some tmnt doodles

turtles have teenage angst too

and i made this thing:

it's all done. Finished. stay tuned for screening info and eventual internet launch...

Robin Arnott did an amazing job with the sound design--we had an epic mix session at his studio in Austin a couple weeks ago. Nick Koenig lends a really awesome score. I'd say that old hat about sound being half the film, but I think in this case, the sound makes the film. check their stuffs out.

I'd like to post more how-to type stuff in the coming weeks. but here are a few stills for now.

time to catch the bus!

more stills:

done . . . soon . . . ish

here's the youtube embed for toxie:

I drew some original sketches, thinking toxie could maybe be a turtle. Because I love turtles.

Still have Toxie coughing up change and all that.

But we decided to go in more of a monster direction to keep with the feel of the first animation. I think it ended up being a better design anyhow. More of a mischievous gremlin-type character.

from there I started building models for everything. Lots of hand-drawn elements scanned and puppeted in after effects. For me this is the fastest way to work. Also I animated a stock bounce that could be reused and adjusted into lots of different scenes:

At the same time, I'm thumbnailing story boards to the audio track:

Then cleaning these ideas up into boards for an animatic. I try to keep the boards clean enough to serve as really bad layouts for animation, but loose enough to draw quickly.

Then I just animate the after effects model over the boards. the finished still is below.

All in all we had a little over 3 weeks to do everything. 1 week for boards, 1/2 for models, and the rest of the time to animate.

i haven't posted in awhile--but I made this cartoon! This one is for NPR's Planet Money. It's about Toxie, a personified toxic asset that helped burst the housing bubble.

The embed is a little funky, but you can see the full cartoon here. Big thanks to connie and robin for helping out. We had about zero time, but we somehow made the deadline. And huge thanks to planet money for giving us something wacky to make.

I'll post some more making-of stuff and a youtube embed soon. For now it's nap time.

he's a watermelon.

that's about it, really.

I'm a big fan of bloggers posting screenshots from films. So I thought I would start doing the same. Here's a sequence from "the jerk" that I've always found funny.

So here they are. Bernadette Peters and Steve Martin in Carl Reiner's "the jerk."











See how the kiss is the easy laugh? But Steve's look at the end is what sells the entire sequence for me.

It works on a lot of levels, building on the archetype of the hollywood kiss. It manages to be humorous, this weird gag of sorts, as well as oddly character-driven. Finally, the best part of this gag is the last shot, a look that requires a strong performance to be funny.

I'll make a huge generalization here--these days nearly every big studio animation has some sort of romance. Mostly, these love interests interact in some kind of playful, awkward banter. That's fine, and more often than not it's hilarious. But I wish there were more moments like these in large animated films (maybe not quite as weird?). silent, physical interaction goes a long way. And it can still be hilarious and emotional. Can't wait to see how it's done in wall-e.

It's not an easy thing to do. I'll get off my soapbox. What do you guys think?