Homework Hydra

Homework Hydra, May 2009. My Sheridan BAA Animation 4th year thesis film. Hand-drawn in Flash with a tablet and Cintiq (for cleanup). Music by Brendan McElroy.

Now that there are no more potential public screenings for it, I thought I'd post it online. Hope you like it.

I also realized that I never linked to the complete short film we did in 3rd year. Here it is. Enjoy!

Bloor Screening

If you're in the Toronto area next Tues or Wed, check out some great animated short films screening at the Bloor Cinema (Bathurst and Bloor) for only five bucks. That's Tuesday June 9th at 7 pm and Wednesday June 10 at 9:30pm.

Original link to screening info here.

List of films screened here.

There's some great stuff screening, and I'm not just saying that because mine and Rachel's films are there. Yes, many of these great films were done by good friends but there are some real gems by people that I don't personally know. I'm not the only one to like these films either - some of these films are award winners, including Toronto's International Film Festival.

You can't go wrong for the price either, more entertainment for $5 than you'd get from many $12 "features".

Mark Mayerson's the man to thank for making this screening possible. He's put together a little trailer too.

I'll be there at least one of those nights. Come say hi.

Demo Reel 2009

"Latest" demo reel. Just animation this time. I took the advice of putting whole sequences in, rather than just short clips, so the viewer can get a better sense of the storytelling in the animation even if it slows the overall pace.



My film is fully complete now, but I'm not sure if I can show the whole film online yet if I'm sending it to festivals. There are some clips from it in the demo reel that give a sense of what it's like. Hope you enjoy. The rest of the clips are mostly from last year's film and all TV work has aired. Flash, ToonBoom, and paper.

It was a hectic, but good year. Hard work, but lots of fun too. I'll miss everyone. :( Keep in touch!

Flipbook Page/Postcard

Could be better but I'm pretty happy with this one. Besides, spent too much time on it to hide it away and it's already in the flipbook. :) Thanks Chalky, BK, Loben, Gman, AA, Chechik, and everyone else for their feedback and making this better.

some older stuff

Back in my teens, Spidey was my favourite hero. My brother and I used to collect all the Spidey titles until the storylines got ridiculous with the clones and too hard to follow without buying all the crossovers.

Some people on the train last December.
A partly painted lifedrawing from long ago - just to see how much anatomy I remembered without looking anything up.

More Monsters

Two from the life drawing "sketches" pages. Fixed them up a bit based on Bobby's review at the end of the term. The feedback was really helpful.

Last Lifedrawing Portfolio

hmm... the top three look a lot more yellow than I thought (using a different monitor now than when I originally scanned)

Royal Winter Fair Animals 2008

3 pages from the Royal Winter Fair, November 12, 2008. Used the second page for my portfolio.

Monster Tourist

i think these are the brightest colours i've ever used in my life. what do you think? does it work?

Some Flash Sketches

Sketched in Flash but some Photoshop work needed for the first. The gradient on the hog monster rendered really poorly out of Flash. It was all "liney". Also, I know the kid sketch is pretty bad... he's just there for scale.

Some Concept Sketches

Concept Sketches for my 4th Year film. It's about a kid procrastinating from his homework and the various monsters who try to motivate him. Top one is a cleanup test in Flash. Not sure about how well two-toning will work.

2008 Life Drawing Midterm Portfolio

I feel like I've learned a lot about tones and cast shadows. Hope it shows.

Early 2008 Life Drawings

Learning more this year about life drawing, partly due to the feedback from Bobby's Schoolism videos, and partly because I've been spending more time on it than last year. Fourth year is busy, but the schedules are flexible so I'm actually able to do more. Also I'm not commuting this year, so that helps.

Last Day

That's me, sitting at my compewter revising animations for Kid vs Kat. Drawn by the very talented May Wa Leng!

Where's the Beef?

A piece I did for our Studio's art show a few weeks ago.
It had two titles. The current title was something of a tribute to that classic series of Wendy's commercials from the 80's. "Where's the Beef" video here.

However, the original title was "Please sir, I want some more." which I thought was a fairly well-known line from a very well-known story, but while many people did associate the image with the story, I was surprised to discover that only a few recognized the line.

Robot Overkill

Scene 72 from our group film. It was fun to make. And much quicker to do than the wolf animation (~2 days to rough, clean, color, and comp).

Wolfman and Frank get a beat down

Our 3rd year Group Film "Monster Bash" turned out better than expected, and the team came together really well in the end. Hard work, but fun. The other 3rd year films turned out really well too. Good job everyone!



These are scenes 51-64. This film has consumed most of my waking hours these past four months (and stolen many sleeping hours too). I've got a few other scenes I may post later but these are the bulk of it.

