Long Time No Post

It's been a while since I posted anything. This past year has been tumultuous with many ups and downs. I'm working on an exciting show that makes me very happy, but I still feel - as I'm sure I will always feel - a deep sense of loss since my brother's suicide.

The show I'm working on is one that I'm sure he would be equally excited about since it was such a large part of our childhood. I am not at liberty to say any further details about it right now however, and certainly not in this format.

Today is Saturday and I was going through my archives of saved artwork - both collected and created. It is my well of inspiration. My idea farm.

I found two images that I created some time ago that I still found to be appealing, so here they are.

~Chris

Where Are They Now?

The child actor gone sour.

~Chris

Skipping Thumbnails

Yikes, seven months without a post. Well, it's not much but here are some thumbnails I did at work today for a character skipping. I haven't animated a skip in some time, so some action analysis was much needed.

I remember when I was a student and finding reference took some effort - nowadays you can find everything on youtube. I like it, but at the same time I think it makes us less appreciative of the reference because it's so easy to come by...

~Chris

HOLY SMOKES DO I EVER LOVE LAUGHS!!

There was an email thread at work here a little while ago, talking about gathering together and watching something funny. One of my co-animator pals replied with an email saying, "HOLY SMOKES DO I EVER LOVE LAUGHS!!". All in Upper Case like that. I was immediately struck with an image, so I quickly hammered it out in Sketchbook and emailed it to him - he liked it.

~Chris

My 2010 Animation Showreel

This is my latest animation showreel. You can check out more stuff on my website

~Chris

Drawing The Festival

Some drawings I did while attending the presentations at SPARK Animation '09!

~Chris

Zeke's Pad at the Elan Awards

http://www.animationmagazine.net/article/9950

I was a Lead Animator on Zeke's Pad so I'm really excited to hear that it took home some lofty awards, including Best Animated Television Production!

~Chris

One of those "An Actor Is Talking About Animation" segments

Except, unlike most of them, this one is actually watchable.

~Chris

Wolf and Bulldog

So I was doing all this crazy action analysis a while ago of a weight lifter and I've since started developing this idea around a weight lifting competition. The character designs are starting down the Anthropomorphised Animal route which has me really excited. I'm envisioning something really wacky with a heavy inspiration from Tom & Jerry and Tex Avery. I'm working on an animatic at the moment and I'll post it once it's in a state that I'm happy to start receiving feedback on.

~Chris

Posing Exercise #1

I wanted to practice conveying weight in this pose because I hate seeing poses that lack any sense of gravity and balance and I want to make damn sure that they aren't creeping into my work. This is the Sergio character from Strut Your Reel, I just made some small adjustments somewhere along the way but all copyrights to their respective owners.

I hadn't touched this character in some time but a friend of mine was asking me some questions about the rig which forced me to open it up and poke around. I think I'm going to animate something with this character because I remember really enjoying the rig in the past. But that's going to have to come at another time as I have some other, more pressing fish to fry at the present moment. I have some action analysis notes to post, as well as the current Work In Progress that the aforementioned action analysis has spawned. Not to mention the ongoing search for work. Hoo-ray.

~Chris

NINJAS ARE WAY COOL

There's a really awesome rig floating around in different animation circles affectionately known as Norman. For my money, Norman is the shizznit.

I've retro-fitted Norman a few times for some 11 Second Club submissions in the past but none of those retro-fittings even come close to this latest one. I put a lot of work into it and I learned a heck of a lot of technical stuff that I wasn't aware of before.

I also got to model a Katana which turned out great! Well, to be honest it's not a true Katana. It's kind of a mix between a Katana and a Ninja-to. Oh man , I've been geeking out over this retro-fitting for like two weeks.

Now that he's all finished I'm going to animate some scenarios because I seriously want to see this guy in action!

~Chris

Dog Walk All Finished

So that Dog walk is more or less finished. There are still some things that could be tightened up but since it was my project for last week I had to upload it in the state it was in. You can check it out here.

The camera angle is the reverse of what I had in the blocking but it shouldn't make a whole lot of difference.

~Chris

How my brain works for animation

I'm working on a canine walk cycle right now and a quadruped is something that I haven't animated much of for a while now. There was a dog character in each of the last two shows that I worked on but the shots that I got with the little fuzzballs were few and far between.

I've always been really attracted to quadruped locomotion because it just looks so cool. The perfect balance of movement in the front and hind quarters is so smooth and elegant. More so with some animals, less so with others.

Anyway, I cracked open my Muybridge books to study the phases of the walk and I noticed that if you can understand where the strides come into play and how the energy radiates down the spine from the hips to the head, it gets you a long way towards animating a successful walk. I've seen people animate these things in a really automated, computationally heavy way but that really doesn't work for me. I like to figure out what's happening on each extreme and really push and explore the possibilities in the pose before I start getting into the Graph Editor because it's a completely different part of the brain that goes into that initial building of the performance.

The Graph Editor, awesome though it may be, requires a large amount of resources from your Left Brain and if my Left Brain is working hard my Right Brain tends to not add much to the situation. That's why I have to work in a very systematic way. First this, then this. Okay, now that this is done, move on to this, and so on.

Anyway, I'm just rambling now. Check out the playblast of my blocking for the canine walk and draw your own conclusions.



I'll just finish by saying that this is the work flow that I follow about 99.9% of the time:

Heavy, in-depth blocking of Keys, Extremes, Breakdowns, and sometimes more detailed bits depending on the scenario. Then I switch gears to work in the Graph Editor, which is a pretty painless process due to the extensive blocking. Then I tackle the face with a similar approach and... BAM!... done.

I'll post more videos of this walk cycle as it becomes more complete. It's my project for this week so hopefully you should be able to see it fully animated by Friday or Saturday... schedules permitting.

~Chris

Jibber Jabber: First two episodes

The first two episodes of Jibber Jabber have been made available online in their entirety!

Check them out here!

~Chris

Jibber Jabber in French

I just thought I'd take a second to post this. It's the first episode of Jibber Jabber, a cartoon that I worked on a couple years ago except this version is all in French! Now that may seem random, but this is the website for Canal J, a popular cartoon station in France.

Enjoy!