A return to monster girls! You'd think unemployment would give me plenty of time to draw these, but somehow I lose the days to chores, errands, and other boring grown up stuff. But less talk, more monsters!
#3: Slime Girl
This one was tough, but I think I'm just a little rusty. I'm not satisfied with the transparency effect I was going for, but I've never tried anything like it before. But oh well, onto the next one!
Also, compulsory progress compilation:
1. Harpy 2. Centaur 3. Slime 4. Naga 5. Mermaid 6. Spider Girl 7. Plant Girl 8. Octomaid 9. Demon 10. Succubus 11. True Monster 12. Zombie 13. Insect Girl 14. Dullahan 15. Dragon/Reptile Girl 16. Ghost 17. Robot 18. Alien 19. Cyclops 20. Satyr 21. Canine Girl 22. Feline Girl 23. Yokai 24. Multiple Limbs 25. Favorite Monster Girl 26. Favorite Monster Girl Character 27. A Truly Gruesome Girl 28. A Group of Monster Girls Together 29. A Monster Girl and Her Significant Other 30. Celebrate Monster Girls!
When I first moved to Los Angeles to find a job in animation in '08, I had a lot of time on my hands. You can only cold-call so many companies in a day. So, I decided to make an animation out of a comic I liked. That comic was "MORE SHETLAND PONY ADVENTURES!!" by Kate Beaton:
First I recorded myself doing funny voices for the characters, broke the comic into panels, then timed out the panels in Flash to what I had recorded. However, before I went any further I actually e-mailed Kate and asked for permission. She graciously said yes, and I could begin.
A big reason I chose a Beaton comic was because she has no consistent style. At least, not a strictly consistent style- characters change proportions from panel to panel. For me, having just completed an animation education, being "on-model" was supposed to be the most important thing, and here was an artist that simply drew and didn't worry about that stuff. It was invigorating.
Trouble is, I wasn't a very good artist then. Here are some of my pitiful '08 attempts:
The project went well, until I found a job. I pretty much stopped working on it from then on. Fast forward to 2012 and I was working at Animal Logic on the LEGO movie. One of our editors, Doug Nicholas, had the idea to have a crew film fest where we could showcase our ideas. I had no idea what to do, but then I remembered my Pony animation. I dusted off the old files and began again.
Starting again after 4 years was pretty surreal. At that point I had been storyboarding for about three-quarters of that time and I noticed my draftsmanship had really improved. I also employed habits I picked up along the way. I adjusted the frame ratio from 4:3 to 16:9, and I even made a few model sheets, despite my earlier idea to go without
Having model sheets really helped, and as I drew I didn't worry about staying perfectly on-model anyways, so I felt I sort of matched that Beaton-style in essence:
Eventually I was able to draw an approximate Pony that looked close enough:
After 12 hours of labor spread over a couple of weeks, the animation was completed. Here's a compilation video showing the work at different stages:
And, finally, here's the completed video:
The video was received very well at the crew film fest (and everyone else's videos were great too). It felt awesome to be done with the project after four years of "development," and I'm very glad that Kate Beaton was ok with me making it.
In August 2012 my friend Ben asked me to animate for his YouTube show, "The Locals," where they capture audio from TF2 matches, cut it down into a mostly coherent conversation between players, and then hand out sections to animators to bring to life.
I wasn't able to complete it until January 2013- a shameful delay, I know! But, keep in mind I was working on the LEGO movie at the time, as well as a Sonic Bunny animation, and a side project for an inner-studio Film Festival. But complete it I did, and I'm happy with what came out.
Here's the video:
Here's the bits I animated:
Here's an animation breakdown of that fight sequence:
And here are some Pentagram doodles, doodled tonight to cap off this blog post:
In January 2012 I was offered a freelance story job for the Robot Chicken DC Special. The show had moved to a different studio and reached out to me since I had worked with them before. Like a moron, I took the job despite already working full time as a story artist on the LEGO movie at Animal Logic.
I met with the director and he walked me through the first 20 pages (of a 60 page script), which was all that I could feasibly do in the time I had, since I could only work weekends, and a few hours after working a full day on LEGO. But, I somehow managed to complete what I promised, and here's some of the stuff I boarded:
Starting in June 2010, midway through work on Robot Chicken Season 5, we transitioned into working on the 3rd Robot Chicken Star Wars Special. Storyboarding for this project felt like a double dream come true- not only was it Robot Chicken, of which I was excited to be a part, but also Star Wars, one of my favorite movie series. Every day I drew a character of Star Wars, which felt oddly familiar since I used to doodle R2D2 on the margins of my paper grade school.
After looking through all my work, I've decided to show these two sketches, both of which made it all the way through production:
RCSW3 #1246, "Rejected":
RCSW3 #1272, "Sandcrawler":
After production was complete, we had a viewing at Skywalker Ranch, in the property's huge theater. I wrote about that trip on my Livejournal, and included several panoramas I took while I was there.
In 2010 I was working on Robot Chicken's 5th season as one of three story artists, one of which worked from home exclusively. This particular job felt like a big milestone for me- working on a show that I both knew and enjoyed. It was like living a dream, honestly. Of course, that dream job quickly just became another job, what with how fast we had to create storyboards.
There were 20 episodes, each with 20 pages that needed boards, although only half the sketches would be used. Storyboarding on Robot Chicken (or more specifically, the Shadow Animation studio), I've come to realize, is unlike storyboarding anywhere else. Because we used Flash to draw, we were able to also animate some of the more visually complicated moments. Not only was our time spent drawing, but we were also animating and timing out our scenes. The end result was that our timed, animated boards were sent to the editors, who then re-timed and re-animated a lot of them. It was kind of backwards, but hey, hindsight.
So, out of ~200 storyboard sequences, here's a few that I'd like to show, reformatted for a more convenient 2x3 layout. Also, because I don't have the scripts anymore, I had to remember a lot of the dialogue. But, you'll get the gist of it:
Episode 503, "They Finally Did It":
Episode 506, "Santa's Presents":
Episode 506, "Snow Balls":
Episode 507, "Frat Runner 2":
Episode 507, "Indiana Jones":
Episode 511, "Precious Summary" (This one I kept in its original, timed out, animated format, but with added subtitles for clarity):
Episode 513, "Powers of God":
Episode 516, "Sides of Dice" (Just a single image with subtitles, since it's a pretty simple gag):
Originally the sketch called for two, 6-sided die on a Craps table, but I suggested a D20 and a D&D table instead, which they went for. I mean, not only does the punchline make more sense this way, but it also fits more with the show's demographic (geeks and nerds).
Episode 518, "MC Horse":
I ended up not being too proud of the boards, but I liked these few drawings that came from it.
Episode 519, "Walt Whitman" (again, animated and timed with subtitles):
"Walt Whitman" was never made, but I liked the fun and dumb premise.
Episode 519, "The Ballad of Gay Tony":
"The Ballad of Gay Tony" were the last boards I made for the season. With my hindsight glasses on, I wish I hadn't kept the angles so flat for my boards- everything's facing a stage, dead on. But, like I mentioned before, because we were encouraged to animate and time out our storyboards ourselves, I think that kept us (or me, at least) from finding new angles because it would take more time to animate.
So there you have it, Robot Chicken Season 5. That's not all of my Robot Chicken stuff, though- I also worked on the Robot Chicken Star Wars 3 special, as well as the Robot Chicken DC Special. Those write-ups are on their way too!