It's mainly my work (animation, layout, design) but I had a some great help from Trevor (character closing and coloring), Garrett (BG painting, robot painting), Martin (Compositing and lighting), Alvin (Compositing and lighting) and Alex G (design). The Sheridan faculty gave a lot of good feedback and advice too (Natalie, DQ, Komza, and Tony). The 3rd Yr group film experience often gets a bad rap but I've learned a lot this year, and despite the stress and frustrations, it was a really good experience. It's what you make of it.

And no, the bike isn't 3d. It's just drawn in Flash. Actually most of this is hand-drawn full animation (on 2's) with selected use of symbols for efficiency (though most folks won't notice unless going frame by frame).

Watercolour Costume Life Drawin

Been pretty busy with the film but it's been too long since I posted and since I had these scanned already, here's some costume life drawings from my final portfolio.

Some short poses (2-3 min)


Some longer poses (5-15min)





I like short poses more because the models tend to take more dynamic poses. Watercolour was a fun new thing to try. I hope to do more once I finish the rest of my schoolwork.

Nerd Scientist & Greaser Wolfman Roughs

Some character roughs, poses, and revisions from a few weeks ago. Wanted to make them more cartoony and have stronger, simpler lines.

Group Film BG Paint Tests

Just some test BG paintings in Flash to explore some concepts for the group film. These are not final finished works.



Mostly flat but with some gradient and blur tests for the lights. Next ones will be texture tests.

Besides the workbook, I've been working on more character designs as well as animation. Hope to post some of that soon too.

Group Film Story Reel

It's been a while since I last posted. Mostly I've been very busy working on this. Hope you enjoy it.

Our group basically junked what we had at the end of last term because it wasn't working as well as we wanted. We ruthlessly cut everything until we had it down to just one basic idea. Then we rebuilt it all in less than three weeks*.

On Thursday January 10th, Alex G, Jinhee, and myself took the one idea and came up with the new premise. Then Jinhee, Martin, and myself storyboarded it several times with the first thumb reel by the 16th. Jinhee, Alvin, and myself cut the final reel and added the latest sounds on the 29th, but Martin, Andrew, Laura, and Mena contributed a lot on earlier versions.

The rest of the people were mostly on the design team, please see our group film blog for some samples.


*It's arguable that we shouldn't discount all the work we did last semester; after all, it told us what direction not to go.

Sheridan Online Portfolio

One from my most recent Life Drawing Portfolio:

One possible design for our group film ghost.

Page out of my sketchbook from Hallowe'en.


Lots more stuff here:

http://animation.sheridanc.on.ca/portfolio/Internship/hub/

Ghost Story Mood & Design

Ghost Story Beat Boards

Selected beat boards for our group film about a ghost and a girl. It's not Casper.

Bikers

Biker Beer Battle

Setup, Conflict, Climax, and Resolution for my 30 second Action Analysis short film. The pose for the bandanna guy in 3 could be a lot better but I think it's still relatively clear what's happening.

Below are some quick rough exploration sketches trying to capture the character, attitude, and emotion of these bikers. Not great drawings, but I had a lot of fun doing these.

Wayside Episodes Now Airing on Teletoon

It's been a long time since my last post here - busy summer and first seven weeks of school. Now with reading week, I finally had time to watch some TV today and I was happily surprised to see one of the Wayside episodes I worked on being aired on Teletoon.

I only caught the last few minutes of "Free Stewy" so I missed my octopus scene but I did see the ones with Miss Mush and the girls. Even if it's not spectacular, just a few scenes lasting less than a minute, there's something really cool about seeing your own work being broadcast on TV.

The show airs on Teletoon, Saturdays at 2:30 pm. Enjoy!

Wayside at Mercury

This is where I'm working this summer. Mercury Filmworks. A bunch of recent Sheridan grads are working there too. Plus a whole lot of Algonquin people... We're all animating using Toon Boom Harmony. So far, so good. I'll post more later, though obviously I can't say anything specific about what we're working on until the season airs. But this is what's officially released already, so check it out. Wayside clips on Nickelodeon's website. Extreme poses, wacky humour, lots of fun!

Demo Reel 2007

Most of it is already on this site, now it's just all condensed into one reel. Most clips were cropped. Nothing the same as my first reel from last year except for the forest and farm layouts. Could have subbed in more recent layouts but they were thematically limited and I wanted more variation. The diagonal pan turned out well though.

After way too many crashes by Premiere, I finally got a working render at an uploadable file size with no frozen images, stutters, or dropped frames. And no random noise from youtube either. So this version is surprisingly pleasantly close to what I intended.

Your thoughts?

Rock Toss Smackdown

Here it is. Now with facial expressions and the second scene as originally intended. The charging monster will probably stay rough. The mane definitely needs better secondary action and I'm tempted to redo the skid but I think it's time to move on to something new.

Sound doesn't synch perfectly and some volume problems but I don't have Pro Tools so I'm working with what I got. Most SFX are from free web libraries but some I recorded myself and adjusted. Music is stock.