tree swing

2D Test | January 2011 | :14 second
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Haha, ok so I did this over the past couple days while on vacation here from work and AM. I'd consider this my first real 2D animation. I've done small flipbooks and things before but they were all like 30 minutes work at most, I spent a few days working on this one. It ain't perfect, great, or hell ... really all that good, but it was a fun learning experience so I figured I'd post it here. I like being able to draw things where you want them in 2D, that part is great. Keeping "on model" and consistent volume is quite hard, even with something this simple. I made this with Plastic Animation Paper.

bon appetit

Acting Test | October 2010 | :14 second
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Well, this animation was a bit hurried at the end. Animation Mentor is in full swing and I don't have the time to devote to finishing it 100% proper, but I didn't want to leave it undone for the next 18 months so I spent the weekend getting it passable. Actually for the most part I think it works. Not 100% satisfied with the BOING action and it feels kinda posey to me in the beginning. Anyway, that being said, glad I finished it instead of just discarding it forever.

escape

Action Test | August 2010 | :10 second
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I always liked the armless parkour tests that AM students were doing, so I figured I'd give it a go. It turned out to be more difficult than I expected. The wall run, the flip, the backroll ... I had to work on all of those quite a bit. I wound up having to pull the camera back quite a bit to fit the motion in and I constantly fought to keep the framecount down and not have it bloat. Anyway, this took about 2 weeks of my night/weekends.

vikingwalk

Action Test | August 2010 | :04 second
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I wasn't going to bother posting this on this site but then figured what the hell. This was done over a few days as just a simple walk exercise. I decided to give him a bit of personality and he wound up with Viking colors. I'll be doing more of these seeing how I need the practice.

fetch

Action Test | July 2010 | :08 second
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Did another little action/mechanics test with another character this month. Overall I'm pretty pleased with how this came out. There are a few things I wish I could have done better or maybe found a way to fix. Lotta popping of the legs that I had to fight through. Putting this guy in awkward poses didn't do me any favors. But it's a kinda fun little thing.

chaplin

Action Test | July 2010 | :07 second
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Well, this wasn't the body mechanics test I had in mind, but I think it'll do. This was going to just start as a character walk to keep things going while I brainstormed, but it turned into a little bit bigger of a project. I've seen an AM student do a walk in the past which was really good. I decided to take this a little bit further. A lot of time was spent studying reference for this and planning how I was going to go about it. The Tramp walked slightly different depending on his mood and what was going on at the time (probably the era if I really studied). So here's my take with a little chase story for good measure.

makethenoise

Acting Test | June 2010 | :13 second
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Update! I got 24th place for this entry. Drats.

Here is my June entry into the 11sec Club. Kinda a fun little soundclip with the guy moaning. I lost too much time on this one working out some camera issues early on, but I burned the midnight oil the past week to get it into submission shape. Sorta planning on some body mechanics tests here this next month.

dabomb

Acting Test | May 2010 | :14 second
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Update! I got 15th place for this piece. Have to work harder.

First off, I did animate in April! Just numerous test exercises and nothing worth showing up here. Carrying on...

This is my May entry into the 11 Second Club Competition. It's my 1st Sound Effect Animation. I like how this came out, I had lots of feedback which helped out immensely. No COD:MW2 either, so that helped! Anyway, fun time. I'm already working on another animation plus the new 11sec soundclip should be released in a few minutes. I'll see what that is and may be back for more next month.

ontheteam

Acting Test | March 2010 | :12 second
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March entry to 11sec club. I had to whip this one into shape at the last minute since I spent most of the month playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I may come back to it in a few weeks to relook at things and update it, but for now I think I'm going to move on to something else and not get bogged down anymore by this one animation. I think a personal project is up next.

chef

Music Test | February 2010 | :13 second
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Update! I got 22nd place and average above 6 stars for this entry. New highs on both accounts!

