an update or two. However, the development of Toroth and the connection to my personal site now seem like such a perfect fit, it's a wonder how they ever existed apart.
I had been trying to do a few different projects involving Toroth beyond writing stories or with this website for a while... but aside from a few drafts of a children's book, nothing really went anywhere.... until I hit the idea of an animated short.
I've always loved to do voices, whether it be imitations, dramatic readings, or accents. While my aspirations for becoming a voice actor has always been something that seemed interesting-- doing voice work for Toroth was easy and fun to play around with.
Animation, however, was a different ballgame. Even with the medium of Flash, and the distribution method of the internet, there was one last hurdle: my drawing skills. Even allowing for the fact that drawing with a mouse is like painting with a hockey puck(*), I looked at efforts and thought, "Geez, this'll never work. This art looks like it was done by a two-year old!" Then, I realized something: Toroth is two (dragon) years old. This would be a perfect fit for story if the conceit was that it was narrated by him.
So off I started. There have been fits and false starts, storyboarding, and revisions, and help along the way. It's taken me a several months of work, and I'm very grateful to the Clock Crew in general (and Bagel Clock in particular for his assistance and co-animation), but the project is nearly complete.
For now, here are a few screen shots, and a trailer/introduction. To view a screenshot in a larger size, just click on the respective thumbnail below:
(*) A tip of the pen to Richard Rouse for that analogy.