CONSTIPANIMATED

Now, with more idiotic made up words.

2011-02-18T16:46:00.000-08:00

I am going to continue this blog on tumblr. Actually, I already started and didn't tell anyone, but since you're such a special good friend, I decided to let you know before everyone else. Now instead of coming here, go to:

http://constipanimated.tumblr.com

I'm doing this because I could not resist the allure of "tumblr" being an even stupider word than "blogger", and also I one day plan on having all my online stuff in one place instead of maintaining both a blog and website that overlap. Once I get everything consolidated, I will enjoy neglecting just one site for months on end rather than two.

This is the part where I would repeat the new website for you, but I won't because I know you're smarter than that.

Thanks.

Super Bus Guy Pitches Super Bus Idea to Room Full of Dream Crushing Cynics

2010-08-06T08:17:00.000-07:00

Don't give up, Super Bus Guy.

Friday the 13th Part LXXCIVII: Jason vs. Ricky

2009-11-13T07:59:00.000-08:00

It's your lucky day. I have two updates. Firstly, here's a clip from the show I'm working on at the Wild Brains. It's the Ricky Gervais podcast from a few years ago, but now, cartoonified! Cartoon Brew ran a clip a few days ago, and their readership faithfully generated a wonderfully diverse list of reasons to not like it. Tough crowd. As someone directly involved in the production of the show, I have empirically determined that it is funny. Of course it's because the original audio is funny, and the added visuals are designed to complement rather than upstage or detract from that, but this show is eliciting genuinely spontaneous laughter. The people building this cartoon are laughing - bitter, sullen animators, zombified, Avid-bound editors, and Kellman, don't get me started on Kellman - all actually laughing at this show despite being so close to it. That just doesn't happen. So if its making us laugh, then something must be working.

Secondly, I updated my website. After several days of tinkering, I can proudly say that I am now an expert at generating a window full of ActionScript 3 Compiler errors. But it works well enough that I can stop beating on it and call it done-ish. Plus, it's all modular, so if I ever make anything new again, my webpage will automatically sniff it out of the wild and seamlessly drop it into the appropriate gallery*. So check it out and get back to me. That's your job. Thanks.

Well, that was quick.

2009-05-05T23:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the lack of updates recently. My current day job consumes nearly all my waking hours, so blogging got kicked on down the line along with the many other non-essential things in my life such as basic hygiene, interpersonal communication, etc... But my current gig is wrapping up, so here's the latest, and some not-so-the-latest.

Remember The Sloppy Seconds? The project that was moved from CN's shorts program to regular development? Yeah, well it dropped out of regular development. This was in early March. Not too surprising, since my boards plunged right into deep end of the TV-PG crib sheet I was given. More so than where CN probably wants to be. Besides, it was to be an animated cartoon, which by many accounts is something that makes CN nervous these days. So I own it outright now, and can shop it around. Anyone interested in a slam-dunk for a 15 to 30 y.o. male-skewed lowbrow physical-gag driven paradigm shift? Give my people a call.

In other news, my Thesis film was shown at USC's annual screening in March and also piqued some interest. The good kind. Hopefully something will come of it that I can put in a substantive post, but anything I write presently would be irresponsibly premature and wildly speculative. And as you regular readers know, that's a habit I'm trying to quit.

H.G. > F.G.? (and also some other news.)

2009-02-14T17:47:00.000-08:00

So I just completed my first week over at Disney TV Animation. I'm working in the Frank G. Wells building, which seems to me just one initial off from being a far more fantastical and perilous workplace. Despite that, I'm in the development division, working on storyboards for show pilots created for the new XD channel. It's pretty fun, but I still don't know what the "XD" stands for. Rest assured, finding that out will be my first priority for week #2.

In other news, the short I pitched at Cartoon Network has been moved out of the Cartoonstitute shorts program and into "regular" development. I can't really comment on this further, because I have yet to meet with the new stewards of my show, but the only thing I know with any certainty is The Sloppy Seconds will not be made into a short. At least not in its current form.

I do hope the Cartoonstitute continues, though. The first batch of shorts produced both in-house and overseas was screened for the Flash crew recently, and word is they're looking good. Pringle and the crew are running a clinic on spinning straw into gold over there, raising the bar on what's possible with Flash. There's a wide variety of art direction among the shorts, and it seems Pringle is translating that into a variety of animation styles as well. It's cool to see them stretch out and show off where they can take things.

