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Xylus and Dexter in Space! "Castle Clause" Episode 3 - Cartoon animation

Episode 3 -
of my animated cartoon series Xylus and Dexter in Space!

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

Concept

In this Episode: The boys are still stranded on Mars. When they make an interesting discovery.

(Related post: Xylus and Dexter in Space! "What's that?" Episode 2 - Cartoon animation)

Art

I was still re-using a lot of the character art and backgrounds from the previous episodes. I would also create some new expressions and poses for the boys when I needed them. Doing this along the way adds even more re-usable drawings to the character library I have for the cartoon episodes. 

illustration of boy and stone wall
Dexter with his arms crossed

I also needed to create more backgrounds for this episode for the inside of the castle.

I used some pictures I had found as a reference for the castle interior from old monster movies on Google image search.

illustration of two boys on wood floor in front of stone walls
Castle interior

I also had to create a new character Phineas Handela for the story. I had only drawn a few sketch ideas for him and wasn't sure what he would look like yet. 

So for this episode of the story, I only used a silhouette.

illustration of eyes glowing in shadows
Alien in the shadows

Animation

I still feel like I'm being really restrained in my squash and stretch animation technique for this cartoon, so the scene where Xylus gets an idea seems really undramatic to me. 

I re-drew the animation several times and the take I used still feels like it could have been bigger.

animation gif of boy and a red sky
Xylus has an idea

Audio

On top of doing the voice of the announcer, now I got to do the voice of the alien. 

I did it in a higher evil-ish tone but it just sounded like I was talking funny. So after recording my parts I added a pitch shifter effect to it. It kinda makes me sound like the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz.

Next time: Watch episode 4 "Finder's creeper"

Check out the previous episode 2 "What's that?" here - https://www.tomrayswebsite.com/2021/11/xylus-and-dexter-in-space-whats-that.html

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Location: Madison, WI, USA

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