Animation Design in Flash! Fun BGs & Characters

It's fun to build a throng of Flashy fans and devotees, populating a plastic Everytown, U.S.A, occupying Flash's world of layers and symbols...click to see'em bigger.

Here's our jubilant crowd of up-close enthusiastic small-town pan fans and well-wishers, rushing past as you pass...

...here's a funny little smattering of distant sidewalk onlookers, and a rather anonymous mulling mid-range crowd...

...and here's where we started – with a typical, fun cartoon street, which Flash's plasticity can give an activity all by itself.

Animation Design – Rejections From the "Nice" Pile...

Sometimes even the nicest designs can get the boot, like these two friendly, slightly euro-UPA style salespeople (as value roughs), and the soft pastel world (with their replacements) I was hoping they would live in...

...the soft pastel world with it's graphic bubbles didn't make it either.

IdeaRocket Animation: From Homebaked to Lift Off

I've recently joined up with Will Gadea's team as Art Director of the newly rebranded IdeaRocket Animation production house (formerly Homebaked Films), specializing in "explainers," animations that describe what a business is or how something works.

Visit the IdeaRocket website

Pretty soon, our new IdeaRocket explainer will be up, but in the meantime, here's a peek at the kind of work we're doing:

GlobalEnglish from Homebaked Films on Vimeo.

What's An Animation Designer to Do?

...with very little time, very little money, and a request for a "New Yorker Magazine" look with limited color, and a nice lightly "boiling" line. First off, we needed some quick characters (a lead, and 5 or 6 others) that we could follow through history from caveman to philosopher to peacenik to conferee...

Too bad it wasn't "her"story...

........................................................................don't forget the kids!

the backgrounds

There's always a bunch of odds and ends and special shots to figure out...

...............................................to the amphitheater in ancient Greece

....................the "Peace Rally" background (here's to Peace Rallies!)

We had a request for a "limited color look," which is a gift on a tight schedule and budget...

.......................and of course, the viewer's site interface invitation.

And right up to the present day, it all worked out very well...and fast...and not expensive. Thanks to Will at Homebaked Films.

Codename: Kids Next Door, From the Sooper Obscure Files: Rainbow Monkeys!

Over the six seasons of Codename: Kids Next Door, I designed a lot of Rainbow Monkeys, almost enough to create a real toy line...but it would be a real strange toy line! Many of the variations called for old, odd, or esoteric RBMs. So, here's a collection of elderly RBMS for the true KND fans out there!

A Location That Can Come to Life

After all the "wordstuff"coming to life in Word World, I thought I'd revisit this Aztec Temple miniature golf hole that comes to life as a dangerous 'bot. I would have loved to do the tranformation stages, but unfortunately, this show for Disney didn't get quite that far...

From WordWorld Season Three: The legible Mr. Fox. For most of the first, and some of the second season, everything in WordWorld was made out of capital letters, not so Season Three, when lower case took over. For a show called, I think, "X Marks the Spot."

Building a Pelican That Reads

A sneak peek at season three of Word World, where Art Direction/Design means building characters, locations, and props; creating, balancing and adjusting colors; and following up the 3-D building of it - making sure that everything looks right in the world.

Here are the stages of creating a character that "says it's own name" for a world where words come alive...Start with a drawing, a lot like an architectural plan...

Get it built in a 3-D grayscale version...

Then color rough it, and check the final word character, come to life!

When you gotta design a silly, happy, friendly little robot...

Bring Dogheads! into reality, and leave the world to the dogs!

Everyone has unseen influences that make up who they are. Influences from inner and outer worlds, from other dimensions of being. In Faith and Mr. Floppy, the kids all have "esoteric energies" that contribute to their personae -in the "real" world, and in magical dimensions. Here's Gideon, Faith's sort-of boyfriend, and Topher, her step-brother, and their respective esoteric selves...

A new, cuter Faith...at the insistence of Dominie Mahl, Art Curator for Project Development at Curious Pictures. With some good reason, Dom suggested that Faith needed to look younger, that she "could pass for forty." She had a point- Faith didn't look as young as I wanted her to.

It points out how important it is to work on a project with a variety of different people. Each one brings fresh eyes, and can help knock the corners off your rolling project so that it can organically find it's final shape.

Character Page!

Thanks to more terrific work by Michael Perkins at Setstatic, my website finally features a character design page in my animation dept. Check it out to see more of the character work I've been posting lately. From robots to dwarves to many-lettered "word pals" to Jonas-like teen dreams....I hope there's something for everyone.

Characters: Rescue Bear!

Rescue Bear is about a bunch of wanna-be cartoon stars, awaiting their big break while taking classes at "The Comic Animal Cartoon Academy" (CACA). Unfortunately, the most promising young talent falls prey to the professional and alimentary appetites of fellow student, Baron Von Sharkula. Here's some of the slightly-flawed student hopefuls...click to enlarge.

Characters: Retro-lectrified!

Here's the last of these 60's-style characters. It's Gramma, and of course, Gramma electrifried. The spot was a little sarcastic, so all these characters have a bit of attitude. You may have noticed, they also all appear to be pinching something, or someone...and they were- all were composited pinching the little boy's cheek. I think Gramma pinched a livewire here.... Fortunately, this shocking effect only caused cartoon damage.

Characters: 60's Hip Aunt & Creepy "Uncle"

Retro-Characters

A 60's mom and little boy done for a "classic" looking animation that appeared in a Cartoon Network show (KND!); another entry in a little run of character designs leading up to posting a new Characters section on my site.

More C-H-A-R-A-C-T-E-R-S

Here are a couple of porcine characters, on the continued character thang

......and their hang-out, as a rough sketch, and a quick color version:

More Characters...from Faith & Mr. Floppy

In keeping with the character designs, here's a look at Faith and her dark alter-ego, Vera; as well as the roughs for good-guy Gideon, and the magical triplets, The Claires.

Characters: The Lost Dwarves, Pt. 1

Now the truth can be told - there were more dwarves working back in that mine than made it onscreen...dwarves they didn't talk about; and these recently unearthed original development artworks prove it...this is the first group of characters who "weren't good enough" for the big-time - part of a celebration of these unsung heroes leading up to a new character section coming soon on my website.