This is Lance the squirrel getting eaten by a giant Were-bear that lives in a haunted bog:

While we’re still trying to get a render out of Solomon Fix that looks as good as it did 2 months ago (Don’t ask…the computer has a tractor run over its hard disk that processes-) so in the mean while a bunch of Koreans are banging away at my 2D animated short SQUIRLY TOWN.

I want to warn our young audience not to imitate this behavior at home because someone could get killed and I don’t want to be responsible for you being so stupid that you can’t tell the difference between 2 dimensional representative lines and reality (I don’t mean that you shouldn’t hit people on the head with an umbrella…duh, what would life be without that? I [Read more…]]]> …though it’s filed under Solomon Fix. (Don’t ask…it has to do with the tractor running over my head when I was 3 injuring the part of my brain that processes filing and categories.)

While we’re still trying to get a render out of Solomon Fix that looks as good as it did 2 months ago (Don’t ask…the computer has a tractor run over its hard disk that processes-) so in the mean while a bunch of Koreans are banging away at my 2D animated short SQUIRLY TOWN.

I want to warn our young audience not to imitate this behavior at home because someone could get killed and I don’t want to be responsible for you being so stupid that you can’t tell the difference between 2 dimensional representative lines and reality (I don’t mean that you shouldn’t hit people on the head with an umbrella…duh, what would life be without that? I mean not to pick up old ladies by their head without first wearing a seatbelt. God, the public schools don’t teach common sense any more.)

Play this funny Squirly Town clip! Just CLICK HERE! Yeah, right here!

And After:

[Read more…]]]>

And After:

Hey–This is Melissa Wolfe posting for Doug! Because I have his blog password…and I can…muah haha…

“Solomon Fix” creator Doug TenNapel came into my office today and let me know that there is a rough 3D color animatic ready for Solomon Fix. It is terrific!

To show the process of going from the storyboard animatic to the 3D animatic, I’ve posted the same scenes of each.

Here is the rough storyboard timed out

And here is the way it looks in rough 3D!

This model is just what I was hoping for with “Ned” the little boy from the world of SOlomon Fix. Humans are very difficult to make in 3D, usually because the temptation is to try to make them look real. Usually the results are something hellish, not quite human, not quite synthetic…the closer to “real” you get the more something doesn’t seem quite right, like in the Final Fantasy movie.

Contrast that with The Incredibles or even Woody from Toy Story, the characters are rendered CARTOONS and they look comfortable in their own skin. In this sense, 3D is much more like puppet animation. Look at the humans in Davey and Goliath, The Nightmare before Christmas, even The PJs and you have broad forms of cartoon expression, not a feeble attempt at realism. The realism in puppet animation and 3D should come from the textures and light-sourcing, not the sculpt [Read more…]]]>

This model is just what I was hoping for with “Ned” the little boy from the world of SOlomon Fix. Humans are very difficult to make in 3D, usually because the temptation is to try to make them look real. Usually the results are something hellish, not quite human, not quite synthetic…the closer to “real” you get the more something doesn’t seem quite right, like in the Final Fantasy movie.

Contrast that with The Incredibles or even Woody from Toy Story, the characters are rendered CARTOONS and they look comfortable in their own skin. In this sense, 3D is much more like puppet animation. Look at the humans in Davey and Goliath, The Nightmare before Christmas, even The PJs and you have broad forms of cartoon expression, not a feeble attempt at realism. The realism in puppet animation and 3D should come from the textures and light-sourcing, not the sculpt of the character.

The above model of “Ned” still needs real hair which we are trying to figure out. They stuck lumpy hair on him just to occupy the space his real hair will occupy. But I like this model, he makes me want to see what he would do…where would he go? What would he say?

This is a color pre-viz done by the art team based on my original pencil drawing:

[Read more…]]]>

This is a color pre-viz done by the art team based on my original pencil drawing:

I requested a soft rich environment that would recall memories of classic children’s book literature like Winnie the Pooh or the Beatrix Potter books.

I liked the color piece so much I said, “I have no notes, this is great!”

Behold the majesty of an imperfect Ned. Like I said before, I have a beautifully rendered Ned sitting on my computer, but I’m not going to show it to you yet…it will only inflate the ego of my animation team and they need to be kept down. You see, I have to maintain my reputation as “The Man” and if I selflessly encourage them, empower them, give them a hint that they could make it without me, all hell will break loose.

So the above image is a concoction of the original model they sent to me for notes, and then there are the notes I drew on the picture in Photoshop. These modelers at RedEye are so good that they turned around my notes in less than 24 hours. You’re probably not a big shot like me so you don’t know that that’s really fast for “the biz”.

Speaking of The [Read more…]]]>

Behold the majesty of an imperfect Ned. Like I said before, I have a beautifully rendered Ned sitting on my computer, but I’m not going to show it to you yet…it will only inflate the ego of my animation team and they need to be kept down. You see, I have to maintain my reputation as “The Man” and if I selflessly encourage them, empower them, give them a hint that they could make it without me, all hell will break loose.

So the above image is a concoction of the original model they sent to me for notes, and then there are the notes I drew on the picture in Photoshop. These modelers at RedEye are so good that they turned around my notes in less than 24 hours. You’re probably not a big shot like me so you don’t know that that’s really fast for “the biz”.

Speaking of The Biz, I saw Jeff DeGrandis come out of the men’s room stall while eating the top of a muffin he tore off earlier. Now I’m a pretty casual guy, but eating while on the pot crosses a line I probably shouldn’t elaborate upon here. The offense was compounded by the fact that the muffin top was one of those dense-chocolate ones. Jeff didn’t wash his hands either, he smeared his DNA all over the door on the way out before going back to the kitchen and gouging a poppy-seed bagel. This is the kind of environment I have work in over here…at least over at Disney they have cameras in the bathroom stalls so people don’t do gross stuff behind closed doors.