Here's my entry into February's 11 Second Competition. This is my first animation set to musc. The soundfile was actually pretty catch, and really lent itself to being some sort of stage show with violins and dancing. Well, I didn't want to follow what I figured would be this month's "cliche" ... so I decided to put my animation to a bit someone working. The music reminded me of some french cafe or shop, and after a few hours of brainstorming I decided on a french baker working on some dough in his bakery. I have to say, it's a bit complicated animating to music ... espcially animating dough with it. I probably followed the beats a bit too much maybe, but I overall really like it.

kingfu

Action Test | January 2010 | :08 second
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Wow, I spaced updating this one on the site. This is the piece I did the first few weeks of January. I was watching some video of Elvis and he was doing his kung-fu demonstrations on stage during concerts, so I thought I'd do something along those lines. I was going to parody him more, but he was so bad at it, I decided to just capture the spirit of his routine.It was fun working on a 100% perosnal project for a month, probably back to the 11sec club comp here tomorrow.

crook

Acting Test | December 2009 | :13 second
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Update! I tied for 23rd out of 134 entries.

Here's my entry for the December 11secClub. This makes 5 months in a row. Probably animated more these past 5 months than any other period of time in my life, which has been great! Anyway, this animation was pretty fun. It had the most animation for 2+ characters in a scene that I've ever done. Some light camera work to keep things interesting. My favorite part is when the old guy gets mad ... as well as the moments leading up to that. Next I'm "planning" on taking a month break from the competition and working on a totally personal choice piece. I still kinda want to enter though ... having a month deadline to get things done has been great for me. I've animated MUCH more.

cocoon of horror

Acting Test | November 2009 | :15 second
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UPDATE! I tied for 30th out of 246 entries. Top 12% roughly. About the same placewise, but an improvement percentagewise. Gotta be better this month I guess to improve more.

Here's my November entry for the 11 Second Club. This took 40 hours of work to get it to submission level (that includes planning, modeling, animating, lighting, rendering, compositing, etc..). The story is pretty straight forward. This guy is in some AA type of meeting and tells his soul crushing secret. Pretty fun clip to work on. Since I had a pretty subdued animation for a lot of it, I decided to add a couple more characters to help sell the scene. I used the MooM rig agian, this is by far my favorite rig for audio clips. He has the best face setup I've used ... not perfect ... but the best I've managed to get my hands on. The new 11sec clip is already out and I'm already listening to the audio to get ideas. Hope to go 5/5 to finish the year, then maybe take a month off from the comp and do something else.

tv is power

Acting Test | October 2009 | :11 second
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UPDATE! I placed 31st out of 207 entries this month. Top 15%! Not a great place I know, but pretty good improvement if you ask me. That's all I can hope for. I'm already working on this months (planning).

And here's the October entry for 11sec club. This was another fun audio clip. I didn't have two characters or dynamics to fiddle with this time so that gave me more time to focus on the main character. I did do some animated prop work with the remote, but it wasn't too bad to deal with. I also animated the camera a bit ... which I pretty much never do. Anyway, the gist of this was a supervillain monologue ... with inspiration from The Incredibles, of course. Animation wise, the hardest parts were timing the popup and remote toss at the TV, and the walk down the stairs. Acting wise, I just sort of acted out ideas until I got something I liked and felt fit the audio. I wanted to stay away from an actual fist at the end ... settled on holding the remote. Still kinda cliche, but I think it's an appropriate choice. About 6 hours until the next clip is announced from 11sec club, so time to chill out for a bit before starting all over.

that tone

Acting Test | September 2009 | :11 second
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Here's my September entry for the 11 second club. I moved up the ranks a number of spots this month, so that's a plus. I had a fun time animating to this soundclip. The mean woman was just great. I tried to push the facial shapes more than I have in the past. I like the direction that's heading. Also on this one I did a dynamic string simulation. Kinda cool, but I wasted a full day getting it to work right ... for not much gain really. Ah well. Already well into the October competition, so tune back in a few weeks to see the finished version.

oneway

Acting Test | August 2009 | :11 second
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Couple weeks late in getting this animation up here. This is my first entry in the 11 Second Club competition. I overall like how this came out ... could be better though maybe. I went for a Maltese Falcon film noir idea, which made for a cool look I think. It was fun having the deadline of getting this done in a month and I'm already on to the next one. Funny thing about this animation, most people really liked the little guy, and I totally just did his animation on the fly.