Rubber Scars returns

2009-01-19T20:50:00.000-08:00

Anthony is bringing Rubber Scars back. The original podcast consisted of odd moments recounted by emotionless synthesized voices as though the speakers were unsettled by their memories, like robot radio theater of hypnogogic hallucinations. You probably missed it, which is too bad. The good news is, he's rebooting it in blog format. Check it here.

It Lives…

2009-01-14T20:26:00.001-08:00

My Cartoonstitute™ storyboard pitch was today.

I stood before a Crush or Clobber or whatever the collective term for Development Executive is and pitched my short, The Sloppy Seconds, without once having to summon my mastery of jazz hands. I got a lot of laughs, which seemed to coincide with the jokes and gags in the board and not from my haircut or anything, so that was good.

The verdict? I got a solid Non-No, which means I haven't been cleared to go straight into production yet, but I also haven't been shut down. I've also apparently broken a short streak of flat-out "No's", so I'll take that as a positive.

Thanks to everyone who crossed their fingers for me and a special shout-out goes to the guy who sacrificed the chicken. I do appreciate it.

Subversion City

2008-12-28T22:02:00.000-08:00

Dear Interwebs, that previous description (now deleted) about my kiddy cartoon in-the-works being "like The Tin Drum, only more upsetting" was a joke. I mean, c'mon people, really?

But regardless, it has been brought to my attention that the speculative echo chamber of the blogospere may be starting to cement this little red herring into fact. So just for the record, my cartoon will be completely devoid of characters willing themselves into Dwarfism, Polish street thugs, percussion instruments, or any traces of the Third Reich. Although at least three of those elements do sound like a winning combination for capturing that tender and elusive 6-12 y.o. demographic.

Anyways, sorry for misleading anyone earlier. I'll post some info about the short as soon as I have something postable. Until then, I think I can safely reveal that it's tentatively titled The Sloppy Seconds. No joking.

In development

2008-12-22T21:40:00.000-08:00

Hey, here's a brief update. The idea I pitched to the shorts program at Cartoon Network (The Cartoonstitute) was given the go-ahead to move on to storyboards, which I've just completed. So, next up is the board pitch, which is currently scheduled for an unspecified time in the near future. If that goes well and doesn't conclude with me falling through the trap door in the floor of development's conference room, then I actually get to direct my own one-off short cartoon at the studio! Purty cool.

♪♫ Meet The New Bike ♪♫

2008-11-15T12:06:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Benson and the crew at Jones Bicycle, my chainline issues are resolved, so my Xtracycle project is no longer a project. It's for reals.
VegOil wagon, you've just been put on notice.

Automotive transport will soon pass into quaint obsolescence, joining the Geneva Convention and United States Constitution. And my money's on longtail bicycles emerging as the official vehicle of The Outquisition. Are you ready? Meet me at Bartertown!

M @ BCAM

2008-10-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

We took the little guy to BCAM at LACMA over the weekend. He liked both Hirst & Koons (whod've guessed?) but running around inside Serra's Band was by far his favorite. He may have liked it even more than riding in the elevators.

One Less

2008-10-18T15:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we wrapped up animation on the sixth and final season of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Three-and-a-half years is the longest I've worked on one project, and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to work with a group of such fun and talented individuals.

The dissolution of the crew is unfortunate in itself, but what's really lamentable is how there are very few shows that are produced from start to finish, 100% in the U.S., with zero outsourcing. Foster's ending means there is now one less. Hopefully the trend will swing the other way again before too long,

It's a Wrap. A carne picante wrap con queso.

2008-08-20T09:39:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: I just got word that this will be featured on Channel Frederator starting on Tuesday August 26. Please check it out, and don't forget to give it a high rating! YouTube version is here.

