Super Duper Super Hero pre-production

Thought I'd share some earlier color development from the Super Duper Super Hero series.






Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood

 

Over the past year Ive been directing the animation on P.B.S.'s latest preschool show Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood at 9 Story Entertainment in Toronto. You can feel free to check out more about the show, including a few clips at PBS.org. Hope you enjoy it!

Super Duper Super Hero - Episode 4

Well its been a fun run, I'm pleased to post the final episode of Super Duper Super Hero entitled "Insector". Hope you like it and hope you've enjoyed the series!

Super Duper Super Hero - Episode 3

It's a fight against The Future in this week's Super Duper Super Hero episode.
Hope you enjoy it!

Super Duper Super Hero - Episode 2

Im happy to post this week's episode of the Super Duper Super Hero entitled "The Super Villain"

Super Duper Super Hero - Episode 1

I'm really excited to finally share the first episode of my new web series Super Duper Super Hero entitled "Turtle Trouble".
Hope you enjoy it, and thanks for watching!

Super Duper Super Hero

Im really happy




Monster T

Here's a very poor I-phone photo of the TAAFI shirt I designed to accompany the poster. I thought it might be worth switching it up for the shirt to show a kinder, more gentle monster.
If you are interested in owning one, I'm not sure if they are still available after the fest, but if so I'm guessing it would be through www.taafi.com or possibly the TIFF shop (which is where they were selling over the weekend)

Characters

A few early designs from a gig I was working on last year.

TAAFI poster process

With the TAAFI festival a few weeks away, I thought it might be fun to post a few examples of my process and how we ended up with the final version of the poster that we did.


I initially sent TAAFI some rough sketches of a few different ideas. I blocked in the color on a few of them to help get a sense of the moods each would portray.



After some conversation, we decided that none of these were really hitting the goal of TAAFI's directive, so I did a few more quick sketches including this one below which we ended up moving forward with. Although its extremely loose and rough, I realize I kept surprisingly close to this in the final version. This sketchy bunch of scribbles was done in Sketchbook pro.

Once we were all on the same page with the idea, I started cleaning up the line art in Flash using the brush tool and putting some structure to the shapes.


Here is my first pass to block in the color. Again, this was all done in Flash with the paint bucket tool. I had a few different color ideas at this point, including the "Tribe Called Quest" inspired version below. I kinda dug that version myself but the consensus was to move forward with the more natural color style seen here.



And here is the final version with all the shades and colors that I ended up revising along the way. One of the big challenges at this stage was the request to lay the logo on a white background, but in hindsight I think having to revise the BG to compensate for this ended up really helping the poster. Again, the remainder of the coloring was done in Flash with the help if the gradient paint tool and I ran the final export through Photoshop once I was done to punch up a few of the values.


Now if I could only go back in and fix that blasted tangent on the tip of his horn...

News update

A little news round up with some people and websites that have featured my work over the past few weeks. A big thanks to all of them!


The state of Canadian animation and 3 animators to watch


TAAFI poster release



EO post on "summer posters"


An interview on AWEH



And last but not least, my film County Ghost #5 "The Gift of Ghost" will be available to check out at the "FILE" Electronic International Language Festival in Sao Paulo this July 28th - August 19th

collaberation project update

Im willing to bet this fella is reacting to something on the list of suggested props.
Just a hunch...

TAAFI 2012

My poster for the new Toronto Animated Arts Festival International was unveiled today. Pretty excited to be a part of this festival and really honored to be asked to do this inaugural poster.
Thanks to Rich and the rest of the TAAFI staff for the super cool opportunity.

There is also a little blurb on their website about the poster here if you are interested.

Thank you!


A big thanks to everyone that left a comment on the last post.
Production has started and will try to post as regularly as possible throughout the process.
Thanks again!

Collaberation project (help my new film!)


Ive started working on a new little short film and realized that it could use some props. Rather than throw in whatever came to mind, I thought it might be fun to throw in whatever YOU thought came to mind instead.

My idea is to have you, my blog followers, twitter friends etc. etc. choose an item, any item you want (lets please keep it clean), and I will do my best to somehow incorporate it into my next short film starring this guy pictured below.
It can be anything you wish, as long as it is a THING.

I will take suggestions for one week (from now until Sunday April 1st).
Since I'm unsure of how many suggestion I will get, I cant promise to use yours. I think the best method I can think of is to randomly choose 10 (Ill take more if I can fit them in), but not reveal which items I chose until the short is finished. Hopefully giving you a surprise once the film is done to see if your item was chosen, and if so, how it was use.
Call it a Mad Libs animation style.

So please join in my film making process and post an item in the comments below.
Looking forward to working with you!


*note - you don't need to sign up for anything to post in the comments. Just write your suggestion and preferably a name (so I can include it in the credits if chosen) and click "anonymous" which will let you post without signing in.
Thanks!

Zap!

Here's the rest of drawing to a post from a few weeks back.
Rainbow zap!

Toast


I drew this for a little drawing challenge at work last week under the guideline of "unconventional heroes", but before posting remembered that Jessica Borutski had also drawn a character with a toaster for a head (she must eat a lot of toast as well). Nevertheless, Im posting this anyways under the heading of Bortutski "fanart". Surely her drawing was buried deep in my subconscious somewhere before this came out so all credit due to her.

Batman

Posted this a few days ago to Planet Pulp which is a really cool website I am a part of where various artist post to monthly themes. Feel free to check it out if you have the time, I can always seem to find some great inspiration over there.

The Green Care Bear

Here's a little project I was involved with for MAD TV called "The Green Care Bear". I did the animation on Hal (the more realistic looking guy of the bunch), which was meant to replicate a limited 1960's type style.

Star Wars Uncut

It appears the Star Wars Uncut project from back in 2010 has found some new legs thanks to the rights finally being cleared. Here are two links to sites that are featuring my little 15 second section. I cant read the Dutch German comment under my picture but when I ran it through the translator it came up with Animated scene from "Star Wars Uncut": Mike Geiger has filed this 15 seconds. He is a fan of the old "Star Wars" films - the new place he just horrible.

Spiegel Online
Vancouver is Awesome

iphone bgs







A few day and night BGs from an iphone project I was involved with.