Yam Handed

You look down in the dumps, old friend. As well you should, if things are so dreary that you've come here of all places for distraction. How about a heapin' helpin' o' HuHa to perk you up, misery-tits?
Episode 9 of Wobble Box went up earlier this week, my wee contributions to which being the deoderant (1:01 in) and escalator (2:09 in) skits.

The former was an entirely Toon Boom affair, including the backgrounds which I kept loose'n'colourful'n'simple.

As per there was a lot of fun design work coupled with minimal animation. Get some sketches down ya:

That last one is for the escalator bit, the assets for which were also done in Toon Boom. I wanted to do something less identifiable as my style and so went with something more cartoon-modern.

The colour approach was thought up on the fly - rather than solid colours I scribbled them in on their own layers on a boil, exporting them separately from the character animation before compositing both with textures in After Effects.

Over in Skwigly land we have a new podcast after yet another unexpected hiatus. There was one scheduled for September but we hit our first genuine snafu when our lead guest inexplicably rescinded permission to be included. First time for everything, I suppose.
Far better sports are Chris Landreth - the Oscar-winning NFB director known for Ryan, The Spine and now Subconscious Password, a wonderfully-relatable tale of a man's inner turmoil as he struggles to recall the name of an old acquaintance he's bumped into at a party - and Chris Shepherd, the chap behind the much-loved shorts Dad's Dead and Who I Am and What I Want among others. Shepherd has recently been involved with 12foot6, Random Acts and Autour de Minuit, the latter for his new live-action/rotoscoped short The Ringer, a genuinely touching father-son tale and one of my favourites from this year's Encounters.

Thrown in the mix are musings on shows like The Simpsons outstaying their welcome, general Encounters chitchat and my usual sanctimonious pontifications on filmmaking. You can do the streaming/subscribing/downloading thang at your leisure and discretion. Whichever option suits you best. There are no judgements here.

"Coffee please, Doris..."

At the end of last week the fine folks at HuHa discreetly put up "Fantasy Office" episode 3, following on from episode 2 back in May. While I did the animation for both, this one features a few characters from episode 1 which was designed by another chap, so I've attempted to bring the two styles together.

This one was written by Joel Jessup (apparently the credits at the end are wrong) and got some nice feedback over the weekend. Personally I found it quite satisfying as lip-sync on a skeleton is a f***ing breeze. Here are a couple of new character sketches:

As always I was up against it so the backgrounds were a bit rushed, that being said I'm quite happy with the crypt one:

Okay, that'll do for now. Frankly I've spoiled you enough as it is.

Now I can finally get the folder labeled "AssBabies" off my HD before the feds come knockin'...

I'm briefly emerging from the subterranean land of Worst-Flu-Ever-meets-Most-Stressful-Deadline-Ever to provide some quick cartoonery to ram into your adorable faceholes.
This was a fun little between-commissions commission for one of YouTube's original content channels FlipTV (they who host Carpool, David Mitchell's Soapbox, Simon's Cat and...possibly others) whose latest sub-channel HuHa! is being headed up by Jonti Picking and Sarah Darling of Weebl's Stuff. Basically it's a way to get out a bunch of animated webisodes and original content to that oh-so-cynical of crowds: The YouTube audience. But so far the response has been very strong. Weebl is already a pretty established name as far as online animation goes so them's some fine coattails to ride.
My first contribution is the mini-skit "Assassin Babies" for the debut episode of their sketch show "Wobble Box". It was written by Sarah Darling while I took on all the visual stuff - character designs, storyboards, animation etc. They also wound up using what I'd thought would be a placeholder audio track so the sound and voice is me too. What a little showoff I am.
You can watch episode 1 of "Wobble Box" right here. My bit's around 23 seconds in. Other bits I didn't do but am rather fond of include "Unrealistic Dog" and "Mr. Bubblehead".
Here's some development scribbles and whatnot:

First character concepts. I was very relieved they preferred the top batch.

Character sketches for layouts

Character sketches for keyframes

Background Design 1

Background Design 2

Knock wood when I get my evenings and weekends back I can do more for HuHa! I have a particular fondness for anything named after any inexplicable noise Al Pacino's been known to make.