bulldozer

Acting Test | May 2009 | :12 second
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UPDATE! I uploaded a new version of this where the camera is a bit closer so you could see things a bit better. Old version is here: OLD VERSION

Finally got this one finished! I started this a couple months ago and it just took quite some time to get done. The audio is taken from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It just sorta struck me as a fun clip to do with the villain guy. This is two "forest" animation settings in a row, time to get off that kick and go do something else. I'm not as loose as I want to be yet, but maybe I'm loose enough for the acting choices in this shot? I dunno. Hardest part of animating? Getting enough feedback.

iDinDoit

Action Test | February 2009 | :12 second
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Update! I've gone back and updated this animation to try and loosen it up some more. I've updated the links to point to the new version. Just for kicks, here's the link to the old version: clicky clicky

Well, this one turned out much better than the last. I started this last November doing planning. I lost most of December & January to just being too busy. I like this one quite a bit. Turned out pretty much how I wanted it. The overall project went much better than the last one. That was a mess...this was pretty well thought out and executed accordingly. I've already started working on some cycles while I work up an idea for the next full animation. Back to it!

villain

Action Test | August 2008 | :20 second
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Oy. Long time no update. To be fair, this is a 20 second animation with 2 characters and I did do quite a bit of animation in between (game cycle tests & whatnot). Anyway....this is an example of an animation gone wrong. I had it all planned out (I thought) and then things expanded and just never quite worked, and instead of going back and scrapping what I had (or at least parts) and finding a better solution, I just trudged through what I have now and it hoped I could "work it out". Well, it was becoming more apparent that wasn't going to happen so I decided last week to finish it up this month to at least an acceptable state and just start a new animation. Plan your scenes kids!

peyote

Dialog Test | April 2008 | :09 second
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Another up. This one was really fun. I liked the sound clip and I enjoyed the Sergio rig. This is another sound clip from Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. I cranked this one out pretty fast ... doing all this animation this year has started to help me speed up a bit. I'll probably touch all of these before they go on any sort of reel, but I'm liking them for the most part.

shakenbake

Dialog Test | April 2008 | :03 second
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Holy crap ! I finally get a new animation up within a month! This was a fun one using some real old characters I made years ago. It took me awhile just to get used to using them again, but I definitely did more with them in this animation than any previous animation (at least the main guy). I did a little light textuing in this one, but ... yeah ... I'm no texture artist. Maybe it'll get spiffy'd up for the reel. The sound clip is from Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

smokin

Action Test | March 2008 | :16 second
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I have no idea where the last 8 months went, but here's a new animation. This was pretty fun, with the biggest problem being the props. Lots of transfering of stuff around. I may come back and add some FX to this shot, but I really want to work on another animation, so that's getting shelved for now, maybe for a reel. This was another good animation where I pretty much worked on it every day for the past few weeks.

scissors

Action Test | July 2007 | :14 second
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I really like this animation. Had some great feedback from people on it, and it really just came together nicely. I planned it out pretty well and pretty much followed my thumbnails pose for pose, and it made it pretty easy. I also polished it longer than I usually do, since I had great feedback to keep pushing me. Best of all, I really got a groove going and worked on this daily. Some days more than others, but much much better than my last animation. Time to move right into the next one. Stay tuned.

vampire

Dialog Test | May 2007 | :14 second
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Once again, not much of a gear change huh? I've actually been dabbling on this animation since like Janurary, but only putting in 30 minutes here and there a week. This last week I decided to finish it up and move on. I'll just leave the description of this animation as being "this is what happens when you drag out an animation for almost 6 months". I could work some more on this, but it's become such a pain in the ass I decided I'm calling it (for now at least, maybe it'll be cleaned up someday).

