Adding a bit of spice to animation and design

We recently did all the character design and animation segments for a new music video by The Go Fish Guys. It features a DJ who instructs the kids and band how to dance. This was a fun project to work and the song is catchy too.

We’re doing a number short animations for Anagram International and I decided to show a few background designs from some of them. We hope to showcase some more as well some of the final animations.

I decided to post a sample Character Library to show yet another glimpse into Flash animation. A Character Library or Character Pack contains all the elements of a cartoon character; hands, eyes, mouth, body, legs…and so on. All these elements have to be drawn first in order to be able to animate a character. If this step isn’t done, animating is difficult.

Now there are times when animation begins after the character pack has been created that a new hand pose or body position might be needed that will have to be added or created on the fly, but for the most part the majority of the library has been made.

Below is a sample of a character with all the parts separated out to show the complexity of a character pack. Keep in mind, this is only part of this characters library. My philosophy is to go overboard so that animation is a fun experience.

So when an animator is hired to do a job keep in mind that animation is so much more then moving characters on a screen.

Anyway, that’s my two cents.

You might not believe this, but animation and character design actually takes a lot of time and hard work which means we don’t own a magic button. In order to give a little glimpse into what’s involved with animating a character, I took a screen shot of a working Flash file showing all the individual parts of a character performing an action. Each one of those little black dots equals a movement. This one is actually very “tame” in comparison with others.

Below the screen shot is the actual character animation that corresponds with those little black dots. Crazy huh? Just click the image to see it in action.

No magic buttons here, just hard work.

New Toon

We’ve been working on a new Christian cartoon short series called “Marvin The Time Traveling Pig.” The first episode was just wrapped up and is available for download over at Worshiphouse Kids. The plan is to keep turning them out and perhaps eventually put all on a DVD.

CLICK HERE to view a rough website for the project.

And below you can view the entire episode.

We’ve been involved in Phil Vischer’s “What’s In The Bible” DVD series since the beginning. Here’s a few random stills on some of the animations we did for DVD 3&4 (there’s going to be 13 DVDs in all). We’ll be adding some animated clips a bit later.

Just click on the image to see them larger.

Our studio was featured over at Church Create thanks to Jared Erikson. Thanks Jared, thanks Church Create.

Click Here to check it out.

This was a fun project to work on. The Go Fish Guys asked me to create a older woman character and animate her in her choir outfit. As the beat changes, she slowly gets into it and busts a move on the dance floor. These clips will be “sprinkled” among a live action music video featuring The Go Fish Guys.

Below are a few sketches, character stills and all the clips we did strung together, sorry no music. We’ll be sure to post the final music video when we get permission.

Not too long ago I was introduced to Ryan Hostetler owner of Yes& Entertainment in Atlanta, GA. Ryan and his company do video production work for many Christian ministries so hire him, haha. But, even though he produces high quality videos, Ryan’s passion is writing and story telling and he has some amazing Christian cartoon ideas and was in need of a character designer and animator to help bring these stories to life.

Below is a teaser video for one of his concepts called Super Simon. He did the writing and video output, we did the animation and character design and we both are having a lot of fun. So keep your eyes open for this cartoon and others from Yes& Entertainment and Salty Graphic Studio LLC. We have a good feeling about our combined future in Christian cartoon and animation.

We were contracted again by the music group The Go Fish Guys to develop a soldier character and a few animated segments for their upcoming DVD. These clips will be sprinkled in among a live action video they shot. The animations were very fun to work on and it involved a lot of action shots something we love to do. This time around we tried to combine a lot of slow motion impact shots. You know when you see someone throwing a quick punch followed by a reeeeaaaaaal sloooooooowww motion impact.

Below are a few screen shots along with all the animated clips strung together.

We were asked by the fine people at Brothers Young Productions, creators of The Fantastic World to create a series of individual title cards for some of their new epiosodes which are soon to be released. They were a lot of fun to do and hopefully we’ll get to do more.

Just click on them to see them a bit larger.

Well the bumpers keep coming which is a good thing. This time it’s for a ministry called Tadpole Tails in Illinois.

We were asked to create a bumper showing the transformation of an egg into a tadpole and then into, anyone? anyone? a frog, yes that’s right! It had to be fun and utilize the tadpole in their logo.

All in all it was a fun little project. Below is the bumper.

Bumper Time? What’s that? You know, they’re those little animations at the beginning of every movie, tv show and dvd that tell who created what you’re about to see.

Below is one that we were asked to do for Brothers Young Productions who are responsible for the Christian youth series known as The Fantastic World.

They wanted to implement their logo as well as tie in a character that would some how change it into a word that they coined, “Imaginate“.

Click below to see the bumper as well as a few stills showing the character.

We were asked to be part of an animation team to bring the Mr. Potato Head character to life for Hasbro’s Playskool Kids website.

Mr. Potato Head had to speak/act 150 different lines of dialogue. Once the character design and assets were created by Stanton Cruise and handed out by project manager Cedric Hohnstadt, the animators got to work.

It was a very tight deadline, but all in all very fun and a great learning experience.

Below are a few screen grabs from the site as well a few clips that we did. We encourage you to take a look at the site as well.

Our first cartoon, The Slug And Ant Show™, now has a Facebook fan page. We figure it’s a nice way to generate more interest and update you all on what’s happening with the show.

Just click the image below to jump to the Facebook fanpage or CLICK HERE.