Texture Girl

This is a little something I've been building in Harmony for a few weeks now here and there. I've been wanting to design something a bit more flat with some textures. Hope to animate her at some point soon.

Earth is Our Home

Below is a new preschooler short I did for Mother Goose Club, "Earth Is Our Home". I was handed a pretty loose outline for this one and was given a bit more freedom. So in addition to my usual storyboard, animation, comp, and edit duties I also wrote it. Astrid Riemer did design work. As I am supplied the audio, I don't know who wrote the music, but it's a cute song. Enjoy!

 

 

Fake Ryu Animation

I spent some time BETA testing two of the new versions of Harmony 12 last month. I was really impressed with the new bitmap brushes, so I made a little assignment for myself to use them a bit more extensively. I wanted to do some traditional animation with them. For lack of coming up with anything original, I did this knock-off version of Ryu from Street Fighter. I really just wanted to show someone throwing a fireball, and as I worked he slowly became more-and-more Ryu-like. So he's not quite Ryu. He's Fake Ryu.

Doggie

Did this with crayons.

Blarg

Whoosh

Chilly Lady

It's been cold out.

Waiting for an oil change

Doodling on the Surface.

"The Wheels on the Bus"

   Back in June, I was approached to do a short for "The Wheels on the Bus" by Sockeye. The only provision that I was asked to follow was to make the Bus a character along the lines of Thomas the Tank Engine. They already have a short in their playlist for this song, so I thought about what would make my version different than is already there? Going further I asked myself what would make my version different than the hundreds of other versions of "Wheels on the Bus" on Youtube?

   I decided I needed a little bit of a story to go along with the track, and more importantly I felt that we needed to feel like we were actually going someplace with this Bus. So I concocted the characters that we meet and a small journey that builds as the short moves along. I posted a small preview here a few weeks ago. At last its finally posted and ready to share.

   For this, I wanted to get back to my roots a bit more. I wanted to put as much traditional animation as I could fit into the schedule. The other mission was to make it visually interesting other than just ink and paint so I pushed for a water color effect. Custom brushes were built in Harmony for the character animation, and the backgrounds were painted in Photoshop. I had previous experience building the look for the Secret Seven spot I worked on last winter, but for this short i was more inspired by Miyazaki's water color sketches for My Neighbor Totoro. I liked that rough pencil line on a more saturated palette.

   The only thing I didn't handle was the sound effects that were added in after final delivery. Enjoy!

11 Second Club November 2014

So I've been looking for something with dialog to animate traditionally for a little while now, and I came across this month's selection at the 11 Second Club. I love this scene from Clear and Present Danger so I had to give it a shot. This is just my first pass doing some rough animation and blocking in some acting choices. His design is all over the place, but some of the core shapes are in there. I don't think I'll have time to get this wrapped up for the 11 Second Club's contest, but I'll work on it when I can nonetheless.

Windy

Frank Thomas' Merryweather Line Test

Andreas Deja posts tons of great artwork from the Nine Old Men, namely rough key animation drawings, on his blog, Deja View. The best part is that he scans the images in with the peg holes intact so it's easy to register them and see how they work. He has a passion for the Nine Old Men, and his career at Disney has afforded him great access to a staggering library to learn from.

I came across this recent post with a series of rough pose tests for Merryweather from Sleeping Beauty, and I decided to work with them to try to learn whatever I could from them. I brought in Thomas' original six pose drawings into Harmony, and worked over them to try and study the shapes and forms. Then, I wanted to actually inbetween it as if I was an assistant to Thomas. I don't believe this particular action ever made it into the film so I had no reference in terms of timing, and I made that part of it my own. There are certainly some inconsistencies in the rough animation, even among the original six poses themselves, but I think a tie-down pass would smooth that all out.

So again, this isn't really "my" rough animation per se. I'm just trying to learn what I can.

Fall chick with a wash

Threw in a wash of color...that I don't know if I like all that much. Might go back and change it up. Here it is for now.

