Be Cool Like Carl

Kind of a weird post, but here goes!

In 2009 I made an image and posted it to the Something Awful forums in a Carl Sagan thread, based on a phrase another use had used offhandedly- "Be Cool Like Carl." I was inspired to make this wallapaper:

Then, a more colorful "starfield" variant:

Looking at it now it's a little rough, but I'm still pretty proud of it. Fast forward to today, and I offhandedly searched for the phrase, "Be Cool Like Carl," and I found this:

Whoa! Looks like my image had gotten around, even inspiring an admittedly cool looking variant (the first result). But, more interesting was this: 

I'm not entirely familiar with how Zazzle operates, but it struck me that I should probably establish an origin for this image in case it takes on a life of its own. Here's the original Threshold "pull" from the original image:

Note the lack of thumb and hand, which is why you can see my wonky vectors:

And here's a pic of my Flash workspace:

Finally, if anyone's wondering, that font is "Barnes Erc," which I altered to include empty spaces for the "B's," "O's," etc.

This is all probably for naught. After all, it was just an image made for fun (inspired by something someone else said). But! You can never be too careful. Lois van Baarle has had to contend with her art being blatantly stolen and printed onto clothing, and then never seeing a dime from sales. Watch out, people!

Writeup: FuelTV commercial spots

In 2010 I boarded some commercial spots for Fuel TV under the direction of Jeff Gardner. I think this was my second paid job- before that I was brought in for some reboards for the first season of Frankenhole, and before that I was a lowly intern on Titan Maximum.

These were a lot of fun to make, and thank goodness for YouTube as a reference source!

"Acupuncture"

"Avalanche"

"Skate Rock"

Pony writeup

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.

"The Locals" episode 6 write up

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:

Robot Chicken DC Special Write Up

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:

RCDC, "Opening"

 

RCDC, "Aquaman and the Invisible Jet":

RCDC, "Deadman Waits for No One" (not made):

RCDC, "That's Bane! #2":

And that's that!

EDIT: Sweet, looks like Adult Swim has the whole episode on their channel.