More Hand Drawn Animation

Still trying to get the cobwebs out, people...



I wanted to try something a little more loose and exaggerated... it's not the cleanest thing ever but I did have fun with stretching parts of him out in the in-betweens.

Monday Love

"You can find better stories in books and movies. Better illustrations in magazines and on book covers, richer characters in Dickens and in classic sitcoms. Where else can you get get magic moving eye candy but in animated cartoons when they are in top form? - and why do so few places and people want to give it to you?"

-- John Kricfalusi

I was watching Mickey and the Beanstalk last week for some visual reference for a project and loved this scene with Donald flipping his sh*t due to starvation. Check out this pose. Personally I think they could've taken it a bit more extreme but then it might've started looking a little too Warner Brothersy. I do love those fingers!



Also for a sidenote, sometime between now and this Saturday I have to migrate this blog to another URL due to Google severing support for blogger-based blogs hosted on other servers. If it goes down, just visit www.markedanimation.com and you will kindly find direction there.

Happy Friday!

Here's a chipmunk dressed up as a cop.
Maybe you'll see it on TV, maybe you won't.

UPDATE: You won't.

Today I Made a Man's Skull Disappear... or something.

Here's more "facial" animation. Have a great weekend everybody!

Today I Made a Man Sneeze

It has been an embarrassingly long time since I've done any hand drawn facial animation, so I made the most of a slow day and had a chance to clear out some cobwebs.



More to come!

Kid Sister "Daydreaming" Music Video

This is a video I worked on through LFS. We only had a couple of weeks from start to finish and I think the concept was simple and well-executed; props to the director Kim Gehrig for an overall smooth production (something that seems to be rarer and rarer with each passing project)!
Unfortunately my life outside of blogging (a.k.a. "life") has been a bit hectic in the last month due to putting some long hours in at the office, freelancing and the release of God of War 3 but hopefully I should be able to get back to posting more on here soon. I've been doing a lot more drawing as of late so there should be plenty to show from that bag o' tricks in the coming weeks. Until then, check out this work-in-progress that I've been doodlin' up on Adobe Illustrator:

There's a lot more detail to it! I'll post a much higher-res when I'm finished with it.

Lost and Foundish: Self Portrait 2004

Here's what I looked like six years ago in pencil form when I had to do a self-nude for a figure drawing class. Look at those tits!

and yes, it was cold in my bedroom.

The Gift of .GIFing

Outside of the occasional venture into Flash, any animation I do designed for the web comes far and few between. That's why today is special... I made this:

If it fails to load properly that is most likely due to my lack of knowledge in compressing .gif files

To be honest I didn't do much more than add a bloody nose to a pre-existing .gif animation and then composite it onto a .gif dance floor, but isn't that 90% of animation nowadays?
My horizon is chock full of new projects, which reminds ME to remind YOU to check out one of my favorite music producers, oddisee. I could go on and on about his rich beats, devotion to providing plenty of free quality music to his fans and versatility in his music, but I'll let you check him out yourself (but only if you're really interested... I don't want to pressure you into something that you don't want to do like so many delicious-looking Domino's® ads these days). Check out his latest free seasonal EP, Odd Winter over on his blog. More on him later...
I must admit that after brainvomiting out that last paragraph I've developed a bit of writer's block & think I will call it a night, however brief it may have been. I haven't even left the office to go home yet.

I'm going to go become lost in John K's blog now.

New Feature: Lost and Foundish

Over the years I've started to accumulate more doodles and old work on various hard drives than I'd care to admit. Whether they be the product of an inside joke, boredom, or a personal project that never quite got off the ground, I'm finally granting them the proper neglect they deserve in an online forum. Each week I'll post a different image or video or audio clip and you can see for yourself just how much time I've had on my hands over the last few years.
This week I'm posting something that I drew way way waaay back in 2006 for a post-house I was working for at the time, the now-dead Outsider Inc. in Chicago, IL. They requested a new cover for their notebook of local restaurant menus so I started this drawing. Shortly after I ended up leaving the company and never got a chance to finish it, but here it is in its last known state:

© 2010 Marked Animation

These Are The Breaks & Such

Back in late 2009 I did a small bit of work for the VEVO program, "These Are The Breaks." I had a couple of days to come up with the intro graphics and I think for the time I had it turned out fairly well.



2010 looks to be another busy year -- I'm not really one for resolutions, and while I expect there to be a good amount of work out there to be done I hope to get more drawing and painting in. I've been doing a lot more on the commute to and from work lately so hopefully I'll have something to post in that regard when I have a bit of free time.
I also really REALLY want to start a new music video project. Hopefully I can lamaze this Locksley video project out of the uterus of my computer and get something new started in the spring time. Any hip-hop artists out there interested... hmmm??? Ghostface? CunninLynguists? Cudi? Raekwon? DOOM? Yeezy?

I'm all ears (big ones).