Daily sketch 10/29/14

Over the past couple weeks, I've been accumulating a bunch of PSD's on my desktop of just random, incomplete sketches. I'm going to start finishing them, cleaning them up, and posting them here if for no other reason than to just clean up my desktop.

This one was me playing with a new ink brush in Photoshop. Wanted to get some thick-and-thin going. The rough is next to it for fun.

Work in progress.

Been working hard over the past few weeks on a new short that has been on-and-off-again since June. Making the push to get it done this week. Here's a snippet of one of the characters...don't worry her screen left hand is on another layer :)

Ghost Family

I recently completed another short for Mother Goose Club Playhouse called "Ghost Family". As usual I was in charge of storyboard, all animation, comp, and edit. I was also able to design the Ghost Family themselves which was a fun challenge. I wanted them to have an iconic look that bordered on being creepy but still kid-friendly. It was also fun building these characters with Harmony in mind to achieve their ghostly effect. Despite the fact that they are maybe only made up of four main shapes, their rig is somewhat circuitous! Its possible there was an easier way to achieve the desired look, but I am happy with the final look.

This version has a sing-along that follows the short that I did not do. Enjoy with the little ones!

Soccer Rocker

I wanted to make a quick post here about my latest pre-schooler short I did for Mother Goose Club called "Soccer Rocker" (the embedded clip is from their Youtube channel). It was posted last week and it seems to be doing really well....wonder if that has anything to do with the 2014 World Cup right now...hmmm...

So as usual, I handled all storyboard, animation, comp, and edit. As previously stated, I did a re-design on the five main characters about a year ago. All animation and comp is done in Harmony with edit being done in Premiere. There are a few shots where After Effects were used. Backgrounds and other character design are handled as usual by Astrid Riemer.  I also did a bit of story development on this one, too as the original script was a bit lose. I generally am given a music track and a script to work from, but I was given the freedom to add some elements into this one which was fun.

So there we go. Enjoy!

Practicing with some color

Just a quick sketch and color study. Here's a link to my reference.

The Planting Song

This one was finished up a few weeks ago, and is doing well for Sockeye's YouTube channel. As usual, I am given a lose script and a track to work from. I do storyboard, all animation and comp, and edit. I helped with the re-design of the main characters. I thought this one came out pretty well, and the song is cute and catchy to boot.

(Yes I am aware that Mary's hand is backwards in the video thumbnail. I don't do those :) )

McDonald's UK Spot

I helped animate this spot at Hornet a few months ago. It had been a little while since I was able to animate traditionally, so it was a lot fun. It features the most recent incarnation of The Secret Seven, a well known series in the UK that I believe dates back to WWII? If I'm wrong, please correct me!

All character animation as well as the paper and water color treatment was done in Harmony. I also did a handful of cut down versions of this where Peter plays a small "game", like a word puzzle, with the viewer, but I'm not going to post them here. This is reminding me that I need to update my reel...

Olympic Skier

It's time for the 2014 Winter Olympics so I'll try to do a few Olympic themes sketches in the next few weeks. I was goofing around with PS brushes more than anything on this one. I think I'd like to revisit it at some point to play with the colors. Here's a link to the ref image.

Doodles

Just playing around on the Surface while watching the Flyers.

A few character designs

I recently started an online character design class with James Lopez, a veteran Disney animator and designer. It's been a great experience so far as I've become a fan of Mr. Lopez's work that he posts on Facebook. Most of the stuff that he is teaching is not new to me, but it is refreshing to hear it again and told in different ways. Just kind of fills in the cracks, you know? I can't participate in the class as much as I want to (work, freelance, and kids will eat up one's spare time), but it has gotten me drawing on the side for fun again. Here's two that I did recently for the class:

Surface Pro 2 test

Like the title suggests, I did this on a Surface Pro2 in Toon Boom Harmony. I was impressed at how responsive this little tablet was in Harmony. Drawing felt natural and close to a desktop experience. That said, I'm not ditching my desktop any time soon,  but the Surface Pro2 isn't shabby.

Blue blobs.

