Merry Christmas

ToonClub

Absolute Electric

Frederator

I recently found that this blog has been linked as a “Site of Interest” on the Frederator Cartoon Blog. Welcome to anyone visiting from there. Some of the best projects that I worked on with my previous employer were contracts from Frederator, and since one of the purposes of this blog is shameless self promotion I’ll take you on an illustrated tour of the some work I have done for them.

Random Cartoons Opening.

We were presented with the logo for this series which will be a collection of various animated shorts which will show on Nickelodeon some time in 2007. The Frederator Cartoon Blog is a collection of production blogs for creators of the shorts that will appear on this program. You can see the animation for this sequence on its production blog. With this project I conceived and storyboarded the opening based on the given logo.I designed a bunch of contraptions for them to choose from. The designs were greatly inspired by the kinetic sculptures of Andrew SmithThese are the drawings for the final contraption with some of the reference pasted in.I personally prefer the original color scheme before it was made more “bright and playfull.”

FredEx-FartRobot

I talked about this before. You may have seen when we were front paged on CG Talk. This was a 10 second animation for part of a compilation film celebrating the anniversary of Channel Frederator. Different animators were asked to conceive how a robot would do a particular thing. Our topic was a fart. For those that choose to view it I'll give you a warning that some of the topics given to varying animators took on a very ADULT tone. For this project I conceived the idea of old pot bellied stove robot, and did the design. I also did the final audio and helped with the final composite.Six Monsters

This one is currently in production. You can see its current status at its production blog. We were given 1 minute of the 7 minute short which will play like a Variety/Sketch Comedy Show. I wrote the story for our minute with input from the rest of studio, and rewrites by Fred Seibert & Alan Goodman, I then storyboarded our segment.The original character designs were by Alex Kirwan, and each of the segments will have the style of the animator doing that 1 minute gag. I wasn’t given a lot of leeway in my direction to change the designs around; my instructions were to just make Alex’s drawings translate to 3D.I designed the set with old sketch comedies in mind. I looked at Hee Haw, and SNL, and Sonny and Cher, and tried to keep simplicity in the set, but make it complex enough to go with the detail of rendered fur on the main character. The sets of the film Pleasantville seemed to meet those requirements, being based on old TV sets themselves. They were big influences. I tried to make areas in the set to stage the characters so hopefully, in the final, the light character will be against dark and the dark character against light. I was able to set all the models up in the set with cameras before I left, so it appears to be working. Sadly I didn't get to animate my shots. As the production goes forward without me I hope it will come close to what I’ve imagined in my mind for the last few months while creating it

Paperless merMAID

For this weeks ToonClub entry I thought I'd try something a little different, so for the the first time I've done a piece with out using paper, pencil, or scanner. Just my trusty Wacom. The sketch and background was done in Painter. It was inked and colored in Illustrator and then put together and retouched in Photoshop.

A New Drawing Board

When we moved out to Pennsylvania one of the things I gave up was my large studio space and desk. So while the computer found a permanent spot in our new home, my camera stand and disc did not. To add insult to injury the glass in the disc broke in the move.


For my birthday my wife repaired the glass, so I needed to make it usable again. Chromacoulour had a folding table-top board which would be perfect, but I didn't want to pay their price. So using their images I fashioned a measured drawing to make my own.

With an excuse to buy a jig saw it was off to Home Depot. Here's the finished board. It doesn't have a built in light, but it is really easy to re-purpose the desk lamp around to the back. Now I just need to figure out how to machine my own paper punch.

Now Available

This is a fun time for me, A bunch of things that I worked on are now available for people to see. I don't get anything but exposure from the sale of these, but it sure is fun to see stuff you've worked on out on the shelves.

To Share or NUT to Share is the project that got me to move to Pennsylvania. It is the seventh in a series of direct to DVD films. We worked on it February and March of this year, and it finally came to bookstore shelves last month. This was Don Knotts final performance. I cut together a reel of my stuff from the film. I had about 4 minutes of animation in there.(right click, save target as. 13.5MB)

Faux Paw was my Student Emmy winning film that was produced for ikeepsafe.org. It was a fun challenge for all of us involved. I illustrated a book that went along with the film that was recently published. It appears that the movie and it's sequel are included on a CD. This was the first I've seen of it since the film was finished, and over all I'm pleased with how it turned out (but don't ask me where the 's on the cover came from).

Pumpkin Carving

Here is this years pumpkin, Kerchow!

You can also see last year's Jack-O-Lanterns here.

Fart Bot

A short bit that I contributed to here at the studio was "FrontPaged" on the CG Talk forum.

We had 10 sec to show how a robot would pass gas. Trouser Trumpets are universal humor. Name one heathly person who doesn't toot. While some poo-poo the excessive use of barking spider humor in animation, I don't mind it in short bursts.

co-worker caricatures

"Froggy Went a Courtin."

This weeks topic was "Froggy Went a Courtin." A song I didn't even know I loved. It's been a favorite since I first heard Uncle Pecos sing it on Tom & Jerry, but because of the stuttering, the only lyric I ever understood was "Crambo". This topic made me do a little research and I found the lyrics. The song is full of great situations and characters. Who doesn't love a sword wieldin', pistol totin' Frog; or a mean Uncle Rat, a beautiful Ms. Mousey, or the eclectic group of wedding guests. Here are a few discarded ideas I had for the post.
The proposal with Miss Mousy on his knee, and the convincing of Uncle Rat to go buy the wedding dress. I picked the shaving because that is what I always think of before going out, and the tattoo because I figure you have to be pretty tough to take a sword and pistol with you when you go a courtin'.

Thinking Animation Blog

It seems I was a mystery man for a while with at the Thinking Animation Blog. Known only as the elusive "guy." Now that my identity has been made known they made a very nice post about me. I'm about half way through reading their book and it's a great read. Check out the Thinking Animation Blog.

This is the only photo proof of me being at Siggraph.

(side note) I just figured out the whole comment moderation thing so I just got everyones comments today. Thanks for all the feedback.

Airport sketches

I'm finally back from my travels. I got to spend the week in Boston at Siggraph, and I finally added a Wind-Up Teapot to my toy collection. I then got to spend a week in Snowbird with my family. After all that vacation, I'm already for a nice relaxing time at work. These are sketches from waiting in the airport. They are all folks keeping there eyes open for rogue liquids and gels.

ToonClub Pirate

As some may be aware I'm lucky enough to be participate in Toon Club, a weekly topic drawing blog. This was last weeks entry. While many people are inspired by Pirates of the Caribean, I found more inspiration in the Gobelin's short, Pyrats!

Siggraph Trailer

They posted the trailer for the Electronic Theatre at Siggraph, and I've got 13 frames of animation in it!

Absolute Electric

These are some characters I designed for use in promotions and ads for an Electrical Service company