Where am I ?

Recently, I've been teaching High School students about traditional 2D animation. I've introduced them to something called a "Pencil", an input device which also has a built in delete button and they are using "Animation Bond" software to create motion on a series of animation paper. They also have been given a "Peg Bar", which is used with the animation paper, holding it altogether.

The first project was to create a "Bouncing Ball"; surly animation students will often roll their eyes loudly and yawn at this, but I think its the best way of showing how to make something move. As a magician, the number one rule to performing magic is to keep your audience's attention where you want it. An animator needs to direct his audience's eye where he wants it to go.

With a bouncing ball, you learn to see each frame as you follow the ball. Starting with a Path of Motion or Line of Action, a guide line that shows how the ball moves through the scene. By watching the ball animate, you can see if the ball is moving too fast or too slow. What the ball is made of shows in how much "Squash and Stretch" shows when the ball hits the ground and how it reacts to it. Does the ball react to gravity correctly? Ease Ins and Ease Outs, also known as Slow Ins and Outs, determine the ball's weigh as it goes into the arc, slowing down as it goes up and then speeds up as it returns to the ground.

Here is an excellent tutorial from Angry Animator which explains everything you will need to make your own animated bouncing ball. There is even a bit about how to flip your drawings as you are creating your animation. Check out this great site.



Now while this is going on, I have been working at a studio called Weareroyale since January. The studio has been doing all the on-air programming graphics for Disney Junior. I have been part of a small team of Maya animators to create short interstitials. I can't go into an details since I think I just spotted a black Mickey Mouse van down the street.

I read some blogs and its, " Tobor at Tobor Studio is awesome and I totally dig what be happening. You my doggs!" That's not me, I do want to thank everyone at Royale for making me feel welcomed and giving us great projects to work on. What started as an end date of March, happily was extended to July! Royale is a great studio with real creative folks that run the place and I have enjoyed every frame I have animated there. They also have allowed me to leave early on the days I had to teach without any problem. I look forward to work with Royale again.

I have been told that I cannot post any of my animation until after Feb or March of 2012, because it has to be shown on Disney Junior first. Wow, a whole year??! I could see the dangers of me popping my shots onto Youtube, but what happens if I put them on a DVD and sent it to Disney Features? Or with met someone at Pixar one on one , showing them my shots, but not giving anyone my DVD to keep. Would Disney lawyers begin suing other Disney Lawyers, creating a matter/anti-matter vortex based on Corporate Law, thus imploding really bigger laws like "The Laws of Gravity" or "The Laws of Physics"??? Mankind could end in the blink of an eye!

So, around the end of July, I will be looking for a new gig and I figure, the only way to show this new work would be in a face to face situation. No posting, no linking, no DVD sample reels, just good old American face to face salesmanship. So if you need any animation help, I'm available in August.

In the meantime, I have been working on "Hot Property" again and hoping to finish it soon.

Happy New Year 2011!

Well here it is, 2011 and I am still in production on this project. It started out as a 3D project and then went to a 2D one, and back and forth a bit until it landed on the 2D side of the fence. I recently upgraded my Toon Boom Studio from 4.5 to 6 in hopes to finish this film using this new software version.

I'm sure I could finish this entire short in a matter of months, if I had enough time to work on it. Of course, this is the number one excuse used by anyone who sets off to make a short film. Especially if they present it in a blog which is sporadically posted ever now and then. Let's face it, animation production is pretty boring and even more boring to read about in a blog.

So this year, I'm planning to make my future posting more exciting to your the reader. I hope to finally finish this short film and reap its rewards if any, of course letting you know all about the real dirt so to speak. Yes, I hope to increase my blogging skills by gaining more viewers and subscribers who will begin blogging about me and buying my merchandise(when I get some).

Yes, 2011 will be a very good year, because after all 2012 will be the end of all of us.

Happy New 2011!

Happy Holidays 2010!

Color Testing

I am trying to determine an interesting color scheme or technique that will blend into the character without drawing your attention to it. I want to avoid the flat "Cel" colors by adding levels of shading as well as textures. To do this in Toon Boom, I am using After Effects to composite all the pieces together.


I might be doing too many things to accomplish this, but I want have a blue jean texture in the farmer's overalls. Then I want to separate the characters from the background, throwing the background out of focus slightly. Here a green color is around the Farmer and Pig and a red color on the Farmer's overalls. The first pass, I'm keying out the red and putting a the denium texture on the level below it.



On a second pass, I am now removing the green background to reveal the background level below. This second pass is combined with other levels as well as the background and rendered out with sound track as a final shot.

Here's the final composite with a blurred out background photo of a farm.

Scene 05

This scene was animated on my Cintiq using ToonBoom.

Back to the 2D!

Here I go, turning the Animation Bus around again and heading for the 2D on-ramp on the production freeway. I have decided to go this direction in order to give my brand new Cintiq a workout and see if its possible for me to make a "paperless" production. I have a handful of programs available to help me do this and it looks like I will have a bunch of free time available in April to work on making this film.

The Cintiq is like having a animation light table that you can draw images right on the monitor screen. This is the most natural way of drawing as opposed to drawing to the side of your body while looking at the screen with a normal Wacom tablet. I am using ToonBoom 4.5 to do the animation in and hoping to composite some elements into After Effects to give it a different look.

Alien Test Walk

This is just a rough test of the Alien walk.