The Pursuit of Character

Check these out! Found them on youtube, it’s part of a series of commercials I worked on a couple of months back. I animated the bottles, those little balls going down the “digestive sytem”, and cameras. A buddy of mine (Matt Johnson) did the fluid effects. Funny thing is we worked at Technicolor together and we both ended up at this gig right after, total surprise when we ran into each other. Anyways, this is the first time I’ve actually seen these commercials in their final cut.

This was my first commercial job and it was pretty intense with 7 spots in just under a month, but I learned a ton (especially how to implement changes quickly).

This past week a couple of pretty sweet looking trailers were released. The first is a stop-motion movie called “Coraline” directed by Henry Selick who also directed The Nightmare Before Christmas. This one is coming out of Laika up in Oregon. This one looks amazingly cool and I can’t wait to see it when it comes out.

This second is a CG movie called “Astro Boy” based on the anime and manga from the 1950’s and 60’s. Imagi Studios (the guys behind TMNT movie) are handling this one. This looks like a lot of fun and I really dig the part where he punches his way through the volcano.

rock ON!

I just finished up my second pass at blocking for this dialogue clip. Feel free to drop by and check it out. Like before you can go to the animation page on top or just click on the link below. Any comments or feedback are welcome.

Sometimes I Lie – blocking plus

So while I was out gathering all kinds of reference to start planning out my dialogue shot, I ran across a series of videos on youtube that just had all kinds of cool reference in ‘em. They’re a web series called “Screentest” by NYTimes.com/TMagazine.

Some things I found interesting with the above video:

• Head gesture at around :44
• Head motion at 2:05 (when she turns back to camera, she blinks with only one eye)
• Check out the breath at around 2:44
• Insane how many head accents you notice with the volume off, but when its on it feels natural

I think these are great to study for head accents, blinks, eye darts, etc. pretty much anything to do with the head and face. Granted these people aren’t acting any specific character or emotion but it’s still a great way to study facial/head motion.

There’s a whole series of these so be sure to check ‘em out and keep on keepin’ on!

I just uploaded my first blocking pass for a new dialogue shot I’ve been working on. I was going upload some of my planning and thumbnails but it’s not showing up as clear as I’d like after I scanned them in.

You can get to it via the Animation Page link at the top of my blog or click the link below. Feel free to leave any comments or feedback!

Sometimes I Lie – 1st Pass Blocking

I’m still trying to work out a few things before my blog is all settled in. For the most part it works, but I’ll probably rearrange a few things down the line so it looks a bit more organized. If anything isn’t working or something seems out of place, leave a comment and I’ll try my best to fix it.

Well first off, thanks for visiting my blog!

Animation is a non-stop journey with all kinds of new things to learn along the way, all in the pursuit of that illusion of life. This blog is way for me to share my own experiences in that pursuit of character in my animation. I hope to be able to share things I run across in this journey from video references, inspiring drawings, clips, and everything in between. I also plan to post my animation tests here for any feedback anybody might have.

I hope you enjoy the journey!