actiontest

Action Test | October 2006 | :04 second
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Well ... so much for that gear change. On the bright side, I can play guitar again! Anyway, this is something I've actually been doodling on for awhile after canning my last animation a few weeks into it. I just wanted a little run/jump/slide/land type of continuous motion exercise. I really need to pick up the pace. Football, Hockey, Snowboarding, Guitar, Work, Beer, Animation, Running ... not enough free time in a day to get in all I want. Anyway, the guilt is starting to pile up, here's hoping ...

pitch

Action Test | July 2006 | :05 second
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Well, I couldn't decide on the last thing I was working on so I rolled right into this one after a couple days. Overall I think it turned out great. I may have gone a bit overboard on the ending ... which has mixed reviews (however none of them consistent, odd); however, my focus was mainly on the pitch itself, which has great reviews. So, after trying different things over the holiday weekend, I wound up with this and decided moving on was the best choice of action. Anyway, time to work on a new project, I'm hoping for a gear change, we'll see if I can come up with something (man it's hard to do for yourself).

look like hell

Dialog Test | June 2006 | :10 second
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Hah! So much for "cranking things out". This animation came about because I couldn't make up my mind what to work on, so I just picked the last soundfile I had been tinkering with and worked on it (albeit slowly). I decided to get a little tricky with the mirror. That made it a bit harder to animate since I'd sometimes have to do test renders to see the reflection. Having to work from two angles, and whatnot also was odd. I sort of just hammered most of it out the past couple weekends. I don't like doing that and would rather work on it more frequently. I think I'll be more focused on this next animation ... which is already in the thumbnailing stages.

backside 180 mute

Action Test | February 2006 | :04 second
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Well, since this has been taking up all my free time this winter, I figured it's only fitting it becomes my next animation. Now I know I could have done a more flashy inverted trick or some crazy camera angle where you could barely tell what the guy's doing, but dammit, I like backside 180 mute grabs. Anyway...this wasn't more than a simple test really. Pretty quick once I finally worked on it this past week. I hope to get more animation done in the coming weeks and back to cranking things out. Stay tuned.

pillar jump (of death)

Action Test | November 2005 | :05 second
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Another two months, another animation. This was simply an action test. I was trying to push the looseness of it all. I really like the beginning part and the ending shaped up pretty decent. Getting any sort of weight on the landing took some doing for some reason, not quite sure why. It never looked heavy, only faster for some reason. Maybe it's the somewhat awkward position it comes down into. Anway, time to get back at it and pick up the pace.

simply evil

Acting Test | September 2005 | :12 second
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Wee...well, this one took a bit long than I had hoped (rock climbing ... it's addicting, what can I say?), but I'm pretty happy with the results. I wanted to do a dialgoue test that was more subdued, so I went out scouring the net for good wavs. This is the first one that just sort of hit me (like most do ... ya just "know" almost right away). Anyway ... the lipsync with a hinged jaw character was a bit of a challenge...especially with the large number of words in a relatively short time. I sort of dubbed it "muppet sync." By the way, the audio is from Halloween. Alrighty, back at it to start a new project.

jedi beer trick

Action Test | July 2005 | :22 second
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Ok, this took a lot longer than I thought. I could tweak it for another two months (weekend/nights spare time of course, not two months solid.) I wanted to do an fun action animation ... so I came up with this little exercise. I can imagine this guy humming his own theme music while doing this (because that's what I'd be doing.) Anyway, time to get crackin' on a new one ... enjoy this in the meantime!

Update 09/13/05 - Bob Nadeau was cool enough to take this animation and add sound to it! Check it out! \mm/ (updated original link)

buttcheeks

Acting Test | March 2005 | :12 second
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Another acting test with a sound clip from a classic 80's movie. I finished most of this quite some time ago, but never put it up. Today I took the time to fix a couple small things and re-render it out and throw 'er up. For this animation I wanted to get Elmer (dude on the right) involved in some sort of dialogue. There are some things I would have liked to add to this animation, but unfortunately my character design & rigging wouldn't allow for it. Anyway, I'm about to start a new animation (planning already!) ... so there will more soon. I may put up some of the animated cycles I've been working on as well.

