M @ BCAM

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

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.

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

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'

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!

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

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

Some animation

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

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...

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

Just saw this on the BoingBoing.



Very nice.

You Call This a Crime Scene?

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

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

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

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.

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!!!

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

Suck that, Dow Jones.

With Apologies to Jim Flora

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

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

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: