Cover your damn mouth...

More line tests for the “Throat” promo. I’m not sure if calling them ‘pencil tests’ would really apply as the lines will still be penciled in the final animation. In fact to match up with the style of the book, the line quality is actually being coarsened and made scratchier rather than being cleaned-up, so if anything these tests are smoother than how the animation will eventually look when it’s done.

This one was really fun to do, especially the extreme poses:

Once it was all timed-out it made for some pretty interesting in-betweens.

In my head this shot would’ve been one sweeping hand motion, picking up the glass along the way to throw the contents in her face. This is how the panel looks in the book, as you can see there's not much to go on:

In reality to do that in one single move would be a borderline physical impossibility, so I acted out a few ways to go about it and came up with this fairly obvious breakdown:

This last one’s pretty basic, although the motion of the hands pulling up the sheets is a little too mechanical so I’ll probably add in a couple frames to the final animation to give it more of a natural settle.

That’s all for this post, so I’m going to stop writing. That’s how I roll. Though by all means, feel free to watch these all night if you like. Nobody judges here.

Return of the Magical Moving GIFs

It’s that fabulous time again: Line test season! That wonderful stage of an animated project (the animated "Throat" promo in this case) where the awful things I draw obtain the glorious power of movement (and with it, I can only assume, hopes and dreams). I’m a little miffed to note that Sitesled, the site that had hosted all my prior line test GIFs, decided to disappear without a trace taking all my files with it.
Those wonderful, glorious bastards.
While I’m sure they’re backed up somewhere it’s gonna be a pisser locating them, re-uploading them and fixing the embed links in all the prior blog posts. Which doesn’t mean anything as fair as these new ones go, I just like to complain because I’m a big complaining complaineypants.
On with the pixelly-pencilly stuff:

There’s something vaguely eerie about watching these characters trapped in their limbos, doomed to constantly repeat the same handful of seconds over and over until the end of time. By ‘eerie’ I really mean ‘gratifying and immeasurably pleasurable’; I’m so horribly empty inside.

Li'l Jimmy

Everyone who's familiar with Jim Norton knows he's just adorable. He's the only person on Earth who can pick up trannies or engage in watersports and make said activities seem cute and endearing. He's also known for projecting a dysmorphic self-image that makes my own seem buff and masculine by comparison (which is no mean feat). So the Yimmy character design is more a visualisation of this grotesquerie than an actual caricature of the man himself. Anyway, here's the lovable scamp in action.
The last couple of shots are a nod to Chris Reccardi, one of the more visually daring post-John K "Ren & Stimpy" directors.
That's all you get for today. I'm sure you'll find the emotional resources to muddle through.

Chicken Licked (AKA how the hell did my scanner get so dirty?)

Here are some line tests for "Norton & Friends", my O&A animation. As with my three prior shorts I'm going the longer route of pencils-on-paper rather than tablets. I just prefer the process and I don't have to compromise my style this way, plus I don't really have a deadline so fuggit.Here are a batch of atypical walk cycles. Right now it kinda looks like they're skating but it'll hopefully make sense in the final composited shot.Again, out of context this one's a little hard to fathom but it's strangely hypnotic.
Some quick cutaways:

The last one I'm really happy with, especially given that I have no idea how chickens move and I can't dance for shit. I rarely animate on 'ones' (25 frames-per-second as opposed to 12.5) but in this case I reckon the fluidity of movement suits the pacing of the short.
More, less chicken-ey, more Jimmy-ey tests next.

"No more singing a cappella..."

I'm really pleased to say that recently I had the privilege of being involved in a very nifty mass collaboration for Plymptoons. As I'm a huge Bill Plympton fan you can appreciate that this was something of a dream opportunity and a great excuse to familiarise myself with lots of incredibly talented animators.The project is "Guard Dog Global Jam", a multi-animator shot-by-shot re-imagining of one of Plympton's best shorts, the Oscar-nominated "Guard Dog". Of the chosen applicants, each animator was assigned a shot to reproduce. Mine was a quick cutaway of a mouth gearing up to sneeze.

Concept still

As it was only two seconds I decided to do it on ones (24 frames-per-second as opposed to 12, which is what I usually stick with). The fluidity of movement is really appealing, almost to the point where I'm considering having my next film be an entirely on-ones affair. Composition-wise, the shot combines full animation (the lips) with tweened animation (the teeth), the throat being the background. Here's a quick vid of the various stages, beginning with the original shot as animated by Plympton, then the line test, coloured mouth animation, teeth animation and finally the fully composited shot:

I was also able to jump on board Mike Schneider's incredibly ambitious flicker-frame concept in which a different illustrator tackles each individual frame of his allocated shot.Mine simply resorted to the fabric-texture-with-relief-shadow look I've been pulling out a lot lately, most notably with the Channel 4 project last spring. It's kind of practice for the ever-growing Struwwelpeter music video I'm still working on. Here are some other, more visually adventurous takes on it by some of the other illustrators:

From top-left: Grant Fuhst, Sameul Guin, Steven Archer & Christopher Panzner

The choking mouth of the first shot is coincidentally apt when considering my ongoing graphic novel project "Throat", the next progress update for which I'll save another entry, however for similarities sake I thought I'd throw up the finalised cover design:
The main artwork has been posted before, but the added bandage/subtitle came from smearing an Ace bandage with hot chocolate mix, blending/warping/blurring the typography to match it and then tweaking the colour to make it look like blood (trust me, it's a far more distressing visual when it's smeared brown). Hopefully it represents the story well, sort of a mix of goofy and grim.

