And this little piggy....

My animatic for Prof. Wright's 2D production class. The last scene's staging needs work, but otherwise I'm pretty happy. Who doesn't love a good old fashion pig launching?

The Pick Up Princess! Coming Soon!

Yesterday I was given the second beta test of the upcoming animated children's e-book "The Pick-up Princess"! So far there is still no release date, but here is what Frank Ayars of Ayars Animation sent me:

 "I will try to make the bug fixes soon. At some point we willl have a viable release candidate and we will release it to Apple. It will take about two weeks for Apple to approve the binary - assuming no rejections." 

So it's going to be a little later than expected, but we're definitely close to the finish line! I'll keep you upated as things progress. Stay tuned! 

armadillos, man

I'm currently working on my senior film which, as you may have guessed, involves an armadillo. Now that I've been working with the weights a bit more, it really doesn't look this bad. It's just that the armor plates of the back like to turn inside out and not fold properly when manipulated. It'll just take some time. However, I feel a desire to fulfill my human condition a bit and complain so...there ya go. Armadillos, man. Armadillos. 

Some Days You Just Can't Draw Pigs

Baby Tooth

A sketch of Baby Tooth from Rise of the Guardians. She was one of my favorite designs in that film!

Hot Chocolate Mornings

Michigan is very cold in the mornings, but on the plus side you get to curl up with a mug of hot chocolate and a good book. Which is quite possibly the best feeling on earth! 

Fanboy and Chum Chum

I had the wonderful privilege of meeting the creator of Fanboy and Chum Chum, Eric Robles, during the Savannah Film Festival. I've always liked watching the show for it's animation style, which went back to the classic Loony Tunes, but it was really inspiring to hear about how he got into the animation industry and the path that lead to Fanboy and Chum Chum. He also made me feel validated in watching abundant amounts of the classic Loony Tunes (like I really needed an excuse to anyway). I'd really like to see more CG shows and films take the Loony Tunes approach to movement. I think that it creates a depth and humor to cartoons that has been a little lacking since the discovery of CG. It's awesome that we now have the ability, through CG, to make things look and move realistically. But sometimes that makes us forget that they are still cartoons: pixels on a screen. They don't have to move realistically. We can make them do anything! That's the fun of being a cartoonist! Hopefully I can incorporate that into my own style more and more.