The Satement of Randolph Carter

So... the project's been done for about a year now and lazy me is just getting around to posting it.
It took three of us a year to complete in flash (see my previous posts about hating flash).
Now we have 4 working on the next Eldritch Animation endeavor. Progress to be posted soon (assuming I get my ass in gear). With out further ado...

My Grudge Monster can beat up your Oscar the Grouch

Well, I think it's a perfectly valid reason why I don't take out the garbage.



Flash

H.P. Lovecraft

So in the past few months I've gotten pretty knowledgeable in all things Lovecraft. Friends, Doug Simon and Kate Mcelroy, and I have been working on project of H.P. Lovecraft's The Statement of Randolph Carter. After much work, dedication, curses thrown at Flash, and sorry to say (but typical) lack of motivation at certain moments, and some denial of certain scenes on my part (damn you walk cycles!), we have a festival-worthy project that is almost complete!!

The entire project is to be done in Flash. I wish Flash were a person... because then I could punch Flash in the face. Don't understand why? Try doing the most simple thing in Flash... go ahead, try it, and see if you can do it so that Flash doesn't throw a tantrum...I dare you.



Randolph Carter (character designed by me and there is no relation to Doug Funny... he just seemed like a sweater vest type of guy). Doug designed the backgrounds and colored them, and I cleaned up and colored Carter.




Screen capture from another scene. Character designed by me, and animation done by me as well. Clean ups and backgrounds created by Doug Simon.

More updates posted when the motivation strikes me.

Dragons, Knights, and a whole lotta Chroma-Keying

This is still one of my favorite things I ever animated. It truly was a labor of love as I combined several different techniques in order to produce this scene. In the story the White Knight is set to complete many tasks to prove his worth to the King for the honor of his daughters hand. The last challenge is to slay the dragon. Being the good guy, the White Knight of course prevails however, the Knight holds a very important secret that comes to light at the end of the story.

For this scene I used traditional paper cut-out puppets. However, as anyone who has tackled paper cut-outs know that when animating them it is always best for them to be as large as possible. Clearly I wanted a huge size difference between the knight and the dragon but wasn't about to make an enormous dragon, so, I had to animated both the characters separately. I used a red cloth backdrop (as that was the color that contrasted the most between the two characters) and animated the dragon first based upon how a large cat would move. I then timed every movement the dragon made in order to move the knight which I did at a separate time. The were then scaled, edited, and had their backdrops chroma keyed out in After Affects and a new background added. I then took the finished product, sans fire, into flash where I was able to animated the fire, and the fire I painted on paper and scanned in to flash. Voila! There you have it! A perfect example of how you can still be traditional, but use technology to its full advantages.

Check it out on Vimeo, here, http://www.vimeo.com/9914031

Figure Study

A figure study from a live model. This pose is pretty appropriate for the time that we live in. The slightly shabby clothing, the posture of almost sadness; it reminds me of a scene out of the Great Depression. It is like the man is down and out on his luck, maybe he hasn't had a hearty meal in days, waiting in line for something...food stamps...a job...hope? It wasn't all that long ago that a lot of people were feeling very similar to that. Perhaps this model, in real life, knows that scenario all too well.

conte on paper

Screen Capture

A screen capture from my senior animation project. The horse and the knight are animatable in a paper cut-out style. The background was heavily inspired by Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" background artist Eyvind Earle. The two trees in the foreground were added later in Adobe After Affects to create that famous Disney multi-plane camera look. I would love to have made an actual multi-plane camera but... gosh darn those things are tricky and involved, and I am just not construction handy.

gouache, paper cut-outs, stop-motion, 2007

Monster Dad

Because even monsters need a day off. I imagine this scenario with this monster walking through the house, all grumpy, with three little monster kids running around with toys littering the floor as dad is just about to step on some sharp, painful toy. Or... perhaps a toy truck of some sort, causing him to slide across the room, into the wall, and breaking his precious "World's Greatest Dad" mug. Oh the slap-stick comedy potential.


2006, watercolor