A Sort of New Reel

Last month I cut a new Demo Reel up for a few reasons. Ill be cutting a new one again soon enough towards the beginning of next months (hopefully). The 3D animation I start the reel with, I'm still actually working on. I still need to do a little more over lapping with the monster head, show more pushing with the feet, as well as break up the timing of his feet more. Plus I can finally add some of my Wonder Pets work to my reel :)! Which is kind of tricky, since my reel is cut to 24 frames a second and WP is 29.97? maybe 30 frames a second. Got to double check that. So once I wrap up that Monster shot in the beginning of my reel, and find a way to have the WP play back at the correct speed, ill be posting a new reel once again. Stay Tune.

-Tim

What's going to work? TEAM WORK!

Some of my animation I worked on for the Wonder Pets finally aired on TV. This might not be my best work on the show, but its the shots I started on and I'm really excited I can finally show some of my work that I have done. Currently were working on Season 3 of the show, but Season 2 is whats being aired on TV right now. For some strange reason Nick Jr. air two of the episodes of Season 3 that I worked on (Save the Raccoon and Save the Lock Ness Monster) a whole season early. Only reason I can come up with is because Save the Raccoon was about recycling, and they aired it on Earth Day :). Either way, it was awesome to see my work on TV. They kept the animation pretty much the same besides the third shot in the quick time. They had Linny cape come over her shoulder instead of staying behind her, and had her push with her arms instead of her shoulders. The way the pipeline works is, we work on a episodes for 2 weeks, then we get 1 week of notes. Once we ship it back to New York, they still do minor tweaks on some shots for another week I believe.

Looking back at this episode is funny. It was my first or second episode with the Kinetic Post and I was so worried about messing up the shots haha. One of the issues I had is they wanted the recycling bin to move while the Wonder Pets were trying to knock it over. When I went to go animate it, all the background elements including the bin were on one layer. We had to get some new elements from Little Airplane (The studio in New York) so I could get the fix done. Now that I look back at this, that must be the smallest thing to worry about. Were constantly getting new elements from LAP or switching out a hat for a shoe.

Over all, the deadlines are tight and at times can be stressful, but working with the team I have, and animating for a living is amazing!

-Tim

Year Of The OX

Year of the OX! Ive been meaning to do this post for awhile now, just haven't got around to it. This year in the Chinese Astrology is the Ox, my zodiac symbol. Hopefully this means that even bigger opportunities will come along at some point this year :) To go even further, the element for this year is Earth, so I did the colors in Earth tones.

On another note, Ive wrapped up the tone mattes for the apple iPhone game. Now I need to scan all the animation into Photoshop and color it. One thing off my list of do. Now I can focus more on my personal projects, who knows maybe even post more ;)

The Will

Oh man! Is this another post with in a week???? Hopefully I'll be able to keep this pace up. This is one of the side projects I've been working on lately. For those of you that know about the 11 second club will notice the audio is from the December competition, yes I said it, the DECEMBER competition. Have I've been working on this piece since December?? Yes and No, between work and the iPhone game, this piece may have seen 9-12 hrs of work a week. Besides the week I got off of work for Christmas Break, I put some decent hours into the piece then. This was the first time I try to "block" out my animation in 3D, usually I do 'straight ahead" animation in 3d, but if your looking to do this professionally and want to make your director happy, you got to learn how to block out your shots first. It allows to directer to see whats going on in the shot pass the storyboard and lets them make changes on the shot before you wasted weeks on a shot. It was definitely different doing it this way, but I think it worked out better for me in the end. I read about how to block out animation at Keith Lango web site. He breaks it down pretty good, still somethings he mentions that I need to work on, but theres always the next animation test for that. The reason why I called it "The Will" is because the whole concept behind this test is the man is laying on his death bed and it is the girls job to write up his will, but as you see things didn't go to smoothly with that.

11 Second Club is a monthly competition for ANYONE who wants to and can find the time to animate to a 11 second audio clip from a movie that the website choices from. You dl the audio clip from the web site and if you want you can dl free rigs form the site as well. If you win, you get a critique from a industry professional that usually works at some big studio such as Pixar or Dreamworks. Definitely something to do if you have some free time and looking to push your skills even further like I am. Only way to get better is to put the time in.........or pay someone to do it for you, but that doesn't feel as good in the end now does it.

-Tim

It's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you...

It has been quite awhile since my last post. I've been busy busy busy!!!! Yes I'm using that as an excuse. Besides freelancing at Kinetic Post, one of my friends Jodie Hudson offer me some freelance, work on a iPhone game. Its being done in Traditional Animation (or Classical Animation what ever you wish to call it). After each character is done being animated, were taking every frame into Photoshop to be color and output for the programmers to create the game. I'm not looking forward to scanning in every individual frame one by one, its like you can feel the minutes being taken off your life with every slow scan. After that stage though it should go quickly. Right now I'm working on tone mattes for one of the characters I'm responsible for. On top of the iPhone game I'm also doing some CG animations on (one which I hope to post next week) to build up my reel a little more.

Any who, I saw that I was called out by Jodie in my last post ha ha. So that kick started me to draw a quick picture and post it. So here is Fyllo, everyone one favorite jungle boy again. I thought it would be sweet for Fyllo to slide down and around the jungle on a giant banana leaf when he can. Its been awhile since I spent more than a few mintues on a sketch, so with this drawing it felt great to complete it!

-Tim

All He Needs Is A Hug

Samurai Jack! Who doesnt love that show! The style of it was great, and it didnt use dialog to get the story, emotion and point across. They used acting to tell the story. Anyone can move something across the screen, its when you actually can put feeling into it that you sell it to the viewer. But anyways, I designed this character, Fyllo, a year or two ago (that sketch is below) and dug him up for the Art Blog Challenge. The Challenge was draw in another style. I though I would give Samurai Jack another try. I did this once in college too, but quickly found out in the critque that there was alot I did wrong haha. So I study it alot more this time, did the drawing in vector using Illustrator, use darker lines to show when things are overlapping, and try to really simplify things from my verison of the drawing. I dont think I nailed the style 100% yet, but alot closer then last time.

Hes pretty simple character, a giant flower on his head with vines growing over his body. His weapon of choice, a sheild and some rocks. I picture him living in a rain forest, a forest protector of sorts. I have Fyllo in some other poses roughed outed as well but just havent had the time to clean up the drawings and render them. In the future I want to make him look more kid like, somewhere in his teens. Also in the poses I drew, he always on the attack, I want to show the fun side of him as well.

-Tim

Draw With My Left Hand? ARE YOU CRAZY?

The second challenge of the Art Club Challenge was to draw with the opposite hand you usually draw with. What a challenge! Like I mention in my last entry, I was packed at work last week and really didn't have time for anything else but I managed to knock this out in 3 or 5 min. Which is why I didn't really want to post it up on the Art Club Challenge, I didn't have the time that I wanted to put into the drawing. But I ran into Jared and he just said to send it to him as it. Since its going to be posted on the Art Club Challenge Blog, I might as well post it up on mine, along with a right hand version of the drawing of course ha. The Right Hand Verizon is on the top and the Left Hand Verizon is on the bottom, but I'm sure you figure that out on your own. I've been reading I Am Legend a lot which is why I think I ended up drawing a vampire of sorts. Completely different then the kind in that book, but more like Dracula. Over all, I like the challenge as much as I hated it. I felt that I started having a little more control over my left hand the more I was drawing with it. It would of been cool to see what the sketch would of looked like if I had put 30 min or an hour into it. Maybe another day.....

-Tim