Back to "Guard Dog", I'll leave you with an animatic (consisting of concepts and the odd finished shot) that was recently uploaded to give a preview of the wide range of styles used:

'Tis the season for line tests

A quick progress update for 'The Naughty List', my mini-short about the tribulations of middle-management. Or Santy-Claus, whatever melts your butter. Focusing on the film as a combative measure against evening snacking, I've knocked the bulk of the character animation out over the last fortnight, which is sort of unprecedented given my usual fits-and-starts approach to these types of personal projects.There are a few remaining shots of channel-hopping that need to be worked out, which I'll tackle next along with the cleanup. As always I've been aided tremendously by my own little batch of worker elves in this respect, and the unexpected stretch of warm weather we've been having has given me an excuse to take some work outside (although there's something incongruous about working on a xmas-themed film in the blazing sunshine). All in all it's been a weirdly calm, organic process putting this short together, and one I'm starting to have some faith in. So here are a smattering of line tests to go out on before the colour footage starts coming together:

Spirit of the Season

The last week has been very productive as far as my third film's progress goes. Having come up with the idea a while ago, I've had a lot of time to familiarise myself with the character personalities even though I didn't really start working on it before March. This has really helped with the animation, which has been going very smoothly so far. The short is essentially a single conversation, charged with a lot of different emotional conveyances such as awkwardness, fear, boredom, incredulity and so on. Consequently it's been a balancing act of having the movements and expressions be considered while not over-animated. Looking back at my first two films, it draws from elements of both."House Guest" was dialogue-driven and had a number of conversational scenes where the animation was very limited in terms of movement and range of facial expression. In a Family Guy/Simpsons kind of way it worked and was an essential means to an end when it came to meeting the MA deadline.My second short, last year's "Ground Running" was "House Guest"'s opposite in the sense of it's absence of dialogue, instead relying on fully-animated sight gags and body language alone to convey the story.
With "The Naughty List" I want to apply this level of acting detail to a conversational scenario. I'm keeping it short (around three minutes) so I can really take my time with it. Just looking at the line tests I'm feeling pretty encouraged, the lip sync and mouth shapes will be a vital contributor to the acting but in the meantime the body movements alone seem to be going quite well with the dialogue. Here's the same segment I posted as a storyboard animatic last week in pencil-test form:
Hopefully next week I'll be able to start the cleanup. The one coloured shot of the Elf in the footage above should give an idea of how the film will look overall. Gives me a good feeling...

A Mere 10"

Here are some drawings for an itsy-bitsy new film I'm doing. This one's the shortest yet, running at no more than 10 seconds. I decided to throw together the story of how I lost my tooth a little while ago, an anecdote which takes me about half an hour to tell as I love my voice so much. Turns out if you cut out the irrelevant bits ten seconds is ample time to tell it. So, yeah, I need better anecdotes.
Anyway, it's for a ten-second film competition being held at this month's 'Straight To Video' screening at Start The Bus. A couple friends of mine are also contributing entries, including Jo (she who done all that stuff on my film innit). It's a nice idea and sounds like it'll be a fun night.



I also thought you might enjoy two slightly grotesque line tests. First off is the last layout in motion. You might want to cover your gums.

And here's some classy'n'mature contruction-line shagging to go out on. Look at the fat bastard go!

Baby Boom

Here are some more layouts from my Depict submission-in-progress.I doubt this one'll be too popular with the ladies, but it's helped me get in touch with my feminine side. Plus, giving birth is generally a bit trickier when you keep your legs closed.Here we see the baby's dramatic entrance.Cut to a side-view and the poor little whippersnapper is snagged on the still-attached umbilical cord.
Here are the latter two images in motion:
It's a tiny detail but I really like the way the arms and legs settle into position. It really conveys a sense of tension and balance.This is a similar shot to the first appearance of the baby, although with an acceleration to the speed of the approach to the camera. In the first animation the baby slows down as it gets closer, so with each in-between less distance is covered. In the animation below (combined with last entry's 'skid' shot) the baby speeds up as it falls so each in-between this time covers more distance.
Does that make sense? Does anything I say, for that matter?

The Jo Show

I think to spare her either vomiting or just getting properly creeped out, I'll do my best to restrain myself from heaping more sycophantic praise on my main assistant animator Jo. It needs to be said however that having her take the reigns for the character animation of the Prospective Lay (who I now wish had a better name) could not have been a better decision. My plan as I outlined it previously was to ensure the character had her own personality and style of movement to distinguish her from the uncouth Hunter and Duck duo. Looking at the line tests Jo came up with while I was out of the country there is a level of fluidity and attention to detail that is able to break through the murky webcam resolution. My concern when I left was that by concentrating her attentions on sequences that lasted only a few seconds at a time there might have been a temptation to over-animate. This turned out not to be the case, as she also demonstrates a fundamental instinct for keeping it all reigned in. Here are a few tests to show what I mean:

I must've tried this cycle six times and never came up with anything usable. The main hurdle at which I would stumble was getting the bounce on the boobs right. My follow-through would either be off or the secondary motion would be too minimal to register. Worst would be the issue of too much bounce which came off as gratuitous.

While you need the accompanying dialogue to fully appreciate the movement here, there is a lot going on that demonstrates a real flair for body language and acting. I especially like the childlike way she waves.

This is another shot that I took several stabs at that never felt right to me (in fact, one clunky version made it into the trailer for a few frames). The accusatory point always lacked something or other when animated as a single movement. Here Jo has resolved that issue by lifting the arm pre-emptively.

In this shot I gave her free reign to animate the character being visibly bashful. The animation is timed to the dialogue for the shot, where the Duck puts the moves on her.
These really met my expectations and even went a little beyond them. I feel more of Jo's input would be beneficial, not just to my film but in terms of my personal understanding of animation processes. The animation BA that Jo graduated from taught her a lot more about the fundamentals, while my MA kinda leaves you to work it out on you own. If I can pick up more bits and pieces of animation technique I could make the film a great deal more visually interesting.