This guy

Bull Monster Cleanup

I wanted to play around with some of the textured pencils in Harmony, so I cleaned up the last Roughs For Fun I did with the Bull Monster. I took on some freelance so almost all of my free time has been taken up with work. Still, I would squeeze in an hour or a few minutes here and there working on this. He was inked by hand with a textured tone matte.

Girl Wave

I started this about a week or so ago, and chipped away at it here and there. I wanted to play with the deformers in Harmony, so I came up with this little girl. The brush is custom made in Photoshop, and the dress is a texture fill that was also created in Photoshop. The wave animation gets a bit clunky. Perhaps I could have made a few replacement hands? I attempted to rig up a tone pass on her, but the head didn't come out the way I wanted it to. Maybe I can play around with the rig a bit more, but I wanted to move on from this little side project for now.

Roughs For Fun 07

Finally got some time to do another one of these. Certainly wasn't for lack of want that's for sure. So I've been playing around with Harmony's brushes more, and I tweaked the brush from the previous post I made. I really liked how this brush felt as I worked. I want to work with this one some more. This one took about an hour and a half.

Hello

It's been a while since I've had the chance to update the ol' Sketchblog. I've been slightly busy with work and extra freelance for the past few weeks.

   I recently made the upgrade to Toon Boom Harmony. I'm really enjoying it a lot. It certainly has many features that I felt was missing from Animate. Namely, textured brushes and pencils. I did this sketch just to play around with the tool set in Harmony. I created the brush in Photoshop and imported into Harmony. I'm still playing with the settings trying to find the sweet spot. (Updated with rough sketch).

Roughs for Fun 6

I started doing this a week or so ago, but I got busy with work and had to shelf it for a bit. One of the things I am not very good at is animating any kind of dancing character. I guess I just don't have any rhythm hah. So I wanted to do a ballerina type figure doing a simple spin. I wanted to focus more on the energy of the movement and not worry about design. Thus a "D" for a head.

I consider this a failure. She is stiff and not moving with any kind of weight. This is most likely due to my total lack of knowledge of classical dance and the mechanics that drive it. When you're missing that then you miss the potential to add any feeling or emotion into it. This is uninformed animation. However, I chose to post it because I wanted to put it all out there warts and all. I would like to come back to this maybe next time, but with a bit more of a fundamental understanding of dance and what makes it tick.

Random Doodles

Here's random doodles from today. I saw a post from James Lopez on Facebook today and it was the catalyst for all of these. It started with the back view of the woman near the off-center right, and I shamelessly tried to capture what he did with his sketch today. Mine does not hold a candle to his, but I thank him for the inspiration to doodle the rest of the page.

Roughs for Fun05

I wanted to do something with some sync, and this is one of my favorite lines from any movie ever. Period. It's from "The Room", so I can't claim credit for this amazing acting choice :)

Roughs for Fun 04

I wanted to do a run cycle so I came up with this guy. I was looking to do something a bit more anatomically correct, but still have some exaggeration in the animation. The legs at his high point pose are pretty pulled apart to give him a feeling of rushing dead-on at something/somewhere. He's really hoof'n it. Looking at it now, I wish I made his high point even higher to give him a bit more bounce. Right now he's running pretty low to the ground. I imagine if one was running that fast that they would lift higher off the ground as their back foot propelled them forward. While working I did adjust that key drawing to make him higher, but now I wish I pushed it even more...which I feel is one of my short comings as an animator in general. I don't push my poses far enough.

I approached my timing a bit differently in this one too. I tried to not fall into my normal routine, and instead attempted to feel it out more as I worked and assembled it. It's a run cycle so it should all be on 1's. Maybe I'll go back and do that?

Roughs for Fun 03

Megaman jumping and shooting. I did this one in about an hour and a half. I had to do this one in chunks. Fifteen minutes here. Ten minutes there.

Roughs For Fun02

Here's another entry in my Roughs For Fun idea. Its quick and to the point. It done in Toon Boom and finished in about an hour. Again the idea is just to shoot out some rough animation and not get too bogged down with making it clean. I just want to have some fun, and keep things loose.

