happy thanksgivin! Dine with deer and count blessings!

Most of the scenes for my next film are looking like this--some animation, some storyboards. Progress moves slowly forward. Lots of working on the train.

doodles:

yeti drew me with the pudding people:

it's a very accurate portrait.

this week on This American Life you can hear the full story of Toxie!

Sit back, relax, and listen to some depressing news about the state of our economy, as lightheartedly investigated and reported by the amazing David Kestenbaum and Chana Joffe-Walt. And review the cartoon it inspired!

I was really sleepy after making the npr thing. but I'm back.

that and my scanner and I are fighting again.

ok that's better. some random sketchbook pages full of obnoxious colors:

don't worry, dr breakfast is coming along...

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.

ive been quietly toiling away on dr breakfast. most days on the train my laptop screen looks something like this:

but here's a random selection of sketchbook pages too.

rz's fauvist nightmare

sometimes little kids watch me draw on the subway. They always look like the don't really care what I'm drawing--but seeing me draw makes them remember that they want to draw something. This 5 year old took my sketchbook and drew this picture. he wouldn't tell us what it was until he was finished. Then his mother and I got three guesses.

it's a landscape from avatar, of course.

One more thing, if you live in france or germany, you can catch screenings of Chicken Cowboy on the ARTE tv network. check your local listings I guess. It's pretty cool that they broadcast short films on tv in Europe, and I wish there was a similar market here in the US.

testing out colors for bg panels. just painting over the storyboards. i think I'm going to do the finals in watercolor & gouache ala chicken cowboy.

if you're in new york at all, let's make out will be playing sunday august 1 at animation block party. go cause it will be great! And look at that lineup!

what batman loves.

and other doodles.

he's a watermelon.

that's about it, really.

dogs and cats

I've turned into one of those really busy people who doesn't update.

I got mentioned alongside some ridiculously talented people in Variety a couple weeks ago. So I ended up going the Annecy at the last minute to speak on a panel. Annecy is obscenely gorgeous:

Working on dr breakfast. Starting to build the models in after effects.

Originally I wanted to animate on pencil and made let's make out as a production test--but the realities of making a 6 minute short in my spare time--things are probably going to look more like this crude test, with some hand drawn scenes thrown in sparingly.

similar to chicken cowboy--very pared down rigs, because I usually end up breaking them anyway. Hopefully this allows more time for story and direction.

oh yeah! check out the L Magazine screening of animation block party on Friday, june 25, at 8pm! You can see Chicken Cowboy and other awesome shorts!

pile of practice figure drawings.

step 1: tear up drawings

2: get plastic bin full of red wigglers

3: place shredded drawings in bin

4: add moldy oldy food

5: let the worms do what they do.

get back to drawing. make more worm food.

untold trials of bygone generations

jury duty part II

some studies

jury duty part I

the amazing jerod: story artist, mountain climber, underwear model