Greetings everyone and welcome to this new incarnation of my website! I am working on new projects to entertain you all. So as I make progress on the projects, I will release a monthly update post like the one you’re reading now! I feel like that’s the best way to keep my viewers engaged while I get these things up and running. If you’re reading this, you have my personal thanks and gratitude. All I’ve wanted to do is entertain people and hopefully make a living from the entertainment projects that I’m making.
I hope to one day get to that place in my life where that is possible.
So with that preamble out of the way, let’s do a quick recap on who I am and what I made in the past
WHO I AM?
If you don’t know, my name is Alexander Trapp. As of this writing, I’m 38 years old, and I’ve spent most of my life in Southern California. I grew up loving science fiction and animation and I have an absurd sense of humor. That mainly comes from being influenced by some amazing cartoons and anime from the 1990s and the early 2000s. My goal is to parley those experiences and qualities into making new original animation projects. With animation, the imagination is truly unlimited in what you can create. So that is the primary medium I’ll be working in. You can make your dream real. That is my mission statement going forward. I have many ideas, it’s just hard to sit and focus on a single one at a given time.
I guess that will end up turning me into a jack of all trades, master of none? We’ll see. I think I can write decently well. It’s just the other stuff I need to get better at, namely 3D animation. Oh but I hate editing. I hate it with a passion, but it’s absolutely necessary to get a project made. That’s why, for better or worse, I keep my subscription to Adobe’s Suite of programs like Audition and Premiere.
WHAT I WORKED ON IN THE PAST
11 years ago I created 3 animated projects using a website called GoAnimate. Those projects were called Emina, Space Opera and Ninja Steve. Emina was my attempt at making an action/adventure story using an anime aesthetic. Space Opera was my satirical take on Star Trek. And Ninja Steve was an action comedy that was inspired by my love of superheroes as well as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
I loved working on those projects and had planned much more. Sadly the creators of GoAnimate changed the focus of the website from appealing to animation hobbyists to white board business animations. I moved onto a new animation program called Muvizu 3D, which was powered by Unreal Engine 4. But like GoAnimate, the animations and customization features of Muvizu were too limited for my tastes. I was also trying to approach animation from a limited perspective. I only had dollar signs in my eyes and I let that get in the way of my trying to come up with new ideas and concepts.
Muvizu also stopped being supported by its original company and changed hands behind the scenes. I decided to forgo developing any more projects in that platform in favor of trying to learn Blender 3D, a more robust and somewhat intimidating program to learn.
I can be a persistent worker when I feel the proper motivation. I also recognize that I can get easily distracted and bogged down in the worries of life, and let my projects and ideas fall by the wayside. That’s why I’m now writing this blog. I want to be more responsible and serious in what I’m trying to accomplish. And I feel that by bringing you, the person reading this entry, along the journey, I can feel a sense of responsibility to you to achieve my dreams. It’s one thing to work for yourself. It’s something different when your work is being anticipated by others.
WHAT I’M WORKING ON NOW
So I don’t want to spoil everything that I’m working on, but I can confirm that I am working on a reboot of my Ninja Steve animated series, as well as a novel, and an original comic book. Right now, everything is in the writing stage. I have an amazing writing partner, Dexter D. Lopez, who is helping me with Ninja Steve. And I’m teaming up with a friend of mine who goes by the name of Alpha Proto for the comic. There’s a lot more work I need to do personally when it comes to writing the stories of the novel and the comic book, but hey, one small step at a time. Also just to be clear, the novel and the comic book are two separate stories in their own worlds and have nothing to do with each other.
I actually tried writing a book about a decade ago. But I became dissatisfied with the way the story was going and abandoned that project. I then tried to pitch a video game idea to an indie developer, but that project also fell through. It was after that, that I found my way to GoAnimate and created the other projects I mentioned earlier in this post.
Now I feel the desire to create a novel again, as well as working towards the creation of an original comic book. I can’t wait to share more details about all of these projects with you all.
WHEN I WANT TO RELEASE THESE PROJECTS
I had, in the past, a very specific date as to when I wanted to have all of these things released out into the world for everyone to experience. But now I’m taking a “I’ll release these when they’re done” approach. But as I’ve mentioned, the purpose of this blog is to keep you all informed about my progress.
When the animations, videos, comics, and games reach a point when they’re nearly done, I will start asking people to subscribe to the membership on my Ko-Fi page so you can see those previews early. And the finished products will be released early to my paying subscribers as well. I also plan to re-open my t-shirt shop on threadless.com for those who wish to support me further. That will happen when my new releases are ready to be shown.
Well that’s it for now. Next month I’ll show some examples of what I’ve been working on, namely in Blender 3D, and I might do some more behind the scenes voice acting videos for some of my other non animated video sketches. Thank you for taking the time to read this! I can’t wait to get back to you all with updates on my progress.
Take care, and make your dream real!