zombie walk cycle

Cycle Test | December 2004 | :01 second
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Decided to do a quick cycle this time for practice, if nothing else. I used the Lowman Rig again (I really like this one). It was actually harder than I expected, but I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I got some great critique on this one to make it better than it was, so that helped. Looking forward to starting something new. Have to do some thinking about what that will be though.

good is dumb

Dialogue Test | November 2004 | :06 seconds
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Here's my second try for trying a new rig. Package Man is pretty well known. Overall it's a pretty good rig. My biggest problems with it would have to be the finger sliders (just do not like that for fingers), and the mouth setup is a bit of a quirky variation of the Osipa one. But overall ... good stuff. Anway, this guy is one of those "calling it done" ones. I've drug it out over a month (should have been no more than a week or two) ... but I have Counter Strike:Source and Online Poker to thank for that. Anyway, I decided I was better off just finishing up what I have here and moving on to something new than dragging it out by changing large chunks.

wax on, wax off

Action Test | September 2004 | :08 seconds
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Decided to try out a different rig on this animation to see how well other's work. This is the Lowman rig you can get here . Overall, I really liked this character / rig. Anyway, as far as the animation I wanted a fairly short action to try and polish as much as possible. I know (at least I hope) after a few more animations I will look back and think "I could have done this better" ... but for now I like it. For what it's worth, this action is a combination of all three sections where the Crane Technique appears in The Karate Kid. After the main action and timing was blocked in, I went in and added my own twist. Reference pays off kids, but don't make it your bible!

sit tight

Dialogue Test| July 2004 | :08 seconds
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On my past few animations I've had some sort of prop or object that the character interacts with. Sometimes it can become kind of a crutch, only being able to come up with ideas with a prop in hand, so I decided I wanted to do a new one without a prop, relying on just the character himself ot help sell the shot. There's a lot of hand movement in the scene, but I think it fits the dialogue well enough. The sound clip is taken from "Big Trouble In Little China." Kurt Russell's finest hour.

blindman's bluff

Acting/Action Test | July 2004 | :16 seconds
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New animation involving two characters this time. I enjoyed animating a scene with more than one character, even though it does require that much more work to keep the actions in sync, and even though you can cheat a lot, there are still a lot of restrictions put on you due to spacing. I tried to keep the animation snappy and cartoony, and hopefully somewhat humorous.

fireflies

Acting Test | June 2004 | :08 seconds
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This is a little acting test that I did mostly over one weekend. It has been three weeks or so since I animated something new, (new website and all) so I found this little sound file from one of my favorite movies and had at it. Probably the hardest part of this was deciding on what acting choices to use in such a short amount of time. I sometimes want to do to much and have to pull back.

box lift

Weight Test | May 2004 | :09 seconds
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The very first box lift I tried ended less than ... good. A few days back I was watching the reels of a few animators and notice some really good looking box lifts and decided to give it and new shot. Anyway, it came out quite a bit better this time. The box is hand keyed.

he's an idiot

Acting/Dialogue Test | April 2004 | :09 seconds
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I re-rigged my hunchback model to follow Jason Osipa's facial setup to try it out. I got the book for Christmas and figured it was about time I opened it. It was great .. I absolutely love the approach. Highly recommend it. Anyway ... this is a little soundclip from Back to the Future. It's not the most dynamic piece I could have taken ... but I tend to take things that make me laugh my butt off over things with more energy.

Plunger Exercise

Action Test | March 2004 | :23 seconds
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This is a cartoony action test with my red guy trying to unclog a toliet. I was going for snappier animation and a good deal of object interaction. You may have noticed the stark backgrounds in all of my animations. Well ... they aren't going to be getting any better in the near future. Why the heck would I want to model an entire bathroom?!?

tequila shots

Action Test | January 2004 | :18 seconds
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This is a parody of Chevy Chase from Caddyshack. Good scene. Good movie. Go rent it. Anyway, the main focus of this animation was just object interaction. I used this Grab script off Highend3d.com. I believe it was written by then Big Idea people. Great script ... make object interaction about as painless as you could expect. As far as the animation goes ... this was also my first animation with filmed reference, so I learned some things from that...what to do as well as what not to do.