The Other Side - Twisted animations by Mata - Suggested for mature viewers

FAQ!

When will you make another xyz animation?

Will you remove abc animation? I don't like it / think it's funny / my hamster was very offended.

What do you use to make your animations?

Where do you get your ideas?

Why is there so little sound on your early animations?

When will your next animation be online?

If I send you ideas will you animate them for me?

Will you marry/have sex with me?

What drugs are you on?

Who's your biggest fan?

Your animations seem to run really slow...

Some of your animations work but others seem to get stuck during loading. Any suggestions?

Is Samuri Lapin dead at the end of the second animation?

Who are you?

When will you make another xyz animation?

When I get a good enough idea.

Believe it or not I've got pretty strict quality control for what I put online, and so if I haven't got an idea that keeps me giggling whilst I'm animating it then you won't see it. This is the reason that there is often a gap between making animations of certain characters.

Mittens is hard to write for. For a start I've got a lot of fondness for that cat but also there's only so many things you can do after cannibalism that are going to be funny without retreading the same ground or going where many others have been before.

Samuri Lapin is one of those characters that I'll always want to make more of but again it's about quality control.

Little Goth Girl is the character I find easiest to write for, mainly because she is like me in many ways.

Mr Snaffleburger... Well, he's a satirical character (and a lot of people don't seem to have much idea of how to react to satire these days, but that's the dumbing down of the media for you. Satire seems to have been replaced by 'parody' which really isn't the same thing. The media has done well out of this because they were often the victims of satire, so by giving it less coverage it means that they look better... Coincidence or conspiracy? I bet you can guess what I think...), because he is a satirical character I feel like there's got to be a good enough target to justify the animation. Fortunately the world is full of good targets but fitting them into his format is more tricky.

Yes, people really do ask this, and the answer is 'no'.

I wouldn't have put it online if I didn't think it was at least a bit amusing, these animations are free to watch and no-one is forcing you to be here, if you don't like one then don't watch it again.

It states in several places on the site that these animations are for mature viewers, if you don't like them do the mature thing and go somewhere else. Simple as that.

I'm not about to remove an animation from the site without a really good reason, if the sexual content of the second Mittens animation offends you then don't watch it again. If you don't find one of the characters funny then that's up to you, please respect the fact that there are many different types of people in this world and some of them do find this site, and the characters on it, entertaining. They're not all for everyone, but wouldn't it be boring if we all liked the same thing?

There's no swearing anywhere on this site, there's no explicit pornographic material, if you don't like my animations then find somewhere else to visit, simple as that.

I use Macromedia's rather lovely web-animation package 'Flash' to make my animations, and their webpage editting package Dreamweaver to fiddle with the page's settings. Both of these programs are available from standard online computer supply retailers. You can see more about Macromedia and their software on their site http://www.macromedia.com

Flash takes a while to get the hang of and it does have some quirks to get around, but once you're there it's really nice to use and you can produce some really nice results with it. If you're just learning then I strongly recommend going through the lessons and tutorials in the help menu then just experimenting at making pages to see what you can do.

There are numerous support sites out there with forums dedicated to helping novice Flash users, and it was through them that I first learnt how to use the software... Be prepared to lose your life though. I've got faster at making animations but they still frequently take fifteen hours or more to make, and some take a huge amount more than that.. It's not a fast process but compared to the days of frame-by-frame animation we've come a long way.

Eating and sleeping is for wimps, it's only the hardcore that do animation. Rah!

Usually my ideas come from dreams that I've had.

Mittens was created after I woke up from a nightmare where I was being chased by zombies and whilst half asleep I reasoned that it would have been quite funny if it was cute kitties and not zombies chasing me. Still not totally awake I then decided that cannibalism was funnier than zombies, and so Mittens was born.

'Harvest' was based on a dream I had where a cow was day dreaming about mowing down a field of farmers in a combine harvester. Of course, that made no sense. Why would a cow use a combine harvester? Obviously it would only make sense if a piece of corn was doing that...

Umm... Oh I don't know, it made sense to me at the time alright? *mumble mumble*

In those happy happy days of starting this site I didn't dream about actual characters, these days I dream about things like Mr. Snaffleburger. Oh for those days of innocence when I could fall asleep without hearing those voices in my head creating new plots and puns.

Little Goth Girl works a bit differently in that her stories are normally based on things that I think about walking down the street. I find this worrying.

There were two reasons. Firstly there's bandwidth. This means the bigger a file costs me more money to have online with you downloading it. Essentially I pay so you can watch the animations. If wasn'tt going to really help an animation to have sound I'd rather it downloaded faster to your machine, cost me less money and was silent. Sound files add a lot to the loading time and so I try not bore people to death just for the sake of a few beeps here and there.

