"Plaid to the Bone"? Really?

I dusted off my old Time Warp Trio work from Soup2nuts in 2005 when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. And here is a sample of some of my storyboards. UNFORTUNATELY, Flash CS4 is so buggy and weird, converting the timeline into Quicktimes is impossible without creating these weird ghosting/artifacts throughout the animation. You'll notice it in the first 3rd of the animation...this was the best of all the quicktimes I made till 4am this morning. But the only remedy to this is, I found out, is to create .swf files from Flash CS4 and then buy a $1k program called "After Effects" (thank you, computer program industry for making creative programs impossible to afford for artists/directors who are struggling to make a name for themselves, ya greedy jerks!). So, I'm calling out a conspiracy here, ADOBE Flash CS4 can only export .SWF files cleanly which are NOT condusive for internet and the general industry, so you are forced to purchase ADOBE After Effects to create the Quicktimes...hmmmm. I think this is bigger than Enron.

Ok, enough about my conspiracy theories...back to the Storyboard. A couple of things to mention here. It's more of an animatic, really...that's only because I was a crazy person and tried to do as much of the animation as I could get away with in the short amount of time I had to create these, so I could convey cleanly enough the timing and what EXACTLY I wanted to happen. You'll also notice in the beginning the red timing indicators I posted in the boards for the simple arm movements...I abandoned that pretty quickly since it was creating more work than necessary. I should also mention what this is about, give you the backstory. This show is called "Time Warp Trio" which only had 1 season on Discovery Kids. The show is based on the children's books "Time Warp Trio" which centers around 3 kids who obtain a magical time traveling book from one of the kids' uncle. The show itself expanded on the idea and created 3 more kids, the boy's great granddaughters from 100 years in the future who are named similarly but have opposing personalities. In this scene (actually this is a composite of 3 scenes) we have the leader of the kids, Joe, his sister, Anna, his Great Granddaughter Jodie, and his magician-Uncle Joe (the previous owner of the book) having a victory feast in 1338 Scotland with Lady Agnes Dunbar ("Black Agnus") as they plan on how they need to survive a continuing onslaught by the English. And Jodie unwillingly volunteers to sneak through the enemy camp to go find help. I enjoyed the back and forth quick camera pans between the bickering family members in this scene and the overall dread that Jodie is overcome with as she just steadily grows worse and worse with fear about her daunting task at hand.

Aftertaste

This is from a small stint of one-panel cartoons I drew for a small wine and spirits magazine called WINO Magazine. I started to name the cartoon "Aftertaste" but by that time I couldn't continue drawing for the magazine due to a contract that was a little too loose.

Supernormal

Something a little different. This is a set of scenes from the British show I worked on before Wordgirl, "Supernormal" which was about a boy with no superpowers going to a superhero high school. Think the plot to Disney's "Sky High" but made into a cartoon show. The show is set around 4 friends, Eric (the normal kid who wears his underwear on the outside of his pants), Changerella (A bubbly girl who could change into anything, from a rodent to a submarine), Brass-Butt (in this scene - he is the idiot of the group who has an impenetrable butt - probably best used for prison) and Buzzgirl ( a half girl, half bug...she has 4 arms and bug wings with a long tongue). The show was shown only in the UK and was animated by a company in Canada called "Fatkat Studios" of whom I worked for via Seattle, WA, USA.

In this scene...I have no idea what's going on. I never saw the full episode. In fact, I never saw a full episode of any of the shows. Only from what I worked on. What I can tell you is that the guy with the screaming British accent and the junky robot with the goldfish in the brain jar are the evil janitors of the school. The guy is supposedly an evil genius who poses as a janitor at the school and are constantly causing problems for the 4 kids. In this scene he flashes back to when the Mayor leaves and we see what the city is like without him.

The interesting thing about the way that this studio had me work, was that each scene was determined by most of the camera changes. There are more episodes I have kept, but only a few I could really show as a great piece of work. Timing issues and just the way I animated things with tweens made the scenes not up to my usual standards.

