Stephen M. Levinson's Blog

The terrific flash animation studio known as Animax Entertainment is looking for people.. A great guy named Burt told me I should show the head of production my work. Thanks a lot dude! So I showed the head of production Ace & Aqua and I was invited to take an animation test. Hooray! Basically I was given these 2 characters, Slammo and Sloshie. They were in a standing pose arms down with very limited symbols. I was also given an audio clip. I had to act out to the audio clip, have good animation, but more importantly have believable/good acting. So after I roughed out the actions i thought fit the audio best, traditionally, and I had to create a bunch of symbols since they were not given. I finished the test, sent it to the directors, and now I’m their newest animator! ( well they may have hired more people since me ).

Watch Test!

So now I’m going to be starting animation on a flash cartoon called “Slacker Cats” that will air on ABC Family. I’m neither an in-betweener, nor am I a fixer-upper of animation already done. I will be animating some scenes. Animax has been hired to do 2 episodes. I’m working on one of them. It seems like a really cool show from what I’ve seen so far. It’s more of an adult cartoon. Think Futurama? This seems like a great opportunity for me, and tomorrow morning I start! I’ll keep everyone updated on the date the show will premiere and other info about it!..like when my episode will be on so you can look for me in the credits!

More soon!
-Steve

The newest shirt to my Cafepress shop. Unfortunately this shirt didn’t even make it to the scoring round at Threadless even though I think people will think it’s funny. A Little Drizzle

-Steve

Symbolism -[sim-buh-liz-uhm] - noun

1.the practice of representing things by symbols, or of investing things with a symbolic meaning or character.
2.a set or system of symbols.
3.symbolic meaning or character.
4.the principles and practice of symbolists in art or literature.

-Steve

Been working on some AFX designs for an upcoming pitch. The level of intensity and action is something I really want to be unique. Many cartoons now a days aren’t as action-packed, intensely insane, the way I picture they could be. I love everything glorified and FX that look and feel incredible to the viewer. I want people to watch the action and be blown away by the level of it. I’m trying to bring it to a new notch.

The first image at the top isn’t as glorified as the image below but I think it looks a lot simpler and less complex.
The design below it is on more of an extreme level. I’m thinking it may be overdone but I love the feel to it.. the more intense the better but that doesn’t necessarily mean more complex. As they say, the simpler things in life are the better things.. just gotta keep working on this until I get it the way I want it/ until it looks right.

-Steve

I am a huge action-anime fan. I love the look and the details the characters have, I love the fighting animations because they’re really intense and well done. Here’s an image I did recently.. It’s just some evil kinda guy I thought up.. I was kinda inspired by this as well as this.<- That image is really what made me decide to draw this. I thought “that’s really cool but it would look so much more awesome if it was detailed like Dragonball z style”. After I finished everything I thought the colors werent so great so I added a gradient map to the drawing and the colors changed to what’s above. I think it looks much nicer and also alot like the colors in first link I posted. Special thanks to Elliot Byrne for his advice.

I’m working on my anatomy and shading…i’d bet 80% of the shading in the drawing is wrong :p

I am posting this drawing because I want to know what I should do differently for my next drawing. As far as color and shading and anatomy go. All help is appreciated! Please don’t just say nice things I’m looking for advice.

-Steve