New Demo Reel

Here's my latest demo reel

Tuesday, December 13th at 8pm

http://youtu.be/3qUuL-CKFrk

Check out the 22 Minutes X-mas Special this Tuesday, December 13th at 8pm on CBC TV. You will see all sorts of funny skits, and Bob Rae (and my animation)!

This Hour Has 24 Frames Per Second

So the other day I found myself putting in a bid on a freelance animation gig for This Hour Has 22 Minutes. (For those of you outside of Canada, this is a popular political satire show on CBC) Much to my surprise, I got the job! So I worked it in around my main storyboarding job at Copernicus, which already keeps me plenty busy.

At his point, the episode hasn't aired yet, so no images, and I can't really get into any details about it. It's a christmas special, which will be broadcast sometime in the next 20 days or so (I assume). Hopefully CBC will have it available for streaming on their website.

So with the christmas season will come the end of my storyboarding job on Wild Grinders, which has been fun. It looks like I'll be moving on to animation next, which I am looking forward to.

I finished the animatic for Episode One of 'The Overlord' and a bunch of cool people have agreed to work on it.

I also managed to get some work done on 'Onions' my stop-motion project with Siloën Daley. That's something I am allowed to share with you...

So there. I updated my blog. Now back to storyboarding...

Onions test footage!

Looks like we got the camera settings sorted out.

Character Designs

These are my new character designs for The Overlord which I did, working from the awesome concept sketches done by Micro Chen.

The Overlord - The Animated Webseries

I launched the crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo today! What's that mean?

http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Overlord-Animated-Webseries

It means I'm going to make the Overlord as an animated webseries, one episode at a time. I want to pay the people involved for their talents, so there's going to be some money involved. I will be posting tidbits as they come together, designs and artwork and so on, but not on this blog; I have another blog that is completely devoted to The Overlord, called THE DEPARTMENT OF SUPREMACY

http://dept-of-supremacy.blogspot.com/

When I started the play in the Fringe Fest back in 2009, I kind of just started doing it and it snowballed as people got excited about it and it started to gain enough momentum that I no longer had to keep pushing it, I just steered it. Hopefully that's what will happen this time as well...!

Onions Test Footage

harder better faster stronger

So I'm drawing a lot - every day I pretty much draw as much as I can. It reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Homer goes to hell and the devil straps him to a machine that force-feeds him donuts, expecting it to be a torture, but Homer loves it. My hand gets sore sometimes, but I never get bored of drawing the same characters over and over again, and I am always learning and looking for ways of improving.

My own projects are coming along well. When my pal Siloën gets back from TIFF we'll start shooting our stop-motion short 'Onions', which is shaping up to be pretty sweet. I've started looking at crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo for The Overlord Animated Webseries. There's some encouraging success stories coming from the crowdfunding scene.

The Overlord Music is finished, and we'll be putting it up on iTunes soon...

Jim Edwards (1946-2011)

My father passed away last month from cancer. Dean McNeill was a colleague from his days at CCL, and he wrote this nice piece for the GDC newsletter.

http://www.gdc.net/designers/index/articles1190.php

Laid up

I had surgery on my right leg this week so it's slowed me down somewhat, allowing me some time to do things like update my blog.

Work at Copernicus has been steady, and keeping me quite busy, which is awesome. I am really enjoying the job. The show is fun, and should be on TV in a year or so. It's my first time working on a show that used an overseas studio to do the animation, so I'm looking forward to learning more about how that works.

I have had other things going on as well. We took a 6-day road trip at the end of June, visiting Grand Falls NB, Trois-Rivieres, Quebec City and Montreal Que, and Ottawa Ont. It was a hectic trip, full of family adventure and fun. A lot of driving was done in the rented Dodge Grand Caravan; we clocked 3500 km.

So yeah, surgery. I've has varicose veins in my right leg since I was a teenager. In case you don't know what that is, it's gross veins that bulge out and look gross. It was always unsightly, but otherwise not much of a problem. When I hit 35 or so, it started to become more of an issue, causing pain and swelling and other grossness. So this week I got them removed by a surgeon with a scalpel. He made about 16 incisions all up and down my leg, and sealed the wounds with staples. Yeah, it's a bit sore right now.

I will post before and after pix of my medical miracle as soon as the bandages come off...

New job etc

I'm stealing some time to update my blog - I've been working at a new job for about a month now, storyboarding at Copernicus Studios, so that's been keeping me pretty busy; not so much time for new animation lately. Some of my projects have been backburnered for now, at least until my workflow with the new job evens out a bit. Drawing all day is pretty darn sweet I have to say.

I have managed to make some progress with The Overlord. I just put some of the music up on YouTube, and I will be making the mp3's available when we add in the last couple of finishing touches to the last two remaining songs.

'A Perfect World'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yAWrZijAeQ

'Power Doesn't Care'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPPdexiTb20

'Access Denied'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxfg5w4v9Gk

'Liberté!'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCtEmt8iP6s

More animation progress

Here's some playblasts of my latest stuff

excerpt from work-in-progress: Necrozone

Here's a little slice of a short animated film I'm working on called 'Necrozone' which is about a guy who loves his guitar and fights the devil in a metal-battle for the soul of his best friend

Animation Demo Reel

Gogo Girl

I hate skin weighting and rigging. I hate it so much I am doing it over and over and over. Whee! I guess this is the way to get good at something. I've started working on some actual textures for her now. These are just rough colours to get her into the ballpark. Right now I'm getting her face blend shapes worked out. I've had the whole rig completely done twice now and I just realized I have to pull it all out and do it over again. It will be awesome in the end though. After trying to do animation with FunkyBoss I realized that I need to get my rigs right or else it hold back the animation too much. 

Video of Alien

Mudbox Monster

I really like Mudbox. Here's a monster I made. I was calling him Dave Chalmers for a while, but he needs a better name. I'm thinking 'Zyffillax the Horrible, Crustacean Nebuloid of the Outer Darkness'

Snowman

Here's some animation of a guy making a snowman. The model is 'Goon' by Sean Burgoon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF9mpDoEUhw

The Door

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db12YxgoKWQ

Animation by Dylan Edwards and Music by Benn Ross

A Robot's Progress - Pt 6

Now my robot is armed and dangerous, sporting a wickedawesome 88mm assault gun. It needs a bit of texturing work to make it match the weathered and beaten look of the robot... all in good time