Cube Spin Test

Recently a coworker approached me with two videos he had seen online (https://vimeo.com/13458659, https://vimeo.com/7576197) and wanted to know if it was possible to recreate the cube spin seen in them without using Cinema 4D or any sort of 3D program. So in an afternoon I whipped up something similar completely within After Effects and you can see the result below. It was made with a few lights, a 3D cube made from 2D shape layers, and some faux shadows.

A Guide To American Football

Fraser Davidson has been a LONG time animation inspiration to me. This recent animation he's created that gives a full tutorial to American football is no different. Not only are his colors brilliant and character designs quirky, but his animation is always smooth and drives the story in an engaging and unique way. The best part of this whole animation? He wrote and animated the entire thing himself!

Jungle - Platoon

This music video for Jungle's hit, Platoon is one of those videos I know I would like before I even watched it.

The Bun House Gang: Cutting Room Floor - Update 1

Hello all!  Seeing as how The Bun House Gang: Cutting Room Floor animation is going to be a constant work in progress for me over the next year, I figured it made the most sense, both for me and my audience, to give updates as frequently as possible. This way everyone can see all the work that goes in to something like this and hopefully interacting with fans will give me a little extra boost to keep working when I'm getting in a slump.

I've made a few updates before, showing you the characters I've created.  I now have the full Bun House crew assembled (see below).

My next step in the process was to take these characters into After Effects and get them rigged up and ready for animation.  Seeing as how Cutting Room Floor is going to be heavily based on old Scooby-Doo episodes, it only made sense to copy their iconic title screen.  So below you can see breakdowns of each character's run cycle, and then the final product at the bottom.  Remember to stay tuned for more updates in the future.

Life Updates

Hey all, I've been fairly busy with a lot of stuff so I apologize for my lack of posts. My life is pretty focused around the things I'm trying to get accomplished. For one, I'm trying to finish my 2013 reel before the end of January. After that I will be working on the first episode of Life of Slim. I was going to try and push it out before the end of the year but it didn't seem right to rush. I want it to be able to take my time with it and make it better than before. I've also been super preoccupied with creating characters for the next Bun House film. This one will be fully animated and I expect it to be one of my biggest projects of next year. In preparation I have been creating the members of Bun House in Life of Slim style one by one. I only have one more to do, but here are the characters I created most recently.

Louis C.K.: Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee

Crackle is being a huge butt and not allowing embedding of this video, so you'll have to just click on the image below to get to the video. For those of you that haven't seen Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, it's a show where Jerry Seinfeld does just that.  He picks up various comedians in cool antique cars and gets coffee with them.  This recent episode stars one of my favorite comedians, Louis C.K.  However, that's not the only reason I was excited when watching this.  About half way through Louis tells a long story, which the editors chose to animate over.  I really like the simplistic style, it's just enough to help make the story a little more entertaining.

Creating and Rigging Spike Timelapse

With Monkey Man: Origins only a week behind me I'm already beginning to think of what new and exciting short films I can make for Bun House Films. The more I thought about it the more it seemed obvious that our brand of humor, gore, and horror would be great for animation. So one of the projects I want to start next year is a short animated horror flick involving all the Bun House crew up to their usual antics. If you've seen my Mean Mug & Slim series then you already know I have an animated character for myself; however, that still left Spike, Dusty, Danny, and Kevin from Bun House to be created before I could start animating anything.  To make it a little more fun I thought I would create each new character one by one, and then release them in a series with each new character killing off the last.  For the first installment I created Spike, and naturally he killed my character.  You can see the making of Spike's character below, and make sure to keep an eye out for the next kill...

Monkey Man: Origins

Had the joy of getting together Bun House Films (a group of my oldest friends) to make our 4th film together, Monkey Man: Origins.  This one is kind of like the prequel to our original Monkey Man film, aside from the fact it has nothing else to do with the film other than the monkey mask.  Either way, we made this in 2 days so take it for what it it.  If you like what you see then feel free to like us on our Facebook page. We will be bringing you more comedy horror in the future, of that I can assure you.

Geometric Portrait Timelapse

Every time someone new is hired at the place I work they get a unique portrait created by one of our artists.  Once in a while I will volunteer my creative services to this cause because not only is it fun, but it's a great way to flex your skills.  Usually the person I'm creating a portrait for doesn't have much of an opinion on what I create, but this time they came with a specific style in mind.  I really liked the geometric vector style they had in mind, but because girls tend to have softer, rounder faces I found it challenging to replicate.  In the end I think the result came out great and it only took me about 2.5 hours to create. You can check out the making of below.

Monkey Man with Commentary

This past weekend I had the privilege of reuniting with my old film buddies, Bun House Films. During our time together we managed to shoot a brand new film called Monkey Man: Origins, but that's not what brings us here today. While everyone was together we were able to sit down and record our second directors commentary. Seeing as how we were filming a new Monkey Man video, it only seemed right to commentate on the original. Below you can find both the original video as well as the commentary we shot. Please enjoy and don't forget to like our Facebook page and keep an eye out for the new Monkey Man: Origins.

San Diego Studies

Cy Kuckenbaker has made some really interesting videos he calls "time collapses". Not to be confused with time lapses. His first two time collapses were merely documenting the amount of airplane departures and arrivals in San Diego over one day. The result is both beautiful and interesting; however, his recent video on the color of cars in San Diego is taking this technique to a whole new level. It's easier to watch the video than have me explain it, but if you'd like to read a little bit more about Cy's process, check out this article here.

Tarantino & Friends

Thought this animation from Timor Barshtman was a fun little way to pay tribute to Tarantino and the many actors he chooses to use in his films. It's also fun to see the timeline and progression in art form.

WIND

Just sit back and enjoy this animation from Robert Loebel.

Life of Slim - Behind the Scenes: Creating The Bar

As promised, a timelapse of me creating one of the backgrounds I'll be using for the next animation. Really like how this one turned out actually.

Life of Slim - Behind the Scenes: Creating and Rigging Hot Chick

So I've decided to create a few behind the scenes videos in an effort to keep myself motivated throughout the process of creating the first Life of Slim episode. My first scene involves Slim attempting to talk to a hot chick in a bar, so I needed to develop and rig a new character. I plan on doing a timelapse video of creating a background scene and possibly short animation tutorial as well. Stay tuned for more!

The Great Heidecker/Scharpling Twitter War

Loving this short from Tim Heidecker about the pains of social media, the tortures of LA, and how we manage our friendships and expectations through this new form of contact that makes us all so accessible. The writing is tight and the animation from Titmouse is a great pairing. I love the use of color in this piece.

DisneyShorts Releases New Mickey Mouse Cartoons

Apparently Disney has been releasing some new Mickey Mouse shorts. I used to absolutely adore the old Disney shorts with Goofy when I was a kid so I was excited to check them out.  I was pleasantly surprised immediately to see that the style has taken on a little bit more of a modern edge (I especially love zombie Goofy), but the slap stick humor and animation is still on par with what you'd expect from Disney.  I only wish now that we could get some new Looney Tunes that were as good as the old ones.

Adsy - It's a kind of magic

Love the style of this little animation done by Sweet Crude and Fraser Davidson for the new app Adsy.

CONAN Season 3 Supercut

Amazing use of clips in this CONAN Season 3 supercut. I can only imagine the drugs this guy was on while he made this.

YouPost - Service providers

This animation for YouPost from Jumbla is a really good example of a learner video done well.  These types of animations are becoming much more commonplace in our society, and thus there are a lot of poorly executed ones out there.  This is not one of them.