hair-do, hair-don't

Approved front
Approved three quarter
Reject 2
Reject 1

I had to scrap the bottom two designs. Reject 1 had to be scrapped because I couldn't get the hair to look right in a front view, so I gave her new a new hair-do seen in Reject 2. I also decided to scrap Reject 2; the hair worked perfectly in a a full rotation, but it changed her character way to much. She looks like she belongs on the cast of Jersey Shore. So I quickly roughed out several other hair styles before settling on the top pics.

bored senseless

you lookin' at me?

This character is too much fun. His expressions are hilarious. I love drawing funny looking expressions. The expression still has to convey all the important information, emotion, eye direction, mood, etc., but is is very important to make it look funny. Sponge Bob, Flap Jack, Ren & Stimpy, all did this superbly.

ha ha ha hee hee hee

emotional rescue

To follow up on the post below; the other advantage of doing the character designs after a rough board, is that I can design the characters with wonderful, exaggerated, highly emoting expressions, because I can see exactly what the reaction shot is about, what a line of dialog is supposed to convey, and what emotions a character has in any given scene. The normal way of doing the designs first and the board second, often leads to designs with generic, bland, or expressionless expressions. And then it is usually up to the board artist to add all the emotion and acting. I'm just doing it in reverse, and using the actual designs in my animation.

working it

This actually turned out to be the most efficient way to work. I did the storyboard before any designs were done, just read the script and started drawing a very rough board. That's the opposite of how it is done on every production I have ever worked on. The board artist always gets a model pack with all the location and character designs before starting on the board. But since I am boarding, designing and animating this myself, I have to be very efficient. The advantage of doing a rough board first, before the designs, is that I can see exactly what BG's are needed and where they can be reused, so I don't waste time on location designs of angles and shots that I will never use. And I can see exactly what characters need to be designed and how much design work to put into the character. I can tell right away if I don't need to draw a profile or back view, or in some cases if I may only need a close up, or a single pose. There is no wasted energy here.

Pete & Bob intro

A simple, yet effective intro. The cool jazzy music was performed by one of the writers/ voice actors/creators of 'Pete and Bob', and part of the comedy team known as 'The Vestibules', Bernard Deniger.

digging up some old garbage.

I mean that in a good way. This was some test animation for an 11 minute pilot about a couple 'garbage men' I did a few years ago. This was done to establish the look and the limitations of the animation, which is practically less than South Park. But hey, it works just fine for this type of comedy. So go ahead! Press play!!

Coo coo ca choo

A couple characters from a project I am working on.

confused by tiny modern gadgets

Saw this guy on the metro this morning, kept him in my head all day until I got home and did this memory sketch.

banner for 2010

The bottom is the old banner that has been up for a long time. The top is the new banner. New decade deserves a new banner.

longest pan....EVER

Okay, maybe not the longest EVER, but certainly the longest bg pan I've ever made. It looks fairly simple and kinda empty, but that's because it will be filled with a long LOOOONNNGGG line of characters.

AND! Check out the new banner at the top of the page! I figured 5 years and over 500 posts later, it's time for a new banner.

Scallops, 2 ways

My girlfriend and I always joke about cooking something 2 ways. So here's a panning background shot....3 ways!

Stand By

This shot is jam packed with characters, so I didn't need to fuss with details in the distance since the characters will be obscuring most of the bg.

one BG, 3 moods

From left to right; happy and bright, and then ominous, and finally dark and gloomy.