"Supernormal Ep. 151 scenes 17-26"

World of Warcraft - Ulduar Strat Guide

More delays from work keeping me from drawing :(

But good news...I'm working on a side project for my other hobby (the only thing I do when I'm not animating or drawing on a regular basis). World of Warcraft. The guild I'm in are in the latest dungeon called "Ulduar". Within this dungeon are several boss encounters for 25 people at a time. We run this twice a week. I try to make time for it if work isn't pressing or a real life event isn't in the way.

So this is a concept illustration for the boss encounter "XT-002 Deconstructor". Its a work in progress, but that is my character "Blooregard" (level 80 Draenei Elemental Shaman). Technically I'd be putting nine more players in with me...but it was just to get the idea down. Ultimately, the full animation will be seperated into different sections to portray each boss encounter to help the raid better understand the fight...what to watch out for and how to avoid damage.

Ironically, I may not be able to raid in Ulduar due to working on this...hehe.

"Ulduar Strat Guide - Concept Art" Flash CS4 7/28/09

Who ya gonna call?

Some kids love Superman or Spider-man. Some kids want to be a firefighter or an astronaut. I loved and wanted to be a Ghostbuster. The Ghostbusters is one of my favorite movies since I was a little kid (like most children of the 80's) and The Real Ghostbusters was my all-time favorite cartoon growing up. Just recently, with the release of the entire cartoon series on dvd and the new video game, The Ghostbusters have rekindled my Ghostbustin' blood and is reheating my creamy geek center.

To give you a better understanding of my immersion into Ghostbusters (my Mom can confirm all of this). I watched the cartoon religiously, I watched the movie several times (even the not as good "Ghostbusters II"), I owned A LOT of the toys including the Firehouse playset, I collected the comic books, sticker books, my grandfather even made a Proton pack out of cardboard for halloween (the trap was made from a shoebox), I understood, even at a young age, the Ghostbuster lingo such as "a Class 5 full-torso Vapor", I tried to get my hair cut like Peter Venkmen in the cartoon but was told that hair just doesn't do that (it was a sad day for my childhood...lol) and most recently, I was researching to become an amateur Ghost Hunter here in Washington State. Unfortunately, that dream died rather quickly because my work schedule is just too busy to be out in some 'haunted' location till 4am.

So here are some sketches that I threw together today after watching the first disc of The Real Ghostbusters. The first is just a BW drawing of the 5 main characters, Egon Spengler, Ray Stantz, Peter Venkmen, Winston Zeddemore, and Slimer. (Winston was voiced by Arsenio Hall in the cartoon...interesting fact.) and the second sketch is just a quick drawing I threw together from a still of Harold Ramis playing Egon Spengler in the live action blockbuster comedy, "The Ghostbusters". Usually, when you remember stuff from your childhood, the memory is better than it actual is...but after re-watching a few episodes of the cartoon, it still looks great.

"The Real Ghostbusters - sketch" Flash CS4 7/17/09
"Egon Spengler/Harold Ramis - sketch" Flash CS4 7/17/09

BUNNY!!

My studio upgraded to Flash CS4...which means I had to as well. The new program is radically different in layout and design. Plus its added a new type of tween.

This is me just fooling around with the new program to get use to it. I just finished a deadline, so I'm in a sort of limbo between quotas. Its a quick animation...took about an hour or so.

Random street person!

Work has taken over my life once again...but its really exciting what I'm working on...or rather who's voice is in the scene I'm working on. But I can't say who until the episode airs...so you'll have to wait to see who it is until I put UP that scene on the blog.

But I haven't drawn anything but Wordgirl related stuff in a while, so here is some sketching I did based on a girl waiting at a bus stop I passed. It was the mohawk that caught my eye. And her basic demeanor (her actual pose is the full sitting sketch) was what spurred these other drawings of her just being a badass. The far right head shot is just a basic cartoon version of her.