Shows

Archibald's Next Big Thing

Archibald's Next Big Thing is created by Tony Hale (Arrested Development,Veep) and is a beautifully designed and animated show about the adventures of Archibald Strutter, a simple chicken who ‘yes-ands’ his way thru life. Go out there and do your best and everything will be ok.

One of the projects that came through my department was this request for an animation of Archibald interacting with Tony Hale. Like many of the projects that came through my department this one had a very tight turnaround with very little room for rounds of notes. All of the animation was done by Joe Statom who at the time did not know the animation software, Harmony, that Archibald was rigged in. However Joe's exceptional animation skillset shows that as long as the talent is there the software is just the tool for the artist. A good pose is a good pose regardless of the medium.

Dawn of the Croods

In Dawn of the Croods we get to see how life was like for the Croods' in Ahh Valley before the events of the 2013 feature film. In addition to supporting the show through the Post Production animation retake process my group was responsible for the cave drawing style animation that is seen throughout the series. The big challenge with these sequences was recreating the style that was seen in the feature film but doing it over the course of a television production schedule while still supporting other shows at the same time.

During the course of production the pipeline had to grow and evolve to meed the demands of these sequences. These sequences often had multiple characters within a shot and new characters were being added as the show progressed. So we had to be very flexible in pivoting to different software and different techniques to get everything done on time.

Trolls: The Beat Goes On!

Break out the glitter and felt! It's time to get scrapbooking!

For Trolls: The Beat Goes On! my department dealt with the usual Post retake requests but we also had to produce scrapbook sequences throught the show. These sequences had to have the look and feel from the feature movie but be produceable in a television schedule. Feature's sequences were produced by actually making physical assets as can be seen by Visual Development Artist Priscilla Wong in this clip.

For us to keep up with a television schedule my department was not going to have the time to physically craft these sequences so we had to come up with a digital pipeline that allowed us to quickly build assets. In the process we developed processes in Photoshop and After Effects to help us automate the creation of assets and to streamline the animation process. We also built assets in 3D when doing things in 2D didn't give us the physical dimension that we needed. By building a digital library it also let us recycle parts of assets to create new assets.

Doing things digitally also meant we didn't have to worry about glitter getting everywhere.

The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants

Tra-la-la!

Working on The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants drew upon every single bit of experience that I've accumulated over the years.

"Can we do greenscreen work?"

"Sure."

"Can we do digital face replacement on puppets or stop motion characters?"

"Yeah why not."

"Can you build 3d models of these toys because we don't have the legal clearance to use the ones we bought?"

"Um ok, yes?"

"Can you curl yourself up into a ball so you're clear of the camera and help control this rod puppet?"

"What?!"

Every episode had what we called 'alt animation' which really just tracked any part of the show not done by the vendor studio Titmouse. This part of the show could be CG, stop motion, digital puppets or practical puppets. Working on this show was not only a tremendous amount of fun for myself but for my team as it gave them a chance to be involved in something new and challenging on each episode.

The amount of practical props built for the show was astounding. The quality of the puppets was amazing and they were so much fun to play with. Being able to work on something that you could touch and feel was such a great departure from working on something that only lived inside of a computer. We were constantly troubleshooting things to get the shots to work right and not having the luxury of an undo button really makes you think and be decisive.