Subway Animation, next step

Here is the next step I took in finishing up the SUBWAY piece.

My feeling was that if I wanted to show a woman taking a seat in a subway car, that I should contrast it with another character sitting down beside her. A wobbly drunk was a good contrast, and showed proof that the woman came prepared and could defend herself.

This is just a very rough pass that I edited in with the woman's animation. The drawings were done in Photohop and timed in DigiCel Flipbook.

August Entry

Thief from bj crawford on Vimeo.

This month was a struggle. The idea, for which I had some help, was difficult to come by. The posing and blocking could have been better. I received excellent feedback, and I wish I had more time to incorporate it.

I probably spent too much time preparing to animate. (Weird, I know). I looked at a lot of Milt Kahl, Glene Keane and Will Eisner. I spent time photographing hand/body reference. But then I just did a lot of sitting around thinking and worrying.

Here is the first blocking I did:



And then the final blocking:



A lot of the best feedback I received picked up on problems that are noticable in these two blocking tests. But I sorta refused any hardcore critique at this stage - bad move on my part!
Anyways, it came together in the end, but there is still work to be done in his performance.
Oh, and the phone cord is missing... gotta remember to add that in.

11 Second Club June Entry

***UPDATE*** Thank you to all of the members at the 11 Second Club for voting and commenting on this piece of animation. I take all of the feedback seriously, so the time taken to rate and then write something means a lot.

After a busy first part of June, I put everthing else aside and deticated the last two weeks of June to the 11 Second Club. After hearing the track it only took a couple minutes before I starting doodling a clown in the entrance of a fancy restaurant. I sat on the idea for a couple days and then began work on the animation. below are a bunch of sketches that included designs for the clown and thumbnails for the animation. Enjoy!

Color Test for PANDA

As someone who loves animation so much, whenever I see an illustration that I'm really drawn to, I'm always thinking about how it would look if it were animated.

I posted a pencil test awhile back of a panda bear jumping around on a roof, based on a beautiful children's book called Zen Shorts. But it needs to be colored in the original watercolor style to have the full effect. Between commercial projects, I've been slowly coloring every frame of the animation. Here is a quick color test of the middle section of the piece. The body tones have yet to be added to most of these frames.

Key Animation

Here is a Key test for a woman sitting down in a subway car. It's the first half of a larger piece of animation. The test is mostly on fours. I'm trying to work harder on controlling my slow ins and slow outs. This key test is not quite finished. I want to get it to the point where I'd feel comfortable handing it to an inbetweener (which will end up being ME). But separtating the KEYS from the INBETWEENS will be a good exercise for me.

"SPY" (thanks ronald searle!)