Motion 08 Recap

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Last week I attended the Motion 08 conference in New Mexico. The 4-day event was geared towards two industries: animation (2D and 3D), and motion graphics/editing. It was one of the best conferences I’ve attended in a while. The seminars were loaded with helpful and inspiring information, and I met a ton of great people.

As an animation character designer, I figured this would be a good opportunity to do some networking with lots of potential clients. My goal was to meet as many people as possible and flex my networking muscles. It was a real treat to get out of my isolated studio and hang out with other creatives in the industry. All in all I think I gave out over 100 business cards.

The first day featured several seminars open to the general public and finished off with a screening of animator Phil Nibbelink’s self-produced feature film “Romeo and Juliet: Sealed With A Kiss”, followed by a Q&A session with Nibbelink. I missed the seminars but flew in just in time for the movie. The film is a loose retelling of Romeo and Juliet, with cartoon seals playing all the major parts. Nibbelink is an experienced Disney animator who wrote, animated, and produced the entire 80-minute film in his basement. Quite an impressive feat!

The next three days were packed with seminars on animation, editing, and motion graphics. At any given time three seminars were going at once. I focused on seminars about animation, so I can only tell you about those sessions. I can only assume the other sessions were just as terrific.

Monday I attended an all-day seminar on the modern television animation pipeline using Flash. The seminar was presented by animator Stanton Cruse from Film Roman. Afterwards I went out for dinner with four guys who design fake computer display graphics for TV and movies. When an actor uses a computer in a movie or TV show, these guys design what shows up on the actor’s computer screen. Most of the time the computer isn’t really doing anything, the actor is just miming to a mini-movie playing on his computer designed to look like real software is running.

Tuesday I attended seminars on animation principles, using Flash, and surviving Hollywood. Fascinating stuff presented by first-class speakers.

Wednesday’s seminar topics included animating to music, designing character packs for Flash, acting in animation, and designing ethnic characters. The last two seminars were both led by Dan Haskett, a veteran Disney animator and character designer. His work was incredible and his wisened, soft-spoken manner had me hanging on every word. More about his presentation in my next post.

If you are serious about animation, be sure to attend Motion 09 next year in Alburquerque, NM. Sign up for future updates.

More “3-2-1 Penguins!” Concept Art

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I’ve been at the Motion 08 animation conference in New Mexico all week. More on that tomorrow. For now, a blog post I meant to publish earlier this week:

The past weekend NBC aired another brand new episode of “3-2-1 Penguins!” for which I designed some characters.

Here’s a few misc. characters –  a butterfly, firefly, and frog:


The script called for the frog to be placed in a large glass jar, and then to get his tongue stuck on the glass.

At one point in the episode the villain (an evil hamster, far right) turns all the other characters into hamsters. So I designed hamsters loosely based on the likeness of each character. That was a fun challenge.

For each hamster character I had to do turnarounds, mouth charts, and an expression charts to assist the animators. Here’s a sample expression chart for one of the hamster characters:

Info about the Motion animation conference tomorrow!

More “3-2-1 Penguins!” Character Designs

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This past weekend NBC aired another brand-new episode of 3-2-1 Penguins!, an animated series on which I was a character designer. I’m not sure but I think this was the premiere of season 2. The episode, titled “12 Angry Hens”, required me to design (among other things) some robotic hens with holographic heads and a robotic scarecrow. Here’s some of the concept art I submitted.

More This and That

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I’m still trying to dig out from under a mountain of work, so here’s just a couple brief notes of interest:

Play Election Lingo! If you are planning to watch the Vice Presidential debate tonight, have a little fun with this bingo-like game from illustrator Bob Staake. There’s also a Presidential version for when the next debate rolls around.

FallCon is this weekend. If you live in or around the Twin Cities be sure to check out FallCon, Minnesota’s largest comic book convention. It’s a two-day event at the state fairgrounds with hundreds of artists and exhibitors on hand. This is FallCon’s 20th anniversary so early-arriving guests get a free original sketch card. I’ll have a table set up to display my latest work, and I’ll also be selling off my comic book collection at bargain prices. Stop on by and say “hi”. FallCon is October 4 & 5 from 10am-5pm.