Untitled Film

About 2 years ago I did some design work for an untitled feature for Laika. I don't think it's getting made so I thought I'd post'em here...

And the winner is...

HOW TO TURN STUFF!

This was definitely the winner by vast majority, so turning stuff it is! Please be patient with me, I just started a new job and am getting comfortable. This tutorial will probably come in a few installments. Thanks for voting everyone, it's so helpful to know what information is lacking out there! Until the tutorial!

Ruff Stuff

Please continue to you cast your votes in the post below! I will end the vote as of THIS Friday (the 25th), so if you have an opinion on the matter be sure to vote in time! Until then enjoy this ruff bit of experimental animation I did for my short film. Often when I have a design getting "close" to what I want it to FEEL like, I take it for a "test drive" which always reveals a lot of it's successes and flaws. In this particular case I animated this to ultimately be used for an eventual color test as well. I animated this in about a day, and in a fairly more ruff way than I typically do. Obviously the end is just posed out, however I do intend to finish it. Also, the beard and floppy bits of hair will be animated in After Effects once the ruff animation is complete. So, no, it won't look like a bit moppy beard in the final product. So enjoy this ruff rascal--

Let's have a VOTE

So from time to time I get e-mails and comments asking about continuing tutorials on this blog. While I would love to be able to continue to do the same volume of tutorials that i once did, I have to be realistic with myself. When I started this blog my time was much more free and open, now, not so much as I am sure all of you have noticed.

But, the initial purpose of this blog was to spread information that I have learned from either people I respect, or just figuring the stuff out so that others could have the same access to, specifically, 2D knowledge. I would love to strike a compromise, so here's the plan. Right now I am on some downtime, waiting for my next job to start and I'd love to do a simple tutorial. So I am going inquire for your vote as to what that tutorial will be about. here are some options:

- Arcs

- Overlap/Follow Through

- Spacing

- How to Turn stuff

- Timing

- Posing and interesting Breakdowns

Just a few to suggest-- but do me a favor and place your vote in the comments section, I'll tally the votes and consider how much time I have to devote to the tutorial and then go from there. Sound good?

Cortez

Have been scanning a whole bunch of drawings lately to catelog them on my computer. Came across these and thought I'd post'em. I think I was reading something about Cortez when I drew these. Enjoy!

PENCIL TEST DEPOT blog by Jamaal Bradley

PENCIL TEST DEPOT

I have to plug this new, GREAT blog by Jamaal Bradley (animator on "Surf's Up") called Pencil Test Depot. The idea of the blog is to gather an assortment of ONLY rough pencil tests from a variety of hand drawn animators. It's the only blog of it's kind to my knowledge that is devoted to cataloging pencil tests! So cool! Jamaal honored me with an invitation to put add some of my work, but the real reason you should go there is to see all the other incredible work from the likes of Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas, Glen Keane, Sergio Pablos, James Baxter and Pablo Navarro! I am sure as time goes on the catalog will grow and the amount of amazing reference will become staggering! So check out this wonderful new resource for animators of ALL types!

John Musker caricature

Here's a fun little drawing! Every years at Disney they have the caricature show. Which is basically the "John Musker" show since he's the best and most active caricature artist in the studio (with Erik Fountain being a very close second)! I've been told I am hard to caricature, so I don't often see any caricatures of me. I thought this one was pretty cool though, I just didn't realize I looked so angry! hah--

Doodle_002

I went to the Skeet Range with my brother while he was in town this past week. Say some pretty hilarious people while I was there. This is Ling Ling-- from the moment she walked out onto the range she had this humongous smile on her face. It only melted off when she decided to kick some Skeet Shooting Butt! This girl hit everything man, EVERYTHING! And that's saying something for someone who's gun is bigger than they are! All in all, a pretty entertaining thing to behold...

Sandro Cleuzo

Ok Ok, so I am a bit late on this one but I thought I'd plug my friend Sandro Cleuzo. I worked with him at Disney on "Frog". He's an amazing talent, who consistently blew everyone away! I learned a lot from him indirectly... he's also one of the nicest people I've met in this industry. Check out his blog for sure and expect to see great things from his new Brazilian Studio! www.inspectorcleuzo.blogspot.com

All Cleaned Up (Revised)

I was asked to remove the boy riding the horse cycle as the project it was for is not released yet-- sorry for the idiocy.

puttin' the ol' reel together!

Just finished up on "Frog" and am having to put the ol' reel together and sort of rediscovered some old animation I never used on my previous reels. enjoy!

Shot from Curious George from handdrawn on Vimeo.

Curious George from handdrawn on Vimeo.

curious george from handdrawn on Vimeo.

Untitled from handdrawn on Vimeo.

OFFICIAL TRAILER!

CHECK WHAT WE'VE BEEN WORKING SO HARD ON!

