The Midriffs

EDIT: OMG THIS IS THE ONE HUNDREDTH POST ON THIS BLOG! 100!!!!! Yeah



sassy and pink!

theyre 5 cool teens looking for fun!

and they've got a passionable for all things fashionable!

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here's their original appearance in this goofy video i animated almost 2 years ago:



(in the original they had no lower bodies.)

SPEAKING OF FACEBOOK:
i know that keeping up with a blog is like so 2006. so you can now follow this blog on facebook!! so you dont have to keep checking back! Click the "Networked Blogs" widget over on the right hand column of this blog. (can I possibly say "blog" any more times in this paragraph? blog blog blog)

swipes!

just some warmup. includes a swipe from uncle phil.



attempting to design sexy lady characters, not really happy with how these came out... ill try again soon.

also i inked lydia from beetlejuice with a brush! i am trying to get better at that. for some reason that makes it look classier... maybe i should brush-ink some of the others?

deadly assault!

yo... finished a big new nockFORCE, check it:




a few ideas


the devil's in the details i guess... get one angle wrong and it looks more boat than car.


damn i love pans so much. just the planning and the execution is so fun to me


the finished pan.

Here we go it's animation time

new nockFORCE and some sketches!



So in working up to this, here's a crappy storyboard:



and here's some character design stuff! Took a while to design this character, here are a bunch of my early tries. They're chronological from left to right.



OH! and a shameless plug! Venture Bros Season 3 trailer:



I directed two of the scenes showing up in here: The one with the pirate captain and the kids, and the first few shots of the OSI sequence! Can't wait for June 1st!

some more nockFORCE vids

two nockFORCE videos for you today: first up is "OMG Facebook Photo", which I'm sure you will understand if you've seen it happen:



Yes, this actually happens in real life. If you don't know, well now you know

That one was kind of a challenge because I had to create completely new character designs- usually the character designs in nockFORCE fantasy segments have monotone colors but since they dominate this short I decided to go for a two-tone approach with slight deviations for mouth colors (keeping the mouths the same tone made them harder to see). Rebecca told me she enjoys when I use basic shapes for characters so I tried to go further with that with these girly designs and I think it came out pretty good.

My only regret with these shorts is that I don't get to do much animation. Producing these weekly is kind of a strain but i STILL want to add some actual movement and it's rare that I get the chance to. I try to make up for this by experimenting with designs as much as I can but I wish I had more time. Ah well.

second is the nockFORCE video from last week:



This is exactly what I'm talking about. There's hardly anything going on visually because the dialogue is pretty much taking over. In these instances I like to think of these shorts as comic strips, basic posing and not much background variation.

A lot of animation people are always critical of what they deem "visual radio", just talking with characters not really doing much. I'm critical of it too, even though that's exactly what I'm doing. Hello hypocrisy! I try to make it at least somewhat interesting.

speaking of interesting, print this on a t-shirt and join the club: