Halloween Greeting - 10/29/2005
Here it is. It took way longer than I had hoped it would. I'm pretty happy with it. I had other ideas to do with it, but ultimately just ran out of time. I'll just have to save them for next year. BUWAHHAHAHA! Happy Halloween!

Stop Motion Test - 10/1/2005
This was a test that my Jill and I did to test out some ideas that we have for a longer project. I'm pretty happy with how they came out. And it didn't take to long to do. I'll be sure to post the actual project in the gallery when we're finished.

Fast Run - 9/22/2005
Another quick sketch. This one only took about 15 minutes or so. It's definitely rough but it reads properly I think. In other words, good enough.

Falling Box - 9/21/2005
Another shot at drawing a proper box moving. Much better than my first attempt I think.

Halloween v2 - Still a Work in Progress - 9/4/2005
I'm still working on this one. I'm really enjoying it. The thing I'm fighting with now is trying to prevent all the great ideas I keep having on it from preventing me from finishing! Obviously, I'm still working on it. I'm busy blocking it out, then I'll go back, color in things, and fill in the in-between frames. I'm definitely pleased with where it's going. I just hope I can finish it before Halloween!

Halloween - Work in progress - 8/31/2005
This one has gone a little past my "one night, short animation" deal, but one of the points to doing this was to further motivate myself to accomplish this sort of thing. So, it's not a bad thing... This is a bit ahead of the season, but I was inspired and being in New Zealand at the moment, I'm not really sure what season it is right now. The character stuff is a bit rough, but it isn't too bad. Especially, taking into account the only real work on walking I've ever done has been directly to the side (ie. no perspective). I doubt I'll go back to clean it up, unless it comes out really brilliantly, but even then, the roughness adds a bit of life to it I think. I'd like to come up with a better character for this sort of thing. I've said it before (and ignored my own advice), but doing it with just a stick figure makes it difficult to keep track of which limb is where. You'll have to wait a little for the ending...

Rolling Hills - 8/25/2005
I did this one the same night I finished the Jester Hat Revisited. I've been wanting to try something like this for quite some time. For one thing, I'm still amazed every time I watch The Snowman at how fluid and beautiful the hillsides look as the two main characters fly around. I'm also mulling over in my head an animation to a poem about hills (I don't want to give it away yet). This was pretty satisfying to get out. The camera move at the end is a little rough, but you can definitely read what's going on, and it only took me about half an hour (I am getting faster!).

Jester Hat Revisited - 8/25/2005
After doing some initial audio to accompanying the animation, I realized I needed to add some animation to the beginning of the original. I'm not sure if the animation I came up with is distracting or not, but I like how the "strands" all move. I haven't tried it with the audio yet. We'll see if it works.

Police Line Up (Still) - 8/18/2005
This is was a character I designed for a group project on the AWN Forum website. The idea was that a couple of us would create a character and someone would put them in a police line-up. It was a fun to be able to sketch out and do a relatively clean character, pretty quickly. It's a bit of a self-portrait. Can you guess the significance of the number? (Hint: Any 5th grade boy with a calculator would know it instantly.)

Slug Thing 2 - 8/17/2005
This was a sequel to Slug Thing 1. I like working with the spheres so much I wanted to try it again. This came out even better than before with an even better sense of depth and volume. I also got some neat squash and stretch going with some good conservation of mass (believe me, it's important). I have a feeling you'll be seeing more of the slug things.

Slug Thing 1 - 8/16/2005
This was based on a tutorial by Glenn Vilppu. Basically, it's to get you drawing using form and volume. It came out pretty well. It was pretty satisfying using such a simple shape to get a real sense of 3d.

Fast Entry - 8/13/2005
I want to start trying to do more frenetic character stuff. This was the first test along those lines. It's more of a thumbnail sketch of an animation than a full out animation. It's not perfect but I think the action reads well enough to develop a more finaled animation if I wanted to. It didn't take me too long, so it was a good experiment in quick sketching out an action.

Jester Hat - 8/11/2005
This was an idea I had for a logo animation. It was a lot of fun to work out the dynamics on such a simple level. I got a big kick out of working with color on black. I'm going to have to play with color on different backgrounds. It's a bit more finished than I plan on doing most of these. This one took several nights to work out, but I was sick at the time, too. I'm very happy with how this one came out.

Rotating Box - 8/8/2005
This was a "simple" one because it was late when I started and I didn't feel like doing much. I've tried to animate a box rotating many, many times. This is probably the first time I was able to get it to work. Again, after finishing it relatively quickly I decided to trick it out some. I wanted to add a guy pushing the pole around, but like I said, it was late. Maybe another time.

Late at Night Doodling - 8/7/2005
This one came out of the need to add something to the top of this site so it wasn't just text. I'm pretty happy with how this came out. The arm dimensions are a little off here and there, but all and all it serves its purpose and reads pretty well as a small animation in the banner. I'm starting to get the hang of Flash and using the tools to reuse elements of the drawings. I'm also getting a feel for using the layers for a pseudo cel animation, as well as getting a better feel for drawing with the tablet. My lines are becoming more confident.

Snowball - 8/6/2005
Well, it's cold here in New Zealand. It isn't quite winter, sub-freezing, blizzard, back home winter, but it isn't summer either. So, we're all in the winter mood (you may be seeing a Christmas animation soon...). This one was a little challenging. There are some limits to animating with the stick figure. It's difficult to keep track of where his limbs are and they can end up switching right and left if you aren't careful. Depth is a challenge. I'm not entirely happy with the throwing action. I think I may need some reference video (or a partner who isn't sleeping while I'm doing this). It isn't bad, just isn't perfect. I am really happy with how the snowman came out though. And I get a kick out of the fact that the guy keeps missing.

Bouncing Ball - 8/5/2005
Part of why I started doing this was to go back and do the basic animation exercises that I somehow missed out on when I went through school. Get back to doing the basics. And it doesn't get much more basic than the bouncing ball. After I animating the ball bouncing for about half an hour and finishing, I decided to have a little fun with it and add in a little extra challenge. This one was pretty rewarding to work on.

Box Jumping into Sphere - 8/4/2005
This was the first official "Late Night Creation." I did it based off of Karma Inc.'s animation tutorial where he draws a sequence of a box jumping into a sphere to create a flour bag for animating (I imagine you'll be seeing more from these pages, view the index here ).

I thought, "How hard could that be?" Well, it turns out, a little tricky. Especially factoring in using Flash for the first time in almost 8 years and never having done much drawing with the tablet. With all of these factors working against me, I still got the animation done before the night was over and it actually looks approximately like what I had wanted. Not bad for a first shot.