Undersea Adventure

A little painting I made. Been interested in scale lately.

Caramel Soup

The Caramel Soup music video is finally live.

I find the music really catchy - even after listening to it hundreds of times. I'm pretty happy with the visuals we created too. The riff on adventuring worked out well and I think we kicked it up a notch on the overall quality.

Finished the video itself a while ago but they added the video challenge now. Answer a few simple questions about the video and win a free prize for your pet's room. A snazzy Meso-American themed wallpaper. Nate Palmer made it.

Ganz isn't much for screen credits so here's a summary. Sorry if I forgot or misattributed anything.

Storyboards and Concepts -Ben Hu
Character (and wall painting) posing and animation - Jenn Kerr, Ben Hu
FX animation (dust, fire, dynamic lighting, caramel) - Mitch Manzer
Backgrounds - Anna Li, Luke Ryckman, Rocco Commisso, Ben Hu
Assembly and compositing - Jenn Kerr, Ben Hu

Lyrics - Howard Ganz and Christian McKibbin.
Music - Christian McKibbin. Not sure of the vocals.


Hope you like it.

City Diner

Location,location, location.

Sketch experiment with Toon Boom and Photoshop.

Winter sketch

Messing around with a simple mood piece in Illustrator.

Tiger Tiger revisited

A lot of the detail goes un-noticed in the Youtube video. 

Here are a few stills and some concept art.

Final vector backgrounds, day and night versions. Illustrator plus photoshop.

My original color concepts/rough layouts for the above. Photoshop.

Nightime approach.

Transformed for the Dance Party 

(minus animated elements like the speakers, strobes, and floods)

Sun's up. Party's over.

Got another epic video in temple ruins coming soon.

Homework Hydra Detail

A still from the film.

The full pan, minus character and overlay, showing kid's personality.
Click to enlarge.

Monster Bash ft. the Graveful Dead

Promo poster layout I made for our group film. Surprised I hadn't posted this earlier.

oldies

Happy Birthday

Even busier since the last post....

I got married. :) It's pretty awesome.

This little sketch wasn't for any recent birthday, I made this quite a while ago but just found it again... moving, changing computers, etc... you know how it goes.

Tiger Tiger

I've been VERY busy since the last post update.

I got engaged :)

I also directed the following music video at work.


(Posted by Ganz. Flash version available on the Webkinz site.)

Thanks to the very talented Stephen Bennett and James Stewart who put in many long hours animating, and to the numerous others who helped out. Thanks also to my boss, Dan Philips, for championing the new visuals and giving us the resources we needed to make this happen. Credits to come, and notes, if permitted.

P.S. I do not own any rights of any sort to this work, my employer owns all those. Now go buy a Webkinz and keep me employed :)

Western

A layout/painting I made last week. Another experiment in style.

Valentine's Day

A Valentine's Day e-card. It's personalized, but you might like it anyways. It has music.



Originally 1280x720. Made it last week but it was a rather convoluted path to embed the swf. It took more time to get the embedding to work right than to animate and paint it. For those interested, I'll post the how-to in the comments.

Skating

 

just trying out a different style. hope u like it.

Beach

I was going to go cafe drawing but I painted this instead.

Go Fly a Kite

Enjoy :)

Also, Rachel posted her Sheridan short film Junko Jango. Go check it out.

edit: replaced b&w version with sepia version

for Mom

From last year. Looks better printed and framed but since only a few relatives have seen it so far, I thought I'd post it. Rachel advised on the autumn colors, it was originally more of a summer scheme. Each family member is depicted as their Chinese zodiac animal, though not caricatured. Still if you know us, you can probably figure out who's who even without knowing our birth years.

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.