Dripping With Pathos

2008-08-01T20:58:00.000-07:00

Vocal chameleon Eric Bauza put his golden pipes through their paces today as we recorded the voiceover for the film. It went very well. Not only is he a true pro, nailing multiple takes, but he's dang funny to boot. I had to stifle outbursts of laughter while he was performing. I really hope the recording didn't pick any of it up, but if you hear any muffled guttural noises in the film, that would be yours truly trying not to yuk it up on a hot mic. We recorded in the studio behind his house, which is essentially a giant solar oven with a really nice microphone setup. And man, was it HOT! But Eric graciously went above and beyond what I asked of him, and I think the film is going to be much better for it. Thanks, Eric.

SIGGRAPHIN'

2008-07-30T08:52:00.000-07:00

We all live with unanswered questions. For some, it is how to make the world a better place. For others, it is a gnawing ponderance on the nature of human existence. Still others lie awake nights, obsessing over Flash's Increasingly Vital Role in Games, Online Entertainment, Art, and Academia. Well, if you count yourself as someone who falls into that last group, you're in luck! I will be part of a ~~tribunal~~ discussion panel assembled to examine this very topic, which is part of SIGGRAPH's exhibition program this year. Other people sitting behind the long table with me will be Evan Spiridellis, Ken Martin, Ashley Postlewaite, and Dave Markowitz, all highly esteemed experts in their fields. Rita Street will be moderating, preferably lobbing me some softballs. I will also be doing a technical breakdown of my thesis film, probably using portions of this blog as visual aid. So please, please come see us and absolve your soul of this crushing, crushing weight!

Picture? . . . . . . Locked!

2008-07-21T12:07:00.000-07:00

Here's what my sound collaborators get to deal with:

Whoa, this cartoon has so much pink and green in it that John K would probably rip me a new one.

Color Cards

2008-07-20T00:34:00.001-07:00

Close-ups of shifters 'n' throttles...

Some animation

2008-05-11T20:24:00.000-07:00

So here's a taste of the animation. There's still some things to be done, like fixing some BG's and adding candy jiggle layers and stuff, and of course some audio to replace the metronome, but the timing is pretty much done.

Mission: Accomplished

2008-05-05T13:15:00.000-07:00

I've graduated. I'm certain that I have. Last Friday, I met with the Thesis committee and showed my assembly reel, which has the character animation completed, but lacks the tight editing and effects layers that will imbue the film with a nice lustrous sheen. And sound, it needs some sound, but I've got that angle covered.

So despite most of my presentation being fraught with technical snafus, it went very well. Well enough that at the end, I filled out a form and was warmly congratulated by all present. It was very nice, but also something like running a marathon for so long that when you cross the finish line, you continue running past the cheering crowds and out of sight, with the fat ornamental finish line ribbon trailing from your face.

I'll post some BGs when I get a moment, and also some clips when I get the effects dropped in. Keep checking.

Also doing some writing...

2008-04-11T08:21:00.000-07:00

It's a walking bomb that can throw a punch, and Tokyo SWAT uses it to kick beaucoup kaiju ketsu.
Smart Bomb began as a pitch for an action show where I work at CNS, and now as Sumato Bakudan, it will be a mini-series independently published by Standalone Comics. Shawn Toshikian and I just finished writing Volume One. Jeff Wamester is doing the art, with Joe Suitor designing the monsters. Check the Standalone webpage and blog for status updates. It's going to be chou sugoi.

Star Wars by Saul Bass

2008-03-03T22:02:00.000-08:00

Just saw this on the BoingBoing.

Very nice.

You Call This a Crime Scene?

2008-02-26T21:23:00.001-08:00

By this point, you may have noticed that pretty much everything is lacking outlines. This was a decision I made before I started animating, which grew out of a test to see if I could animate characters without drawing and inking and coloring. Instead, I'm animating layers of colored shapes that make up the characters, if that makes sense.

I decided to do it this way for two reasons. First, it can be a time-saver. Not having outlines means eliminating a cleanup/inking stage, and sort of eliminates a coloring stage as well.

Secondly, I'm not crazy about Flash's brushes, so getting decent lines means going back and forth to Illustrator, which isn't worth the hassle, especially since cut and paste between Flash and Illo has been broken since 2004.