Yes, I know the muffin man, and now I can’t eat the free food in the Frederator break-room.

Here’s the most recent wrong Chipmonk. He has some hair and lighting issues, the team is still trying to crack his hair lighting and stuff. I’m only showing you the chipmonk because he’s the least finished of all the characters…the other ones look really cool.

Why am I doing this? Mostly to make the team look bad. Humiliating 3D artists is good for their life development. Speaking of humiliating life development, I walked into the Frederator break-room today and there is Jeff DeGrandis gouging the top of a chocolate chip muffin, leaving the less-tasty bottom for someone else. I picked up the muffin bottom and looked at it up close…and there was one of his sickening knuckle-hairs sitting on the pastry. This is the kind of thing that we have to go through being on the same floor with Jeff DeGrandis.

This is a new pass focusing on just the chipmonk’s shape. One of the tough parts of 3D is that rendering takes a lot of time especially when a character has hair, bouncing light sources etc. By the time a short stretches into the 7 minute area, you’ve got a pretty unwieldy project.

Most entertainment projects aren’t a whole lot of “fun” work. I got into animation because I liked making critters come to life, not realizing that I was going to go through 15 years of hell learning how to do that. While the Redeye-animation boys build these models, they aren’t doing any of the “fun” work of moving the character around animating, making it come to life. Nope, they are rigging models, shaving polygons, building rigs, testing lighting etc.

See the little kid above the chipmonk? His name is “Ned”…he’s the real little boy in the short. We spent [Read more…]]]>

This is a new pass focusing on just the chipmonk’s shape. One of the tough parts of 3D is that rendering takes a lot of time especially when a character has hair, bouncing light sources etc. By the time a short stretches into the 7 minute area, you’ve got a pretty unwieldy project.

Most entertainment projects aren’t a whole lot of “fun” work. I got into animation because I liked making critters come to life, not realizing that I was going to go through 15 years of hell learning how to do that. While the Redeye-animation boys build these models, they aren’t doing any of the “fun” work of moving the character around animating, making it come to life. Nope, they are rigging models, shaving polygons, building rigs, testing lighting etc.

See the little kid above the chipmonk? His name is “Ned”…he’s the real little boy in the short. We spent a lot of time making him look good (We haven’t even started on the hair yet so shut up right now). I hate the way most 3D modeled humans look…kind of hellish. I think it’s because artists go for too much realism instead of thinking about the character as a good piece of art. That’s the difference between Woody in Toy Story, who looks really cool and the humans who look horrifying. Woody looks more human than the humans and that’s because our minds are accustomed to translating cartoon imagery of humans. When our mind does less work, like in the Final Fantasy movie we get this feeling that something isn’t quite right…we see a body that moves like a person but there’s no soul rolling around in that body.

Okay, I’m floating way off topic so I’ll wrap this up.

I love the sculpt and expression of the mouth, but I thought the blood-shot eyes made the little guy look not so little. Because there are actual monsters in this short, I can’t have the most horrifying thing be a chipmonk. The hair has some strange light-sourcing on it so we’re looking at that too. But there he is, The Chipmonk. We’ll use this model for both chipmonks since they are twin brothers.

My goal is for the drawing to really play into the model and the sweeping gesture of the line-work is still present in the 3D chipmonk. Success! It’s a lot like inking a pencil drawing, you don’t want to lose the gesture of the cartoon in your clean-up…(for more comic inking tips check out this article I wrote on inking my comic). There was a time [Read more…]]]> This is a first pass at the Chipmonk model for my Solomon Fix short.

I love the sculpt and expression of the mouth, but I thought the blood-shot eyes made the little guy look not so little. Because there are actual monsters in this short, I can’t have the most horrifying thing be a chipmonk. The hair has some strange light-sourcing on it so we’re looking at that too. But there he is, The Chipmonk. We’ll use this model for both chipmonks since they are twin brothers.

My goal is for the drawing to really play into the model and the sweeping gesture of the line-work is still present in the 3D chipmonk. Success! It’s a lot like inking a pencil drawing, you don’t want to lose the gesture of the cartoon in your clean-up…(for more comic inking tips check out this article I wrote on inking my comic). There was a time when the clean-up artist at Disney wasn’t just some person who traced lines. Often the best artist did the clean-up because they present the final and best graphic image. I think the same goes for 3D artists…the new separation between the men and the boys goes to the 3D guy who can maintain the feel, sweep and gesture of a drawing in his model.

The 3D animation for this short will be done by Red Eye Animation. Notice the website gives their phone-number, which means you should crank call them often. Or better yet, ask them for a job, no college or talent required, if you have dreams and hopes, that qualifies you for an 80k a year job at Red Eye. If they tell you to stop calling them, it’s because they are testing how much you believe in your dreams…the ones who give up, clearly are not worthy to be 3D animators and therefore should just remain in their high school in Idaho, Brazil, wherever.

Here’s their cool drawing:

I liked it [Read more…]]]> The little human in my Solomon Fix short is named “Ned” (I picked that name because it rhymes with “bed” and I was once going to call this show “Under Ned’s Bed” before I decided on “Stuffed” which I changed to “Solomon Fix”).

The 3D animation for this short will be done by Red Eye Animation. Notice the website gives their phone-number, which means you should crank call them often. Or better yet, ask them for a job, no college or talent required, if you have dreams and hopes, that qualifies you for an 80k a year job at Red Eye. If they tell you to stop calling them, it’s because they are testing how much you believe in your dreams…the ones who give up, clearly are not worthy to be 3D animators and therefore should just remain in their high school in Idaho, Brazil, wherever.

Here’s their cool drawing:

I liked it so they went to a quickie 3D visualization: