Chris Koelsch - Animation Reel 2018

Below is my animation/illustration reel for 2018. It contains many projects that I had the privilege of working on throughout 2017. I'm pretty proud of what I've done this year seeing as it was my first full year freelancing. That can be a very scary thing for a lot of different reasons, but it managed to keep me fairly busy and I'm proud of the work that came out of it. Hope you enjoy it.

TnT Tuts - #9 - Animating Illustrated Text in After Effects Using Shape Layers

In this tutorial I show you how you can create a text in Illustrator and then animate it in After Effects using shape layers. I created a text for my 2018 reel using simple shapes in Illustrator. The idea was to overlap the shaped and use different blend modes to create various kinds of color combinations. I used the plugin Overlord to import my Illustrator assets straight into After Effects and create shape layers. From there I animated the paths in various ways to create a slick animation. No real tricks in this one, just good ol' fashion keyframing.

TnT Tuts - #6,7 & 8 - Illustrating, Rigging & Animating a Cat in After Effects

In this tutorial series I tackle illustrating, rigging and animating a cat in After Effects.

The first thing people should know about rigging a cat versus rigging a human is that it's double the work (because it is double the legs). Also animal walk cycles are all just slightly different. Dogs vary from cats, cats vary from horses, and so on. So each animal rig is it's own unique beast so to speak. This is why it's always good to have lots of references. I have several books that reference various animal run cycles with photos and information. These are vital to understanding just how different animals walk, because if you don't understand the basics then there is no way you'll be able to deviate and add your own creative spin on things.

Another thing to note is that most animals require an extra bone by the shoulder or foot, so this adds to the complexity of your rig.

Finally, the other difficulty with animal rigs is that they often require extreme flexibility, especially in cats.  If you've ever seen a cat run you'll notice that their torso often stretches very wide on the jump and compresses very small on the landing.  This doesn't seem like a big deal but in terms of looking realistic, getting this to work is what will set your rig apart from others.  This flexibility can often be hard to pull off without breaking the rig as well.

In the following videos you'll see how I tackle these various challenges through the creative process.  I found this to be one of the most flexible cat rigs I've ever created and I had a lot of fun animating with it.

TnT Tuts - #5 - Animating a Bicycle in After Effects

This weeks tutorial features a character riding a bike.  You'll see how I use the same basic principles I've shown rigging characters with Duik, creating the bouncing ball, and using simple expressions to make this rig. 

Tnt Tuts - #4 - Bouncing Balls

So many exciting things to talk about for this one. Finally got a new microphone for the podcast, so now everything is looking and sounding professional. Everything except me that is. Now that I have all of the streaming logistics figured out, I'm happy I have the time to plan out my tutorials more. I want them to be off the cuff, but I also want them to be prepared enough so that people can actually learn something. In this tutorial it was more or less me just trying to work through something rather than explaining it very well. I will have to work on that for the future. Regardless, here is my tutorial on ball bouncing.

Tnt Tuts - #3 - Character Rigging with RubberHose and Joysticks ‘n Sliders

In this tutorial I use RubberHose, Joysticks 'n Sliders, and Duik all together to create a powerful character rig.

Tnt Tuts - #2 - Character Animation in After Effects with Duik: Run Cycles

My second tutorial stream touches on making run cycles with Duik. You see a lot of walk cycles out there on the internet and I wanted to represent run cycles a little bit more. In a lot of ways they are more flexible and fun that run cycles. To catch my steams live just follow me on Twitch.

Tnt Tuts - #1 - Character Creation, Rigging, & Animation Feat. Overlord

I just finished my first Twitch stream and I hope to do more in the future.  For this first tutorial I decided to try out Battle Axe's new extension for After Effects called, Overlord.  Essentially this extension allows to to work more seamlessly between Illustrator and After Effects.  You can send your layers, text, and swatches back and forth from Illustrator and After Effects and all of your changes will update seamlessly.  To see how I created this nifty little vampire just watch the video below.

Feline Friends

One of the things I've been working on this past year is creating characters. I've created over 200 characters in the past year and that has really helped me grow as both a creator and an artist.  Making something new everyday pushed me to start drawing every day.  Honestly since becoming an animator I was beginning to spend most of my time in Illustrator and After Effects.  I hadn't realize how much I missed the simple idea of sketching something out.

Long story short, this has lead to a small ongoing series I'm calling, Feline Friends.  Basically this is a collection of characters from all walks of like that just happen to have cat companions (as you can see I love alliteration).

You can see what I've made so far below and also follow me on Instagram and search my hashtag #felinefriends for more.