But I'm kind of missing having outlines. I still have them as a first step, drawing stuff out in Illustrator:

I'll use that one Illustrator drawing as a starting point for when I get into Flash, so there is a little cleanup, but usually just once per scene, not for every extreme or key pose. Here's what this guy looks like all Flashified:

I can live with no outlines this time around. But having no inlines means I have to find some other way to define where the character overlaps itself. I thought I might avoid overlap all together by forcing myself to have strong silhouettes for every pose, but it's a lot harder to not overlap once stuff starts moving. My solution is to separate overlaps with gradients. It looks okay in still images, but in motion, it looks like everyone has dirty forearms.

So, back to animating by building up layers of shapes. It's really not any different than what you would do by roughing things out on paper. I still do the big masses first and layer on top until I get to the secondary action passes. Here's a wireframe version of a grappling sequence. Click on the thumbnail to see the animated GIF:

Each colored outline is a separate layer. Almost everything is shape-tweened, except for the hands and heads, which are symbols. The luchador's face appears to hang off his head because it's masked off except for the top corner of his brow. It looks correct when it's rendered.

Smoke & Pixels

2008-01-25T14:06:00.000-08:00

So I want the exhaust trails for the vehicles in this film to be scribble lines that expand or "bloom" the longer they hang in the air. I figured I'd try to implement Maya's Paint Effects for this.

In order to be truly lazy, I found a way to have the paint strokes derived from curves that trace through particles affected by a dynamic field. Geez, did I really just write that?

It is a bigger pain than it sounds like, but now that all the work on the front end is done, I have a way to generate a variety of scribble styles and and shapes with relatively little effort.

Firstly, make lots of dots.

Then, connect them.

Add texture, and call it done.
Also handy for endorsing checks.

Big Thanks to the indestructible Brian Coffee for his Melscripting help!

Animation Nearing Completion

2008-01-21T08:58:00.000-08:00

So I'm plugging away to get this film wrapped up in the next couple months. The animation for the shots is nearly complete, and then it's moving on to effects and BGs. Oh, the BGs.

Anyways, here's a pre-grappling showdown between our lucahdor protagonist and a hot rod UFO-flying goon, complete with amped-up metronome track.

And yeah, it's on 3's. Is that a problem?

Specflix

2008-01-14T19:39:00.000-08:00

Back when Crimenals was making the rounds, a new boutique agency recruited me to spec out some spots for Netflix, in the same style as my film. I banged 'em out pretty quickly, each one in about a week, so they're not too polished, but what de heck. I haven't seen them in a while and figured they're worth a chuckle.

Monsters

Screwball

Blaxploitation

Because that's what I do.

2007-10-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, USC has outed me as an "emerging talent". Consequently, this thursday, November 1st, I will be part of a panel discussion called Redefining Animation, which is part of the Animation: From Avant-Garde to Popular Culture symposium happening in Los Angeles and San Diego.

I will be showing clips from my runaway blockbuster absurdist noir mashup Crimenals , and talking about how and why I made the film.

There will be some bona-fide animation lumenaries on the panel as well, and it's free! So if you're handy to Los Angeles, come on by.

Recommendation: BUY!!!

2007-07-31T12:16:00.000-07:00

Look! I can practically double your money in just one week!

Suck that, Dow Jones.

With Apologies to Jim Flora

2007-07-06T22:33:00.001-07:00

I'm contributing these two pieces to a group art show called Copyright Infringement at Cartoon Network Studios.

They're my take on what record covers would look like in the alternate universe where Jim Flora was commissioned to do the art for Sabbath and The Stooges. Or something like that.

They're hand-pulled screen prints. The show will be up for about a month or so.

It opens this coming Tuesday, the 10th at 5:30. If you are handy to Burbank, come by and see these and some other good stuff.

Layout Drawings

2007-03-30T21:57:00.000-07:00

Here are a few old layout and pose drawings from when I was still using pencil and paper. They're so streaky and gray because I was using a nearly broken large-format scanner to capture the 11x17 sheets.

hot-rodded halftracks parked in a cave

antagonists' briefing room

heroes' special handshake

worm's eye view: luchador & ape hangers

pondering some hatchets

The Opposite of Prolific

2007-03-30T07:35:00.000-07:00

I'm back. Searching for and then moving to a new place with a five month-old infant in tow is not something I recommend.

