Captain Underpants animation reel

WOULD YOU PLEASE TELL THE LADY WITH THE LOG TO SPEAK UP?

Gilbert

This week I got to meet one of my all time favorite comedians, Gilbert Gottfried, at the international premiere of a new documentary film about him. "Gilbert" was directed by the wonderful Neil Berkeley, who also gave us "Beauty is Embarrassing".

The drawing I made for him, scanned prior to dedication

Gilbert also signed the initial sketch

Home: "It's a Secret" scenes

I have to thank my supervisor Ryan MacNeil for his direction on this sequence. Ryan gives a lot of thought and attention to why his favorite cartoons work as well as they do, he establishes very interesting and practical theories based on his inquiries. He said that the reason people laughed at the animatic (attached to the corners of this video) was how abruptly the poses change, and so my in-betweens must very strongly favour the next pose, they should almost pop, so to maintain the element of surprise. Had we put in-betweens in the middle of the arc, they would have made the viewers anticipate the next pose and so they wouldn’t laugh as much. I wouldn’t have thought about that without his direction.

Scene Progression

Progression of a scene from "Team Hot Wheels: Build The Epic Race" available on Netflix.



Tips for animating on twos. I made these notes for a friend, they analyze part of the scene.

Yousguys, I did a Harley Quinn

"Home" scenes from "Party of Slumbers" and "Queen of Thighs"

Scenes I animated on "Oh's Party of Slumbers" from the first season of "Home: Adventures of Tip and Oh" available on Netflix .I did more on the episode but these are my favorites. There are some influences from the Simpsons (Oh's expression after he bumps into Kyle) and TMS animation here (Oh balancing and speeding up when changing the direction of his run).

 

When I get a storyboard as great as the one in the upper left corner to work from, I swear to “first do no harm”. Then I “plus it” where I can. I adapted the storyboard artist’s poses as closely as I could while aspiring to other goals: push them to higher intensity and flexibility while staying “on model”.

The animation is all on twos, I tried to maximize “hang time” by favouring anticipation and extreme poses and spending as little time as possible on the characters going across the screen, also to displace them in a way that doesn’t strobe. Oh is rounder and can slide more than Lucy, so I used him to lead the big actions, he moves first. The first time they go across the screen, Lucy still favours her previous pose, there is no drawing of her smack in the middle that first time. The next few times they go across, there is a breakdown drawing based on the pose by the board artist, the characters bend down, that bending breaks down the action and keeps it from strobing, still there is only one drawing smack in the middle. In the drawings right before the middle position, some parts of the characters lead into the next pose, but the bulk of them still favours the previous pose.

You should watch this episode of “Home” especially for the “Thigh Power” song, the hardest part of the NDA was not being able to hum it next to anyone who didn’t work on the show until it was released, I worked remotely, across the continent from everyone else who worked on it and the song was really catchy.

My scenes from "Home: Booving In"

I saw that DreamWorks posted a GIF from one of my scenes on the show's Facebook page. It's from one of my favorite episodes, and I wanted to post my whole segment here.



The voice of Kyle is none other than Matt Jones, best known as "Badger" from "Breaking Bad"

My attempt at a New Yorker type cartoon

You're a mean one, Hipster Grinch!

I love Christmas and advocate for people to say "Merry Christmas" and not "Happy Holidays".
I wanted to write a summary explaining this, outlining reasons from least to most obvious.


Least obviously as an Israeli born Jew:

Canada was founded by Christians, they produced a great society. A society I chose to emigrate to and love living in. My birth country of Israel has great support among north American Christians. People who say "Merry Christmas" are far more likely to support my country of birth than those who say "Happy Holidays". I say this from experience. When I say Merry Christmas, I honour their civilization. A civilization in which I and other Jews feel included.


More obviously as a cartoonist and fan of art:

Christmas has created more great music, literature, folklore, imagery, film and pop culture than any other holiday. I not only love Christmas for all it inspired, but also believe that if it created that much richness it must have something special. These great creations teach that Christmas spirit has heart and generosity. I have to tell you that saying "Merry Christmas" sounds more generous to me than saying "Happy Holidays".


Most obviously:

It's not Voldemort's birthday. Get over it.

"Home" Opening Sequence

These are my two scenes from the opening sequence of "Home". My favorite shots to watch were done by Andres Espinosa, they are the ones with Sharzod and Kyle.

More "Home" promos

My scene is a GIF on the official page!

The full scene is a a few frames longer, catch it on Netflix!

This new trailer has a ton of killer scenes by Anne-Marie Cyr (Tip and "litter eater" Oh in the car) and awesome closing shots by James Sugrue. I animated the shot of Oh and Lucy dancing in exercise outfits.

HOME on IMDb

Dreamworks uses a pic from my shot in the opening for publicity again, this time on IMDB.
My supervisor on this scene (and the whole show) was Ryan MacNeil. If the BG artist and character designer see this, please drop your names in the comments, I'd like to credit you!

Update: Mark Bachand did the character design! Check out his work here 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5759196/mediaviewer/rm940447232

TAAFI 2016 was a huge success!

Priceless souvenirs from our happy speakers! It was an honour to be their liaison! So happy to have brought my friend from the Spumco chat palace days, Michael Rianda to speak about storytelling and Gravity Falls! Everyone was a huge hit!

Old chat room friends united, Michael Rianda and yours truly

From Grayden Liang's Canadian Animation blog:

Attendants to Michael's workshop. His lovely wife Molly is to his right

TAAFI's speaker outreach coordinator Karen Jackosn to my left.

It was Michael's idea for us all to jump

Willie Ito, yours truly and Tony Benedict

Fascinated by Eric Goldberg's drawing ability. 

Photo by Karen Jackson (isntagram)

Attendants to Eric Goldberg's workshop, photo by Grayeden Liang.

Running around with my speakers all weekend was some of the best time I've ever had!

WATCH a wonderful Interview with Eric Goldberg, from Grayden Liang's Canadian Animation Blog:
http://www.canadiananimationblog.com/2016/04/-eric-goldberg-from-walt-disney-talks-about-TAAFI.html

Zimbardo's Heroic Imagination shirt

Shirt I designed for one of my greatest heroes, Dr. Philip Zimbardo as a fundraiser for The Heoric Imagination Project http://heroicimagination.org

Hot Wheels: "A mega race! That no one will ever forget"

Since I've started working full time in animation (over 4 years now) I really haven't spent much time blogging. I wanted to update this space with some of my favorite animation drawings from one of my favourite projects, Team Hot Wheels.  

Animator: Amir Avni / Studio: Titmouse/ Client: Mattel / Netflix