Roughs For Fun01

One of the things I wanted to start doing for myself recently was just to doodle and crank out rough animation for the pure fun of it. I don't want to get bogged down making it super clean. I just want to make some stuff move, use it more as an exercise to get my hand going, and to help me try new things that I normally wouldn't be able to do on my daily jobs.

It's the new year, so why not do it now? When I was a teenager, I tried to come up with a million different ways to produce animation in my home. Hitting pause on a VHS camcorder doesn't give you very good results. Back then, I would've killed to have the type of technology that is so common place today. Here I have a computer and a Cintiq at my disposal, and I don't get the chance to sit down to animate something for myself just for the sheer fun of it. I'm going to try to change that. This is my first of hopefully many more to come.

I wanted to get this done in an hour and I succeeded in doing so. I wanted to do a floppy kind of walk. Something a little goofy and loose. So this is what I came up with. This was done in Toon Boom Animate.

Old lady

This is actually from last year. And by that I mean I did it the day before Christmas hah. I haven't been at my computer in a week and a half, so I'm trying to get back into the saddle this morning. It's going a bit rough, but I'll ease back in. The holidays were busy, and I needed some time away from my work to recharge a bit. 

Ballerina

I did this for this week's Google+ Sketch Group Community assignment. It was fun. I always liked Degas' ballerinas. 

Color sketch

Nothing fancy.

Fashion Chick

I found some reference online, and it really got me to thinking how much work I need to do when I think of costuming a design. I'm very poor in this area. I generally just put a t-shirt and some jeans on a character...which of course is boring. So I did a quick sketch of off of a model I found someplace (I'm sorry I closed the tab and I forget where!) to help get my brain in gear.

Muscle-y dude

I'd be lying if I didn't say I was looking drawings of Brom Bones over at Andres Deja's blog when I drew this meat head. I wasn't particularly trying to draw Brom Bones per se, but I was trying to get some of his swagger into the pose and attitude.

Eliza and Tommy

I've been messing around in Toon Boom Animate a bit more yesterday and today. I already had "Tommy" designed as a test to see how I could rig a character and create a template that can be replicated for a theoretical series. I added "Eliza" as his cohort in trouble...whatever that means.

As I was building her rig, I found myself getting more comfortable with the tools which I remember struggling a bit with Tommy. Also another big mental leap came to me when I was working on her hair. I was thinking of ways to make the hair in the back neatly sit behind her head and not cause any odd overlaps. This is from years and years of dealing with Flash's limitations.  It occurred to me that I could have her hair sit in any fashion that I wanted as the rig would allow me to parent it in a far more flexible manner than Flash ever could. The hair is made up of four parts with the bottom part faithfully following any head animation that I will hopefully give her in the next week or so. I may still tweak her design as I'm not entirely happy with it yet, but here's my latest progress with my foray into Toon Boom Animate.

Fix it.

Today's Gestures

I won't post any more of these as I know that an entire blog filled with nothing bu gesture drawings is kind of boring. I still plan on doing these every day that I can, but I'll refrain from posting them from here on out. So here's today gesture drawings.

Gestures 11/20/12

Some gesture drawings

Here's a few gesture drawings I did from Friday and today. Cliff Roth on G+ made a post about a website, artists.pixelovely.com, that has a selection of models, clothed and nude, that flip by every 30 seconds. It's obviously not as good as working from a live model, but the website is still a very handy resource for getting your drawing arm into motion. I'm going to try to work this into my daily warm ups.

Tommy Run Test

Here's a second test done in Toon Boon Animate. I'm trying to get a better handle on the parenting system, which works well but it makes a million layers that is a personal pet peeve of mine. I'm also trying to get a better grasp on the Drawing Substitution system which can be a bit tough to wrap your head around. However, the main thrust of this test is to try to figure out the best way of creating character templates that can be shared between shot files. The BG was done roughly in Photoshop.

Toon Boom Animate Tests

So lately, I've been experimenting with Toon Boom Animate. I actually bought it several years ago while I was searching for some new software to do traditional animation. I never really had the chance to delve into it much. I'd fool around with it here and there, but nothing substantial came from it.