Princess and the Frog

check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbCT0pG5iw4&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eslashfilm%2Ecom%2F2009%2F05%2F04%2Fnew%2Dfootage%2Dfrom%2Ddisneys%2Dthe%2Dprincess%2Dand%2Dthe%2Dfrog%2F&feature=player_embedded

CORALINE ANIMATION TESTS

  Here are two animation tests I did for Coraline. Usually the way it would start out is me doing some expressions that were extremes for the character. Like how wide or how far something could go, and then animate within that boundary. How course considering character, and shape language as well... 

CORALINE

  I know I'm a bit late on the "Coraline post", but thought it would be a good excuse to post again! A couple years ago I got a call from this new studio called "Laika". They were doing a new Henry Selick film called Coraline and needed someone to design and animate the facial expressions (including design mouth shapes for dialogue) for all the characters in the film. And they wanted it ALL to be 2D upfront (it would later be modeling in the computer then molds would be made from that). It was a sweet gig-- I lived in Portland for 6 weeks, all expenses paid and was scared to death every day of failing miserably. I was surrounded by people who were infinitely more talented than I was and I learned a ton from it/them. It was my first venture in design, and I was therefor terrified. It was kinda like designing with training wheels on. I was already working with solid stuff, I just had to make it emote.

   I used to love walking around the warehouse where all the sets were being built-- it really felt like we were all making something special and new; something all of us artists talk about but never get a chance to ACTUALLY work on.  And here I found myself working on something that I had always talked about working on. (I'll post pictures of the warehouse later). 

  I didn't end up doing all the characters but I did end up designing for the Cat, Forcible, and the Ghost Children. I did some REALLY rough passes on Spink and Bobinski but I don't think they got used.

  So GO SEE THIS SPECIAL FILM! And I'll post more stuff from the film as time allows.

11-4-08

  I did these character designs for a friend a little while back. Had a lot of fun doing it! I miss doing character design these days-- I find when I am bored animating I whip out a clean sheet of paper and start doodling a design or a thumbnail for a future design to keep my mind active. But to be fair, when I was doing character design I missed animating. I know as an animator studying design is imperative to doing good animation. For some reason people seem to segregate design and drawing as separate things.  They are not, drawing IS design-- whether it's well designed or not, it IS a design. Maybe this segregation of thinking is why hand drawn animation tends to look so, well, bland. Too many people buy off on the lie that audiences to not relate to graphic character designs. They relate to who they are, not what they look like. Hopefully we'll get an opportunity to blow that old idea out of the water one of these days!  

what the?

  Am I posting this because it's beautiful? Am I posting this because I'd like to inspire the world? I believe if you look at this painting long enough you could answer these questions yourself... the real reason I am posting this is because it's random and I have nothing else to post while the man cub and wifey are down for a nap. If you are wondering this took about 5 minutes, took 0% thought, and was my first attempt at painting on a Cintiq. It's par for the course for me :)

Frog photo shoot

                                     Guess what we were drawing at work the other week? 

               Here we have nature lover and powerful animator extrodinaire, Minkyu Lee, playing                    with a frog named PacMan. The frogs kept jumping out of their enclosures. I was too                    much of a wuss to pick'em up.   

                                           Hey! There's Mark Henn checking out a tree frog!

            Randy Cartwright ladies and gentleman with the frog. Forgot that frog's name though--               and the gentleman in the red i the amazing Sandro Cleuzo. I've learned so much from                   that guy indirectly. Amazing talent! 

                    Mark looked at the tree frog for a very long time-- believe it or not there is 2 hours                       between this photo and the last one :) We also have Adam Dykstra, Jen Hager, Dale                     Baer, and Randy haycock in this photo. 

  Some more Curious George randomness! The fun thing about designing characters that are only seen once is that they don't always fit into a context. Like these characters are basically cutaways. So, I could basically do whatever I wanted as long as they looked like a dog and a moose.

  Went to Siggraph today-- Disney set us animators up there. Was fun accept they wouldn't let me into the Frank and Ollie talk, dangit! Was talking to a few people about traditional animation while I was at the Disney booth. One dude swore to me that Lilo and Stitch was CG. I politely tried to inform him that it was a hand drawn movie. I could see the confusion on his face and it was later confirmed with his comment "but then that would mean you'd have to draw every frame!!". Yup-- just like in 1939. Other favorite qoutes that I either heard or heard of:

  "Why don't you guys just use tracing paper?"

   (a man walks up with a suit on and a briefcase and says) "I need to talk to John Lasseter".

  "Are you sure you want to be drawing in red?"

  "how many "animations" do you do in a day?"

  Ahhhh man, too funny. 

Walk Cycle

walk cycle from handdrawn on Vimeo.

  Man, it would seem this blog has become a plug for Curious George 2! Well, that or I just don't have a ton to show that isn't really old or that I'd get my butt fired for showing!

  I didn't design this guy, but I did get the opportunity to do the walk cycle for the over seas group. These had to be done FAAAAAST... like, one every two days. They said a walk on 2's would be fine, but come on, ya gotta go the whole way right! So on 1's it was!! My mantra is "no one remembers how fast it was done, only how well it was done". 

enjoi!