Anyways, while I'm getting back up to speed, I'll post some not so recent stuff. Here's a luchador walk cycle:

Scene in Progress

2006-12-21T12:38:00.000-08:00

Here's a scene in various stages of completion, featuring a luchador, a piñata, and some starving children. I do things in several passes working from very crude to the final details. For some reason this particular scene has elements of all stages, so you can get an idea of how I'm fleshing it all out. I could go into more detail on the process, but if you're already familiar with Flash, it's pretty obvious just by looking. If you're not familiar with Flash, I would just bore you.

On top are three of my chickenscratch storyboard thumbnails. Down below is the corresponding animation. You can hear the click track and the temp music in this shot as well.

My Laziness Quotient

2006-12-20T14:25:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, Mad Magazine defined the Laziness Quotient as something like "the amount of work you do to avoid having to do work." This little clip reminds me of that definition.

One of my characters is a piñata. He gets yanked around a lot and the candy inside him needs to jiggle around. Rather than actually animate all of the little bits of candy, I tried to figure out a way to automate all the secondary action. My solution was to use Maya's jiggle deformers to get the candy to bounce around. I still have to animate the containing mass to follow the body, but it's less work than animating each little candy separately. At least I think it is.

If any Flash experts out there are reading this, and know of a way to make collision detection work within a boundary shape, and also how to make actionscript results renderable, please drop me a line. If I can keep this all within Flash, I'd be much less lazy.

Note how the character animation is pencil line. This test was done early on, about three years ago, when I was still drawing everything on paper.

Thumb-O-Matic

2006-12-19T22:53:00.000-08:00

Once I got all the little thumbnails sketched out, I strung them together with a temporary soundtrack to get a rough idea of shot durations and timing. The soundtrack consists of music that I chose to suit the mood of each scene, ranging from Wagner to Henri Mancini to Slayer. I brought the volume way down and added another audio track of metronome clicks derived from each piece of music, so I have a really prominent click track playing over top muted musical tracks. I cut the thumbnail sequence to this click track. Then I rendered each scene out as a quicktime movie to be used as a template in Flash. More on that in another post.

Where I'm Calling From

2006-12-19T00:10:00.000-08:00

Rumor has it that Jeffrey Katzenberg reads The Illusion of Life every year. I can relate; as an animator, I make it a point to curl up with Robert Appleby's Modern Business Administration every Christmas.

Seriously though, I kind of wish Mr. Katzenberg and his peers would read John Culshaw's The Virtues of Flatness instead. A mere five pages, it's shorter than the even the index of Frank and Ollie's book, but it masterfully articulates how engaging animation can be if it weren't so hung up on apeing realism. Published in The Fortnightly in 1953, it's uncannily prescient in its discussion of the "Third Dimension," a term Mr. Culshaw used to describe the extent of Disney's rendering quality at the time. In the context of today's animation, it's pretty easy to apply that term to another, more current technique. Does this fifty year old argument still hold up? Take a look:

Boards

2006-12-18T22:52:00.000-08:00

Since I'm the only one working on this film, the boards are pretty loose. Put another way, they're illegible to anyone but me. Below are some spreads from a Moleskine notebook, so you get an idea of how tiny the drawings are. When I'm boarding, I usually think for a good long time before I draw anything. Then when I'm ready I will run through sequences in my mind and make tiny thumbnails in the panels as I go. When finished, I end up with little visual bookmarks for the sequence that's knocking about in my head. There's room to flesh things out more when I do the blocking and keying passes later on. But for a first step, I get the broadest of the broad strokes down in these little thumbnails.

2 Pop...

2006-12-18T22:49:00.000-08:00

Great. Just what everyone needs. Another animation production blog. Turn back now if you want. But if you stick around, you'll probably end up seeing some pictues and some line tests and probably some final scenes for my MFA Thesis Film, peppered with some random thoughts that I can unload here to clear my head once in a while. You'll get to see how I work. And you can virtually point and laugh at me. So here goes:

A brief recap:
I was/am a student in the MFA Animation program at USC. I was in the midst of production on my Thesis film when I took a full-time job at Cartoon Network. I practically stopped working on my own film for over a year. Now I'm re-assembling all the pieces and filling in the gaps to get it completed. In addition to seeing current progress charted here, you'll get to see how the process has evolved over time, from fully hand-drawn to a paperless digital approach.