Lately, I've been getting tired of Flash's nonstop nonsense. I began to realize that Flash has largely remained unchanged in maybe six or seven years. I still use CS3 because frankly CS4 was such a steaming pile of trash. It is broken in many areas so I decided to not bother with any additional follow ups in the Creative Suite...though I have been thinking about upgrading to CS6 lately...

Anywho, Flash seems to have its better days behind it. Adobe really never did much with Flash when they bought it from Macromedia, and it seems web development is moving more and more to HTML5. Heck, even Adobe is pushing for AIR. It seems the future of Flash, and thus my livelihood, has its fate sealed. I can see a day in the not-so-distant future where Adobe will kill off Flash entirely. Thus, I decided to take another hard look at Animate again.

This test is me playing with the tool set in Animate. I'm working with what I know from Flash and After Effects, and trying to go from there. I was trying to test three things here. The first was to do a walk cycle using the parenting system. Its not the best walk cycle in the world and there are a few kinks in the kneee joints that I was having difficulty dealing with. The second was to traditionally animate "something". The third part, the Guy's reaction, was done in a similar manner to how I would approach a shot in Flash but still using the rigged puppet. I also wanted to see how Animate would handle a Photoshop BG so I did a quick splash card at his reaction. I did the edit in AE because I dont know how to do it in Animate yet :)

Not much...

I really struggled this morning trying to get something out of my stylus. I had several sketches started that I just lost my way with, and just trashed them. This little girl I cranked out was the only thing that didn't make me want to turn off my computer and go back to sleep. I'll try to dig a bit deeper later on today and hopefully something decent will come out of it.

Pilot (Three-fer!)

Two-fer!

Two in one day!

Untitled

Another study

Rough sketch

Found some new PS brushes online and wanted to give them a shot.

Robot-Boba-Fett-Guy

I've been watching "The People Vs George Lucas" on Netflix during my lunch breaks lately, and I guess Boba Fett is in my head. The helmet/head is clearly Boba Fett, but I made no attempt to duplicate the rest of him. I just liked the shape of his helmet and I made up the rest in my head.

Black marker.

I use the term "marker" here loosely. This was done in Sketchbook with the marker tool. Just some shapes and a dash of color to show tone.

Snowy?

By no means is it cold out, but for some reason the idea of a girl in a winter jacket and holding a snow shovel popped into my head this morning. Maybe I'm over the summer and am ready for some colder weather? I also wanted to make her "girly" so I went with a very saturated colors. I thought it would be funny if she just grabbed her Dad's winter hat and plopped it on her head so I made that brown and the least colorful thing on her. Maybe I should have pushed the size relationship of the hat to head then? Made it a bit more over sized and ill fitting?

Old Lady

Office drone guy

One more week.

...and we'll be moved into our new house. Can't wait!

No excuses

I wasn't going to update today, but in the time it took for me to complain about it, I could have just done it. So here's a quick one for today.

Gansta'

Sometimes, a great music track gets you through. I love me some Virt, so I had his DnB Chipmix from 2007 going while sketching away a this one. Love me some chiptunes!

Just a few

I realized that I haven't updated in a littler over a week, and that is not good. If anything, this blog is to be a reminder to myself to try to sketch at least once a day for a bit, and I'm already falling behind. Sometimes, that's just what happens. Life is a busy thing! Just now, I was on my way off to bed for tonight, and stopped by the studio to shut down my system. It was then I realized that I hadn't updated in seven days. So, despite being very tired, I decided to sketch randomly for 15 minutes, and this is what I came up with. Nothing fantastic, but I wanted to put pencil to paper...or stylus to Cintiq. You get the drift.

Reggie

I don't know about you, but I'm getting slightly pumped for this year's E3. My body. It's ready.

I'm sorry

Sometimes you screw up. Say you're sorry and mean it.

Tall duder

Kind of wish I added legs and feet. Maybe I'll revisit this guy later and flesh him out a bit more.

Weird Birds

Determined Space Kid