new yorker animated cartoons podcast

for anyone out there wondering how to get their paws on some new yorker animated fun GO HERE!

there is now a podcast (apparently this is not so new) with new episodes three times a week and supposedly that page i linked you to there updates daily with cartoons but i haven't actually checked to see if that is true. there is also a youtube page but i'm not sure how often it is updated. HERE IS THE LINK if you want to check it out.

i think i have worked on about 100 of these by this point. holy crap!

"No Naked!" on channel frederator!

the good people over at channel frederator are featuring "No Naked!" on their online program, cartoon hangover! i have been holding off on putting "no naked" online to give it a good chance to run in the festivals that don't allow films to be posted online, but it's been a year since i finished it up and it's hit a few of the bigger festivals so i think that's good enough. i'll probably still submit to those festivals that don't have this requirement, there are quite a few. so i guess this is the online premiere of "no naked"! and guess what! there is also an interview with me at the end :D cartoon hangover is generally an 18+ show but my film and the interview are straddling that PG line so it should be safe for most kids to watch.

p.s. that isn't me in the video thumbnail.

p.p.s. get ready for unnecessary bleeping!

building a fuzzy tree

progress pics of a small-ish fuzzy forest i'm making with my roommate, dina noto, for an installation. she is making the creatures in the forest and i am making the forest itself. there will be around seven to ten trees and about the same amount of creatures in the forset. all creatures are various interpretive species of dina's "love cat" character.





most of the trees will be the size of the white one pictured here. the large brown tree is something of a focal point in the forest. look at the love cats :D

ROCK AND ROLL!

acrylic and ink on drywall, painted a few months ago.

a website and a show

i really should keep up with my posting here... last thursday was the "best of animation block party" show in los angeles and my little film "no naked!" played! a lot of good this information is AFTER the show, i know.

here is the blurb about it in cartoon brew

AND and and i finally got my website up! undressedanimals.com is ready for your viewing pleasure. of course i have no idea how to make the website i want to make so i threw the whole thing together real fast in iweb, but it works and it is there and i can always make changes later. and i will. because, iweb, no mater how awesome you are i just need to be me.

a shy hello

i've been animating and building things for other people a lot lately but i haven't really drawn anything for myself in quite a while. so i drew this little guy. short characters with big noses and lots of hair are my most favorite thing to draw right now.

and now for a little context: it's 2:30 in the morning... i've been on ebay looking for awkward animation cels for over two hours... "no naked!" plays at the best of animation block party tomorrow night (tonight)... and i still don't have my website up. i need to do this! hopefully i'll at least have a gallery up or a link to my demo reel and email or something before the screening. i really don't want people to visit my "come back soon!" page anymore. it seems to lose meaning after a while.

i have recently become a fan of sewing

after i made my bison puppet costume i was bit by the sewing bug real hard. i made two hand puppets (pics in older post), modified a giant stuffed polar bear into a halloween costume/vest (still have to fix the hood) and now i'm making my own stuffed animals. this one here is the beginnings of a coyote. i really have no idea how to make patterns so i pretty much just plan out how i want it to look in my head, make a few sketches on paper and hope everything works out in the end. so far it's working out just great.




this is a black lab i made for my sister. the body is a little long so it can be used as a pillow. my sister helps raise service dogs and they mostly use labs for that sort of thing. the most recent lab she helped raised happened to be a black lab and we all got kinda attached to him so i thought she would appreciate a black lab stuffed animal/pillow. and she does :]





i made this one for myself. he looks like a terrier or something but he is actually a little polar bear. his head is super floppy so it can turn in all sorts of directions. i think a moveable head on a stuffed animal adds a lot to the livelyness and emotion of the toy.




i think googley eyes add a lot too!

bunny and bear

i first drew these characters at cal arts in 2005 during a 24 hour sound design session for "robot be-bop" with my friend debbie. we did it straight through and it was probably somewhere around the 16 hour mark (probably awake for almost 24 hours already) i doodled these two in my sketch book. i became obsessed with the bunny and the bear and created multiple universes and stories for them, all of which failed to develop fully.

i have drawn hundreds to thousands of small, random characters in my sketchbooks, on napkins and the undersides of tables but i can't remember ever being so wrapped up in any of my characters as i have with these two. in a way, they haunt me. i have no idea what it is about them, but i absolutely love my unnamed bunny and bear.

these were sculpted in 2005 or 2006 with the intent to make a mold out of them but i got carried away and decided to paint them as soon as they were cooked. they have quite a few battle wounds as a result of my semi-nomadic lifestyle.

i like to draw on the walls of my room

i like living in a place where i can do this. but even if i couldn't i would still do it anyway. there's something special about drawing on walls...








this particular wall drawing is based on a photo of me, my sister and two of my cousins when we were little.

scale-ee-bear: "dayton"

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.

purple bear

painted with neon acrylics during my final semester at calarts around april, 2007.



i wish i had picture of him in his ultraviolet gloweyness but my rabbit ate my blacklight.

two old sketches

probably from some time in 2008


this one was more recent from around mid 2009


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.

RingTales

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 :)

munchies is go

hot out of after effects, it's... "MUNCHIES!"



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.

MUNCHIES!

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.

licky pup

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.

you better don't...

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.

... that's candy in his mouth by the way.

I HAVE ANOTHER BLOG!

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!

fun with cardboard

troll

fee, fie, foe... uh... gimmie your lunch money, squirt!

ANGRY HAMBURGER!

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

photoshop is amazing

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.

look! it's a flying "T"!

tea time

i was playin around with some tea water and pens then added some color in photoshop. i rather like the technique.

little prancing unicorn

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.

BISON!

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!