Day 234/235: Devin

Recently had the pleasure of doing a commission for someone who reached out to me.  It's not very often I do these sort of things, but I was excited to give it a try none the less.

Basically Devin reached out to me looking for a new avatar to use for his social media.  He also wanted a short animation featuring the character.  He sent me some references of my work he liked and some other personality notes.  From there I got to work in Illustrator.

I didn't sketch this one out, just went straight into illustrator working with shapes. I first created the portrait, seeing as how that was the most detailed and important aspect, and then moved on to creating a body for the animation.

Once I had all the art created I went into After Effects, rigged him up with Duik, and began concepting what I wanted the animation to be.  Devin had mentioned wanting it to be basketball related, so I went with that.  My initial idea was to have him running and dribbling, but since I always do run/walk cycles, I challenged myself to think a little harder on it. I then came up with the idea of playing with the basketball a little. There's so many different things you can do with the basketball that are fun to animate.  Below is the result.

The client was happy with everything but the color palette...but I like the original better ;)

Day 225: Space Knight

I haven't done an in depth process video in quite a while, so I thought it would be fun to do a little timelapse of Day 225: Space Knight.

As usual, this one started with a simple sketch.  I had like 6 different ideas going into this sketch and was struggling bringing them all together. Basically I wanted to take the idea of a knight and bring it into the future.  I feel like knight armor and space suits share some similar attributes. That and I'm a sucker for both space and knights.

After the sketch was scanned in I brought the art into illustrator and just went at it.  Not a whole lot to say about it.  I am enjoying getting back into illustrator lately. I've been playing in Photoshop so much that it's a nice break to just play with vector shapes.  That and I'm much quicker in Illustrator so it's a little less stressful for me.

I was pleasently surprised with how it turned out given that I was struggling so much with the initial design. Just shows that sometimes you have to keep working at something even if you're unsure how it will turn out.

Day 223/224: International Cat Day

Normally I don't feed into these "holidays" that seem to be every single day for every different kind of thing you can imagine. But a holiday that celebrates cats I just can't resist.  Here are two dailies I created inspired by the theme.


I sketched them both out and created them in Illustrator. Normally I don't use the blob brush in Illustrator that much but since I've been drawing with the Wacom more I am a little more into the idea.  The base of these characters are just vector shapes and then I drew on all the black lines.  I actually really liked the balance of clean lines and hand drawn that this process produced.

Day 219/220: This 'n That

Oh look, another 2 for 1! Yes, I've been busy with catching up on some real work and also a little lazy as well. So for that, you get two characters in one post again.

These two were actually spun from an idea I wanted to pursue with my Vimeo profile. Every profile has a banner video now and I thought it would be fun to animate a specific video just for my Vimeo banner. I knew I wanted some characters and then I thought "Hey, it would be cool to brand this somehow!" With that in mind I created some very simple characters to represent "This" and "That". I wanted to make them simple to match my brand, but I also thought that would help me focus more on the actual character animation and less on how they looked. Sometimes the simplest characters can be the most expressive. I also thought it fit the theme to make them opposites in a way (not to mention that usually plays better with comedy.)

I haven't started animating them yet. Not quite sure how I want to go about them and it will take some tinkering. Also I'm heading back to Toledo for the weekend and just don't have the time right now to mess with it. That being said, keep your eyes peeled in the futue for an update on these two.

Day 214/215/216: Usual Suspects

Well it's been a long time since I have written a post. Seems I didn't get better at blogging. The last time I posted was for day 38, which honestly feels like a lifetime ago. I know my history doesn't speak well for me, but I am going to try and make a post for every daily now. You can come here and read a little bit more about my process for each day. My struggles. My successes. With that being said, let's get to it.

As you can see, this daily is an example of me sort of "cheating" and doing 3 characters in one scene. For those that don't know, these dailies from from a project in which I'm trying to create a new illustrated or animated character every day for an entire year. As of today I have created 216 of 365. On rare occasions I will put a few days into one daily, but this is usually only when I get far behind. I've actually only ever done it one other time and it was when I was on vacation.

I will say that making the time is the hardest thing I deal with on this project. Some days fitting a drawing in is very easy, sometimes it comes out of work. Then there are days when I'm out with friends, busy with actual work, or just feeling burnt out. But, regardless of the pain, what I make every day generally comes out successful. And even if I don't love every piece as much as the next, I definitely learn something with each new attempt.