The second reason is that I'm just a person with a computer. I still don't have the facilities to produce really great quality sound and I don't like the idea of copyright infringement so I don't want to steal anyone else's work. Things are progressing here, but it still takes time.

These days it would be very strange for me to decide to not include sound on an animation, but this is three years later and things have moved on. I've asked people on my site and generally the opinion seems to be that they would rather I didn't tinker with my early works, so for the moment they will remain silent.

I put animations online as regularly as I can but since I also have demands outside of this site (I hear that there is a whole world away from this PC... It sounds scary) I can't say exactly how long it will be between animations, usually it will be around three to four weeks.

The only way to make sure you keep completely up to date with new things is to join my mailing list, that way you get emails every time I put something new on the site:

Sorry but 'no'.

I've worked with other people before and it is a very difficult process. There are also legal issues involved with intellectual property and copyright that are really too complicated for me to get involved with at this stage.

If you've got a great idea then put the work in and make a site to rival mine! A bit of friendly competition is always fun and I love to see what goes on in the heads of others.

This doesn't mean that I won't occasionally be ripping my hair out and swearing at myself for not writing down that idea I had at three a.m. but I still think I prefer to keep everything on here as mine for the moment. Thanks anyway!

Thanks for the offer but no I won't, although it does usually make me laugh when this is offered in an email. Seriously, I have been asked this several times, and it really is a little odd.

I remember the days when a person who was interested in computers was considered a nerd and shunned by the world. These days I get offers of sex for running a website. That's progress for you.

I know most people don't believe me when I tell them this but I don't do drugs, this site is just a reflection of the way I think on a regular basis without any chemical influence.

I might occasionally have a beer whilst animating but that's about it, and often I find that this hinders more than helps the process. If you are consuming drugs whilst watching these things then heaven help you, they're disturbing enough in a normal frame of mind, let alone an altered one.

[Disclaimer: This site does not encourage drug use and many substances are illegal to posses or consume. You know what I'm talking about, it's your choice but be aware that if you break the law I didn't tell you to do it!]

Doesn't modern life suck when you have to say things like that just to cover yourself?

You are, of course.

Seriously, there are some people out there who've exchanged ideas, talked and just generally be nice to me and it's been really good to have them in my life. In no particular order, and only mentioning those online, Hobbes (you're great), Neko (for being herself despite not having Little Goth Girl's abilities at self-defence), everyone at Ladybird's (especially the Ladybird herself for making it happen), the people in my forum, especially my great team of mods who look after the place when I don't have time, and many more. There're hundreds of you and you make the hard work fun and worthwhile. I'll keep making these things while you keep visiting.

At the time of writing this site is getting just over fifty thousand hits per month, which really is incredible, so my next target is over one hundred thousand a month... I know we can do it! Please tell anyone who you think would enjoy the site about me!

This is due to the machine you're watching on!

Sorry but there's nothing that can be done about this. It's caused by the complexity of the animations causing the playback of the movie to slow down whilst it processes the maths required to make it run. Obviously, older machines have more trouble performing the graphical processing as fast as their modern counterparts, which does mean that sections that require a lot of movement on-screen (zooming in on complex graphics, lots of things moving) will run slower while your computer works out what's going on.

If you have the option, try and watch the animations on a more modern computer. I do try and restrict the amount of processor intensive effects in my animations but there is only so far you can compromise with the storytelling and visuals.

Yep, try deleting the cached file for the page from your internet browser and then have another go at watching it.

I've been asked this a couple of times. I'm not sure what causes this but what seems to happen is that there is some sort of loading error when you first look at the page which then prevents further loading until you delete this and start afresh.

It may or may not be related but this seems to happen more often to people who are watching from a machine with lots of anti-virus software.

Yes, but the final scene is 'many, many years later'. As with all things that live, eventually even heroes die.

Don't worry, there's plenty of years in-between that will slowly be filled in, for example, we've got the training of Ozaki to see yet.

You've not seen the last of that bunny.

Right, my name is Mata, I'm in my twenties (27 at the time of writing this) and I am a carbon-based lifeform that consists primarily of water. I do a few main things in life:

Most of my days involve making sure the trained poodles are answering the emails properly while trying to get time to animate and study.

I animate lots and try to keep this site running happily. You'd be amazed how much work this takes.

I'm studying for a PhD in cyberculture (yes, you can do a PhD in that, and it is pretty cool). This gains me no money at all but does give me a great feeling of self worth. Seriously. If only I had more time to do it...

I also paint. And I do circus performance. No really, I actually do. When I get the chance I also learn Wing Chun kung fu and Tai Chi. I'm a very busy bunny.

Hoppity hoppity hoppity.

This doesn't answer the question very well but it breaks the ice at parties. A bit like an ice pick. Possibly.

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