Bully Backgrounds (Part 1)

Here's something for a merry Friday afternoon that you can all shove in your eyeholes should you so desire - the first batch of backgrounds for my fourth short "Bullies", a film which is defying logic and expectation by inexplicably coming together.
Ain't they purty? It's a bit of a departure from my prior background work as far as the level of detail goes, though the general approach to construction and design has stayed the same. I owe a big hearty back-slap of gratitude to the lovely Luca, who has been lending a hand here and there for no reason other than being spectacularly awesome. She's also been a massive help with my animated "Throat" promo, which should be online sometime in August, so get out the zester and keep those eyes peeled. In the nearer future I'm off to London to indulge an extended weekend of Faith No M'awesomeness, so steel yourself for some fanboy gushing over the next few posts.

Back to the Box

While “Bullies” is progressing in a more or less entirely digital manner, a thought occurred recently that a potentially effective way to promote “Throat” might be to put together a teaser trailer for it. After contemplating the motion graphics angle briefly, I figure it would be better suited to proper, traditional animation so as to be truer to the overall look and feel of the panel art. Which means it’s time to dust off ol’ Molly the lightbox (who’s served me well as a very effective coat rack since I bought Cindi the Cintiq) and get back to some lovely, ol’-fashioned pencil-on-paper animation. The idea is to pick several excerpts from the book that might translate effectively as brief 2-5 second animated vignettes, edited together in a way that doesn’t reveal much of the story but hopefully percolates the interest of people who haven’t read the book yet. I’m still in the throwing-stuff-against-the-wall-to-see-what-sticks phase but here are some sample layouts:

As mentioned above, “Bullies” has been pretty much a completely Cintiq-centric affair, but in keeping with the old-school theme, here are a few pencil sketches on which some of the layout and background work will be based:

And with that I think I feel the familiar twinge of carpal tunnel coming on. How I missed it so!

The Grotto

Backgrounds!
I'm no Bill Wray (who, of all the living background artists, fucking rules) by any stretch but, with the small number of backgrounds this film requires compared to my first two, I've been having a bit more fun with the details and texturing. Use your eyes for looking at them!I wanted these to be quite loose and playful (adorable li'l scamp that I am). Beginning with sketches, I overlaid colours and textures for each background element, using Photoshop's warp and lighting tools to create a contoured effect when necessary.Against these backgrounds the character animation comes off as a little too stark. I've decided to soften the look by colouring in the black outlines and applying lighting and gradients to the flat colours. This really goes a long way toward selling that the characters are inhabitants of the environment I've created.As my version of After Effects doesn't quite nail the lighting effect I'm after this means I've been having to go through every frame of character animation and make the changes manually. It adds a lot to the post-production but the schedule I outlined at the beginning of May left some leeway and I'm still confident that I'll get the film finished before July. I think it's worth the extra effort.

Backgrounds Part 6 - Remnants & Debris

When I did the last batch of backgrounds back in November I wasn't sure if there would be any more left to do. As it turns out I've decided to persevere with including the proposed final scene and give the film a nice comedic ending rather than a maudlin cliffhanger. The last scene takes place at the site of the Hunter's former cabin, now a large mound of rubble.




The last background is a segment from a far larger drawing, as the final shot pulls back to reveal the entire pile. On top of all the other plentiful reasons to kiss her arse, props have to go to my faithful assistant Jo for inking in every one of those fucking rocks:

And here's the full colour version:

As well as the new backgrounds for this particular scene, I've found that to better suit certain shots elsewhere in the film a number of new and adapted backgrounds have been required. Here's the very last smattering to go out on:

Backgrounds Part 5 - Attic Space

The second part of the penultimate scene sees the Duck cornered in the Hunter's attic/trophy room, as indicated in the previous rotoscoping entries. Here are some more backgrounds:


For the Hunter's POV shot. Over the course of the scene this backdrop gets incrementally more cracked and damaged as the Hunter starts getting trigger happy.

The Duck's POV, only required for one tiny shot so I made it pretty simple.

This is for the wide shots where both the Duck and Hunter are in frame. As the walls are adorned with guns and trophies and the like I've had to tone down the lighting to keep the eventual comped shot from being too cluttered.



These close-ups of the mounted animals are for when the Duck halfheartedly tries to justify his desire for revenge, then quickly abandons the argument and confesses it's all for 'shits and giggles'. The bird in the last drawing is based on one of my favourite album covers:
Best I can tell this would be considered fair use. The original photo is by Werner Krutein of Photovault.
While the storyboard calls for a final scene's worth of backgrounds, I'm not entirely sure whether or not I should leave the film's ending as a cliffhanger. Depending on how much time I have this may end up being the last background entry.
Pity. It's so much easier doing this stuff when nothing has to move.