Animation Flipbooks with SIFF

The Seattle International Film Festival organizers contacted me and asked me to teach a flipbook animation class for kids at their festival this year.  The kids were great and we had a lot of fun!  I caught a bit of the first-time animation in their flipbooks with my crappy little camera.  A few of them get lost in the compression of this video, but I'm still going to post it since I remember the excitement on their faces each time they watched their drawings come to life.

Daniel Tiger app

It's alive!  The Daniel Tiger Good Morning / Good Night app that I spent many months working on has released in the app store! 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/daniel-tigers-day-night/id690106176?mt=8

This was quite a task making this one.  The full time artists at this studio were new to the process of developing straight for iOS devices with sprite sheets, xml animations and such.  Luckily these were all skills that were finely honed during my time at Disney Interactive where we were working to get Club Penguin onto iOS devices.  The schedule had been set before they realized the process and level of work involved.  I worked closely with the developers to get this working, sacrificed most weekends and evenings, and all was delivered on time.  whew.

Animation Reel Update - rough cut

This is a rough cut of my efforts to update my animation portfolio.  I am realizing I need to get more animations and screenshots of more of the games I've worked on (after verifying what I'm allowed to post).   My latest little elephant character design is in here. Always fun to do the character sketch in addition to the animations. 

Girlie artwork of my arch-nemesis, Barbie

Recently worked on a large project for Mattel. They were revamping their website in preparation for the release of the new Barbie christmas movie,and although I have never been a fan of Barbie (to say it mildly), it was a great experience working on this. We created two games and some very pink-glam christmas scenes. It is too bad I cannot post the animated versions here because each one of these pictures had bling and sparkle animations happening all over the place!




The first game we made was the SnowGirl Glam Up dress up game. The second was Sisters Stocking Stuffer where the user catches falling items in a stocking in a race against the christmas-lights-timer. I worked on background art, game assets, user interface, level screens, instruction pop ups, etc. Here are some screenshots:

StartUp Foundation Animation

StartUp Foundation had their big launch this weekend. And another startup, What Now Exactly, created an animated explainer video for their launch - with me as the animator. It's getting some great press. Check it out:

Illustrator: Yas Imamura
Writer: Jen Zug
Animator: Linda Spain

News Funnel animated explainer videos

We're on a roll - pumping out these videos. Here is one we did for the News Funnel (low res preview size). Oh the hours I spent watching videos of dogs on YouTube. The client liked it so much that we're working on another one for them now.

Localicious animation

Animated explainer video I created for White Page's launch of their new Android app. I worked with the Lilipip team (Jen Zug - script writer / Yas Imamura - illustrator / Me - animator). This animation was made in a matter of just a few days. Fun working in a totally different style like this. And just days after finishing, this was all over the internet. They had a very quick and thorough marketing campaign!

Parallels video

Here is low res preview of another animated explainer video I made with the team at Lilipip. I did the animation and sound fx. Andrew was the fabulous illustrator / storyboard artist, and Jen Zug was the talented writer.

Animated Explainer Videos - Adobe

Adobe hired us to do a series of animated explainer videos for the release of Adobe Captivate 5.5.

It was a terribly short deadline. A couple of these animations had to be done in 2 DAYS! So some of the animation is not as fluid as I'd have liked, but I used a lot of simple tricks to keep it lively. Check it out.

Animated Explainer Video

Another animated explainer video has been completed thru the tireless efforts of the Lilipip creative team (Jen Zug - script writer / Andrew Imamura - storyboard artist / Me - animator). This one was designed to play out like a side scrolling video game with the student overcoming obstacles. Andrew's set designs are excellent, and I had a great time animating this one, although I spent way more than 40 hours during the week I was working on it. I wanted fluid animation for a change - we've got run cycles, tiptoes, jumps, the whole gambit.

Nick Jr and Disney work

Here are some samples of the work I did for Disney Online and Nick Jr last year.




The Nick Jr work was a series of games which I cannot post, but here is a screenshot of the dress up game I worked on. I created all the outfits - 15 outfits per character - two versions of each (one to hang in the closet). The final piece has a fabulous scrolling closet created by Nate Conlan. I was given the creative freedom to pick whatever 15 outfits I wanted. My daughter had a lot of fun dictating what dresses she wanted to see! I worked closely with the very talented developer Jon Grant, who created the code to make the game work. Getting the code to work with the assets I created was tricky with all the layers having to affect one another. (If the user picks a dress, does the pant layer disappear or just get hidden underneath? But then what about the huge clown pants...?) Many interesting conversations there with phrases like "if we take Dora's pants off..." Our co-workers were having a good time with the snipets they overheard.





I also had a lot of fun creating the lighting effects and backdrops for the Dance Recital game. I was again given the freedom to choose the effects. Here is a quick video showing off one of the effects - the disco ball (I couldn't resist). Add your own Saturday Night Fever soundtrack in your head.

Flash Slide Show

I did a Flash slide show for a design client, Ken Shafer. He does absolutely beautiful design work! To check out the slide show click here.

There were some unique challenges with this one - especially that he wanted the slideshow to start at a random spot each time the user comes to the site. He also wanted a button to make the slideshow play backwards, and a menu that only appears once the target icon is clicked. Some of those involved actionscript I hadn't done before, but I did it! Quite proud of this one.

Salon Vibe logo design

It was a great moment for me walking into the salon for the first time and seeing my logo design posted as a huge mural on the wall. Lovely.

Illustrations

Some illustrations I did working up a logo for Pleasure Tool - a rollerskate ball bearings company. Interesting project. The men on the project wanted the original sexy poses, while the women wanted it toned down a bit. I am posting one of the original sketches and the final image.

Yep Text animated video

The second job I did with the Lilipip team was for Yep Text, a mobile marketing company. Have a look:

Commercial animation

I hooked up with Lilipip in January and have been working on animated commercials with them. Andrew Imamura is the character designer/storyboard artist extrodinaire, and it's a pleasure bringing his storyboards to life. Jen Zug is script writer. Here is the Broadcause commercial - the first one I did with them.

2010 portfolio reel