So, knowing I was going to put 3 characters together for this one, I thought it would be fun to put some fantasy characters all together at the bar. I started by sketching out my idea. I honestly didn't have a plan for composition when I began. I just started drawing the viking and built out from there. When I finished I noticed the archer was WAY too big in the sketch. Being lazy as I am I resigned to fixing it in Illustrator. I honestly wasn't sure if I wanted to use Illustrator or Photoshop for this particular piece, but in the end I felt the crisp shapes and lines in Illustrator would lend better to the idea I was going for.

To compliment the clean and somewhat simple shapes of the piece I decided to keep the color palette simple as well.

In the end I really enjoyed this making this one. Sometimes fitting all these characters into one scene is more fun because I can have more interaction and play around with details more. On the normal dailies it can be a little harder to do that.

Day 38: Meet the Artist

So Instagram is doing this Meet the Artist thing and it seemed like a fun way to get my daily done. Here's me.

Day 2: Grizz 'n Grind

Well it's Day 2 and I'm still going strong.  Decided it would be fun to do a timelapse with this one. I haven't done that in a little while and it seemed appropriate.

Glenn Davis - Be Honest - UNOFFICIAL Music Video

I recently had the pleasure to work on one of my first full fledged music videos. The musician in question is Glenn Davis of the band Way Yes.  At the end of this month he will be releasing his very first solo album titled Waves & Webs.  Glenn recently helped me create the music for my 2016 reel and as a fellow Ohio native I felt extremely connected to helping him create a video for his single, Be Honest.  His entire album centers around the turmoil that followed a failed marriage, so all of his songs have a shared meaning in love and loss.  Be Honest is unique in that it has a very driving beat and higher energy than his other singles.  When we discussed ideas for the music video we tossed around all things relating to what honesty is and what it means in different forms.  We landed on the idea of chameleons and their ability to shift their colors.  How this effects their ability to be honest or dishonest with their surroundings and who they are.  We took the idea a step further by having a central character who did not want to conform with the ever changing colors he is being bombarded with on a daily basis. With this in mind I took off to sketching out and developing more ideas, characters, and storyboards.

As you can see my sketchbook is very stream of conscious and rough.  I like to spend the majority of my time actually developing the art and animation.  I use my sketches as a quick way to just put my ideas on paper.  I did everything from research about chameleons to looking at all shapes and sizes of the species. Once I had these things locked down I went into creating my characters and assets.  I knew I wanted the look to be vibrant and alive to match the emotion of the song, so instead of using a clean vector look in Illustrator, I decided to use hand drawn elements in Photoshop to give everything a much more textural feeling.

Now that my assets were created, I was free to bring everything into After Effects and just get down to the nitty gritty of rigging and animating.  When rigging characters I use a program called Duik.  This is a free program that works great with setting up character rigs within After Effects.  All you have to do is label and parent your elements properly and you have a working character rig within minutes.

It's a little challenging showing all the layers in one shot, but this is what the set up looks like after the rigging is done and Duik has performed it's magic.  Basically I get a set of about 8 controls that let me easily manipulate the character in a way that makes sense.  Once this is complete with all the various characters I do all my animating.  After many hours and hundreds of keyframes you end up with the music video you see below.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it!

Blacksmith Andre Illustration and Rigging

I recently played through Dark Souls 3 and loved it. I enjoyed it so much I had to create my own animation of one of my favorite NPCs, Blacksmith Andre. I created the illustration in Photoshop and did the animation and rigging in After Effects using Duik.

A Bun House Christmas 2015

Made a little animated holiday card featuring the Bun House crew. I was listening to a lot of Charlie Brown's Christmas while making this and it definitely affected the whole vibe. Enjoy.

Tree City's 3rd Annual Film Festival Poster

Last year I had the joy of participating in the Tree City Film Festival with my film troupe, Bun House Films.  This year we are back, but I also had the opportunity to design the poster for the event this year. 

I was provided with a single line to inspire my design - "The root of all evil." From there my mind started working up ideas.  I looked at a bunch of other poster designs and tried to pull things I liked from all of them to create my own piece.  One thing I liked was creative use of negative space.  Obviously poster designs need room for text so this is a useful technique to create space.  I also really liked when poster designs were kept to a very small color palette.  For my poster I ended up using 4 greens based off of Tree City's main brand green.  The actual design was just my interpretation of the line I was given.  Obviously the city is known for their tree's so I wanted to tie that in as much as possible.  The film festival actually takes place in a historic train barn so incorporating that somehow was another goal of mine.  From there I just began creating this eerie and whimsical world which you see below.  I was given a lot of free reign on this design so I really just let the artwork lead me in creating the final piece. I'm happy with how it came out and I can't wait to participate this year!