Why Is A Raven Like A Writing Desk?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow the years keep flying by quicker and quicker, and this one isn't any different. I've been really busy at work these past few months, that I haven't been able to update this blog at all. I have tons of sketches laying around just waiting to be scanned in or taken to the next level. Hopefully I'll get around to uploading them. I feel very blessed that I've been able to keep landing jobs these past few months after my contract with Kinetic Post ended in July. In August I went to a studio in Detroit called One Of Us Films, and help with a After Effect educational animated film for children. In September I was in Royal Oak working at a studio called Pixo Factor on some motion comic stuff, once again using After Effects. Since the beginning of October I've been working at a studio called With A Twist, their Rochester studio, on Tim Burton's film Alice in Wonderland. Which explains the riddle in the blog title. I find myself for the first time using Maya on a job instead of After Effects or Hand Drawn Traditional haha. Never thought that would happen at this moment in my career. Usually I use Maya for my own personal animation tests and that's it. Alice should take me up to the end of the month, and starting in January I'll be back at Kinetic Post working on the Wonder Pets again. Its crazy that I can say I have worked on a feature film now in my career, hopefully next year and the years to come will be as amazing as this year!

Hope everyone has a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year!

And incase you were wondering the riddle in the title originally didn't have a answer, but after fans asking Lewis Carroll what the answer was to it, he came up with this - "Poe wrote on both"

-Tim

Demo Reel

Here's my latest reel, I'm hoping that ill be able to throw a larger version on my website tomorrow at some point, which brings me to my next topic..... I need to redo my website ha. So it will be Under Construction very soon. I'm still thinking about changing the reel up a bit, mixing up the shots instead of just having them in order, not sure though. Also may take the stop motion completely out. who knows.

-Tim

iPhone Game

Here's an animation from the iPhone game I was working on. It was the "Special Move" for the character. It's ment to start during the idle and end at the beginging of the idle. Unfortunately the game isn't being made anymore :( But I still got paid :) But the game isn't being made anymore :( and I spent allot of time working on these shots, actually probably more then I should have. I learn allot working on this game, mostly that in gaming animation, you cant do all the easing in and out of the poses you wanted to, because the moves have to be fast pace since its a video game. Think about Punch Out! or any other boxing game. The character throws the punch and brings it right back so the next move can be simulated.

Right now, the stage the animation is at is known as "Tone Matt's" which is why there are all those bubbles around him. I took the clean up animation, frame by frame, and added a line on another additional piece of paper to show were the shadows on the characters will be. I plan on finishing this test completely up and adding it to my reel.

Either way, it was a great experience that taught me allot when it comes to trying to freelance two gigs at once haha. Hopefully Ill be able to work with that group of animators again, and who knows maybe will get the call back to finish up the game!

-Tim

Alittle Concept Art

As I promised, here is some concept art from one of the pitches were working on at work. I don't want to talk about the story of it at all, but you can get alittle idea of it from the art work. The last few months I've been helping my buddy Carl with the environments for the pitch. It was a lot of fun! I forgot how much I like designing environments. It was a real nice change from the character work I do during the day. Hopefully I'll keep running with this and designing some more stuff for some of my own projects.
Working on this show was a real big change then what I usually work on. Anyone that has seen my work knows I'm more into comedy and family animation, like Pixar, Blue Sky, or some of the stuff Ive been animating on like the Wonder Pets. This is completely different. the show is still funny material, but different audience age range. Haha the first environment I did, I ran it by Carl for the final say and he said "Sweet man, make it more destroyed."The environments always started off so innocent and by the end there was complete death and destruction. I've posted two versions of the Navy Pier to show what I mean. Either way it was a lot of fun to switch up what I'm use to working on and trying something new! The Characters are done and ready to rig. Then the next step is to animate a short to send along with the pitch.

The process on these environments I would do is first thumbnail sketch a few different versions of the environment before I started building it in Photo Shop. After I decided on the composition, I found the resources I needed on the Internet, and some of my own pictures as well. The Photo Shop part of it, actually went by really quick actually, probably since I missed working on environments and it was something different than animation.

-Tim

Attack of the Grey Monster!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Once again I haven't been up dating my blog as much as I should, BUT here's an animation for ya to make up for it! :) I started this back in February I believe and then it got put on the back burner for awhile. I guess that's what happens when you have a job, plus trying to do concept art for pitch ideas. Who would of thunk it. I found some time this past week to tweak somethings I wanted on the animation and now its ready to destroy creates, lots and lots of grey creates.

I'm hoping to do a few posting this month of things I've been meaning to post, but haven't had the time to. Thumbnails, concept art, etc. Also now that more of my animation of the Wonder Pets and 3rd & Bird have aired, I can finish cutting that new reel of mine! Plus I figure out the converting of 24 fr to 30 fr or 3:2 pull down as they call it.

Hope you'll like it!
-Tim

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