The Critical Drinker

I get a kick out of The Critical Drinker and his caustic Scottish humor. He gives his honest reviews from the perspective of someone that genuinely loves movies and wants to see the best films and stories told. For the films that The Drinker does feel fall short of the quality mark,  he does offer constructive suggestions on how to improve upon them from a writers perspective. I have observed that he also engages with his audience and colleagues in a genuinely decent respectful sincere way. He maybe crusty and drunk, but I reckon he's a really good guy.  He must be, he likes dogs.

During downtime between jobs, I try and explore things with TVPaint and different aspects of animation. So I thought about doing a comical animated shot of The Drinker. The character design is mostly mine with a little input by my colleague Tim Watts (check out the his stop motion short film "the Big Story" and Spittin' Image caricatures).

Animator Seti Erfan kindly did a one frame shadow set up for me basted on the Robert Valley tone technique. I animated them for the shot and I can tell you the whole procedure is a massive complex pain in the backside. It's so important to keep learning the various aspects in any business so you can understand and empathize with colleagues down the pipeline. From all my past animation experience, I have a huge respect to the animation assisting teams, especially the crews that work on Robert Valley's jobs doing these difficult tone FX under extremely challenging deadlines.

Thanks to Editor Daniel Budin for his SFX suggestions.

Check out the Critical Drinker's youtube channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/@TheCriticalDrinker/videos

Click on the link below to see the animation:

The History Squad

I really enjoy Historical Education and I happened upon the History Squad YouTube channel sometime ago. I binged watched episodes and it quickly became a favorite channel that I have been following ever since. It's hosted by Kevin Hicks and edited by his wife Julie.

Kevin has a really interesting and engaging way of relaying historical events, individuals and even some of his own adventures from the past. He uses props, models and location walk throughs to make his educational lessons really retainable. And wow, can he ever shoot a longbow.

I've got to know Kevin and his wife Julie over some time, and we have had some great discussions One of our chats lead to some artwork for the History Squad channel which I was very happy to do.

Check out the History Squad here:

https://www.youtube.com/@thehistorysquad/videos

Metatron

The Metatron has a History Channel on YouTube with well presented and insightful Historical content that I occasionally listen to. Some people agree with him, some people don't. He does encourage a respectful discourse which is a good thing. One of the things in his videos I do find amusing is his use of the term "Muppet". So here is the resulting bit of animation of the "Number one Muppet." 

Thanks to Gary Dunn for his design suggestions.

Click the image to check out the animation:

Love, Death + Robots Vol 4: The 400 Boys

Blur Studios asked Robert back to direct this episode of the LD+R series. I have worked for Rob off and on for over 20 yrs now, and I can say a lot of complimentary things about the guy.  One of the most outstanding things I've noted these past decades is his loyalty to the crew. On Rob's productions, he has a preferred group of hard working skilled individuals he continues to call back. The schedules might be challenging, but its a good work environment with solid folks.

Recently I was working on some personal animation and I wanted to apply some of the techniques of tones and highlights that Robert uses on his productions. So I asked Seti Erfan (who did some great animated shots on 400 boys) to help me with a one frame tone set up on my own work. On past jobs I directed, I'm used to one tone, one highlight and occasionally 2 tones/highlights on jobs incorporating animation and live action. When I got my animation file back from Seti and reviewed her instructions, I was blown away, as I had no idea the complexity of this technique. Its extensive, multiple layers of tones and some highlights per character, per frame. 

Robert is quite particular on how things look in the end, and what the Animation Assistants do on all these jobs to get the desired "Robert Valley Look" is amazing. Especially on how fast they do it. Sending so much respect to everyone in that department.

I'll post some stills of my shots in the future.

Bond, James Bond

Who was the best iteration of James Bond? Well it's the one you like the best. I was introduced to 007 when I was a kid  by my mom, so I grew up with Sean Connery and Roger Moore. But I think all the actors brought there own flare to the role, and they did the best they could with the scripts given.

This Bond opening sequence was inspired by Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan. I wanted to mess about and educate myself on applying animation to multiple camera layers, mattes and fades with TVpaint. 

Click on the link if you want to see the animation: (click on the lower right to see it full screen)

Dr. Squatch

While searching for things to listen to while I'm working,  The Dr. Squatch adverts would pop. I thought, ok that's a fun logo, which inspired the rough animation below.

Click the image to watch:

Mr Ballen - Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories.

I've been listening to Mr. Ballen  off and on for some time now.  John really has an engaging way of telling stories and I enjoy listening to him while I'm working. It was around 2022 that I noticed he had a logo representing his content which inspired me to do some rough animation incorporating that design. It's only just recently that I have had some time to have been able to finish off those concepts.

2-D FX animators like the very old school Disney bunch, guys like Michel Gagné and my friend Raymond Pang I've always held a great deal of respect for.  But after messing about with hand drawn FX myself, I now have an even greater admiration for those artists. I'll be keeping to the character stuff from now on.

Speaking of respect, Mr. Ballen does a lot of support for the veteran community, people with mental help concerns and many other groups in need. John seems like a really good guy.

Check out his Channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/@MrBallen 

And here is the animation I did with his logo, Thanks to Editor Daniel Budin for adding the SFX.