i occasionally go to a local coffee shop to do my ringtales animation work. the atmosphere is nice with exposed brick, hardwood floors, ample space to sit and work and a few odd antiques lying around. their internet connection has been on the blink recently and while waiting for a connection that never came i noticed that the old scale sitting on a counter top looks rather like an odd bear. this is pretty much exactly what it looks like.
i want to find more things that look like bears or other animals now and draw them in this fashion.
and for those who don't know, besides animating for ringtales again i have also taken on an internship over at shadow machine building sets and props for their new show "frankenhole". it doesn't leave me much time to make stuff for myself anymore but i am making money with ringtales and having a ton of fun over at shadow, so, i feel pretty alright about not having much free time.
i got my job back! well, i never technically lost it since i was freelance... but anyway... ringtales is finally getting back on its feet which means it's back to work for me! the company just signed a few major contracts and has a full plate for the next two years. so to celebrate i decided to post a few of the pieces i previously worked on.
"animal analysis" animatic and animation
"drive by feeding" and "kid toss" animatic for both
"head hunter" animatic and animation
"handy mantis" animatic and animation
"puppy chow" (the second animation, not the first one) animatic
"cold call" and "salmon slalom" animatic for both (though the company that was supposed to animate it basically just colored my animatics.)
in total i made somewhere around 50 or 60 animatics for ringtales with the new yorker cartoons and fully animated five.
i don't believe i am going to be animating the new yorker comics anymore, i think i will be working on the new properties the company just landed. not sure what those are yet but i should find out in a few weeks :)
unfortunately we noticed AFTER uploading the video to the contest website that the sound is not quite in sync. it is only a hair off but still enough to mess with the timing and dampen the impact (note to everyone: do NOT use mp3 type files when editing to video, stick with aiff or wav these file types are much more reliable). we might try to upload it again but i'm not sure if the rules will allow for that.
other than that little sound problem we are happy with how this came out. total hours working on it is about 24. not bad for a 15 second concept to completion i think.
it's munchies! these are all the animation elements used in the 15 second short jasser and i put together. tomorrow we are doing the sound and then we will be done! this project has come together much like a 48 hour film, except that we stop working on it after 8 consecutive hours and actually get sleep.
so yeah, these are all the animation elements used and believe it or not i actually drew more elements than we ended up using. the pages were scanned, meticulously separated and layered in photoshop by jasser and then animated in after effects. the animation is extremely limited and relies heavily on timing and expressions.
after some time playing with the timing it was decided that the last concept jasser and i came up with for the 15 seconds to fame contest was going to be longer than 15 seconds so we came up with a few new ideas and settled on one involving a dog. three dogs actually. these sketches just happen to be all of the same dog.
look who's back! makin a post on the blog of blogs. it's a me... caroline!
so lots of stuff has been going on in my world; visited the family in arizona, went camping on the beach, been working with some crazy dogs, been chased by some dogs, had "no naked!" in a few festivals (more i hope!), finished up the animation for "a plumbers tale" with jasser, been working on a few gigs here and there and now i'm starting on a fresh new animation project with jasser for a nickelodeon contest.
here's a little snippet of a peek:
the contest is called "15 seconds to fame" and the idea is that you have 15 seconds to make them laugh. we have until september 8th to get it all done and looking snap-tacular. i feel pretty good about this.
hey everybody! want to see all my stop motion fabrication work in one place? well now you can! because i have an all new blog just for that sort of thing. so head on over to the bare bear workbench. your happy times will be thankful for much fulfillment!
i just uploaded my "angry hamburger" design to the patched together website. if it wins it goes into production to become a vinyl toy! please tell all your family and friends and everyone you know to vote for me! and don't forget to vote for it yerself here
i animated and rendered this as a quicktime... in photoshop. PHOTOSHOP! i have been dreaming of this moment for years. why didn't anyone tell me CS3 had animation capabilities sooner!?!! granted, it is a bit clunky but it is soooo worth it.
little unicorn for a music video greg http://chickomon.blogspot.com/ is working on. i would have fixed the follow through on the tail but i ran out of time so i left that fix in the hands of greg.
i can't believe i actually rode around on a bike wearing this thing. i had to do it all one handed because the other hand was needed to control the head (guess which arm is fake!). this was an amazingly fun costume/puppet to build and i learned a lot. i have so many ideas for other puppet costumes now!
i have some video of the costume in action but my after effects is acting up and doesn't want to render things out properly. hopefully i can upload that soon!
old sculpture! geez, i haven't posted in a while. but i have been busy animatin and doin art related stuffs. i have two new demo reels, fabrication photos, animation footage and other crap so i will steadily be uploading that here whenever i can remember.
so for now, enjoy the wind wolf! made in... 2006? maybe? somewhere around there.
oh look, i made a crappy little title thing for my blog :o
so i was up until about 4 in the morning watching this thing on the national geographic website about a frozen baby mammoth. the thing looked like a giant hunk of beef jerky shaped like an elephant. needless to say, i was inspired. but in a cute way.
i made the little mammoth pretty quick since i opted to use hot glue instead of hand sewing it. it is just a bit chunky but really not as bad as i thought it would be. definitely passable.
i am also now working on a series of monster paintings for a gallery that will happen in two months. the theme is monsters and robots. oh boy!
i based the pattern from a hand puppet i already have. i am really on a puppet kick right now, i think i am going to try to make another one of these little ones. sewing things by hand takes a long time though so i am gonna bust out the old glue gun on this next one. i hope it doesn't turn out too chunky...