Robot Chicken DVD release party!

It's not everyday that a bunch of stop-mo geeks get out of their dark animation stages and into a place like the Playboy Mansion. That's right- to celebrate the release of season one of Robot Chicken on DVD, the crew was invited to join the party up at Hef's place. Here are a few pictures of some of the amazingly talented people I work with having some much deserved play time:

Carrot Kid

I was reading news over at AnimateClay.com where there was a link to a stop-mo website I'd never seen before. You really have to go and check out Carrot Kid's films. Really cool stuff that clearly shows how good animation gets inside the characters head.

I put a link to Carrot Kid over there ------->

Gettin' squirrelly

I recently built a squirrel puppet for my friend and incredible animator Sihanouk Mariona. He's got a really cool project in the works, and has invited several animators to build and animate characters in the film. I was assigned a squirrel, which I built using a wire armature and foam build-up.

Here is the bare-bones armature:



Wood head with facial controls screwed into threaded inserts:



Starting to build up the foam, and I shortened the neck and used a ball joint there and in the jaw:



And here is the finished puppet- life size!



Fake fur and flock:

Sunday Funday

I spent another day working at Xow! over the weekend with fellow animator Josh Jennings and project genius Eric Towner. We are moving out of the green/bluescreen stages and onto real sets, with Josh doing the first shot in the warehouse. Check out that detail!

Variety.

This past week was a sanctioned break from Robot Chicken, so I was able to pick up a few days working at other local stopmo studios helping out on a couple of really cool projects. I felt honored to get a call from the guys at Screen Novelties to do a couple of shots on an anti-smoking PSA they are doing for RAT (Reject All Tobacco). It is always a pleasure to work at Screen Novelties! Check out the amazing set, built and lit by Joe Schmidt.




I also had the opportunity to do a few days at Xow! Studios helping out animators Eric Towner and David Candelaria on an in-house music video project. I was shooting some of their characters against green and blue screen for some really interesting composite shots using live-action footage. They were also having a really amazing warehouse set built for the other scenes in the video. I'll see if I can drop by once that is up and lit to take a few more pictures.




On a side note, there have been some new digital still cameras released recently, and I have seen three of them in action.

Screen Novelties is now shooting with the Sony DSC-R1.

Xow! is now shooting with the Olympus Evolt 330.

And I am now shooting with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ30.

These cameras all have some small issues, but I've worked with each of them and they all produce very nice final images. I will devote another post to the details....

Stop Motion Oscar!

Wallace and Grommit take the award! Congratulations to Nick Park and all the talented artists and animators who brought this film to life and have pushed stop-motion into the mainsteam once again!

Thanks Bryan!

The set is lit and ready to go. Actually, I've got a few touch ups and things to do, but I will be animating this sequence within days! I am really happy how Bryan's lighting added depth to the set. His technique was to use a couple of bounce cards in conjunction with 200watt fresnel lights to set an overall ambient level, and then go in with small 20watt MR11 halogen spots to highlight areas and add depth and some color. Thanks again Bryan!