U Can't Stop The Rubber Rocket!

It’s been a long road, but the music video for U Can’t Stop The Rubber Rocket! by Rubber Johnson is finally out in the world, courtesy of Respect Music Records. I served as the director, animator, story artist, and character designer on this project, while also kicking in a few backgrounds here and there. Shouts to my production crew, Robert Pendleton (compositing lead), Jonilyn Ly (environment designer and background painter), and Naomi Meyers (environment designer and background painter). Thanks for putting up with my endless notes. I think the video is looking pretty decent, guys. 

I also worked on a comic adaptation of the music video, which is available as a free download. Writing credit goes to Rubber Johnson's Chief Creative Officer, James Canning. It dives into the world of Rubber Johnson in greater detail and allows the reader to see what the characters are actually saying to each other underneath all that music. Click on the cover image below to download. 

Finally, here’s a bit of production art from the project. I'll probably post a few more in the future. 

Tilt BG from the video's opening shot. 

Another tilt BG, this time from the scene taking place in
the abandoned arcade.

'Colored' version of the arcade background, once the band bursts
 out the machine into the present day.

Initial design for the 'mindless masses', who were later
dubbed "The Enslaved"

The band insisted that I make a cameo in the video, so here's
 my avatar who ends up getting STOMPED by The MAN. 

Watch 'The Turtle and the Monkey'

I've just made my De Anza College student film, The Turtle and the Monkey available to watch on vimeo and Youtube.

I figured that it's probably time, after about a year of trying to get into all of the free festivals and a few of the paid ones. I wasn't as successful as I had hoped, but you take your lumps, learn from them, and move on. If I could do it over, I'd probably make the film considerably shorter.

Falling In Flames

About a year ago, I worked on a music video for indie hip-hop icon, Murs, and his Yumiko, Curse of the Merch Girl graphic novel project which he co-created with Josh Blaylock. I've been a fan of Murs since picking up his album, "The End of the Beginning" back in 2003, so I was honored to get to work on this. We actually wrapped just before Comic-Con 2012, after which it seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. To my relief, it finally surfaced online a year later, in conjunction with the digital release of the Merch Girl graphic novel.

I worked on this project as the lead storyboard artist and lead animator. I happened into the lead animator position by virtue of being the only one on the crew without anything else going on his life; the rest of the animation team was mostly made up of students from Cogswell College and San Jose State. Our crew on this project was actually pretty big - apparently too big to completely fit into the youtube video description. For the lead animator position, I'm simply credited as "Leo" because that's where the cutoff point happened to be, meaning that the other animators aren't credited at all.

Who the hell is interrupting my Kong Fu?!?!?!

The more I looked at the previous Black Dynamite sprite, the more I kind of hated it. So, uh, do-overs. I studied the SF Zero sprites a little more and adjusted his proportions accordingly. I'm still not sure that it looks like it fits in that world yet, but it's an improvement.

Oh, and hey look! He's moving!

Sprite created in Photoshop and animated in Pixen.

Bunches of Punches

Here's an exercise that I did recently to evaluate Toon Boom Animate and practice some action stuff for whenever I get around to doing something with Kinniku Fighter.

Bulalove

I was thinking recently about how I haven't done much animation containing dialogue. So I set out to remedy that situation. But I couldn't just do any old vanilla 11 Second Club sound byte. Ohhhh no. I needed to stir in some of that Pilipino play-bor.



The bit is from the latest Rex Navarrete comedy album , Live at Cobb's. I actually haven't had bulalo before, but I probably need to get the bulalovin' going on one of these days.

Fall back, you jive suckas!

I'm somewhat of an overzealous music consumer, so when left to my own devices,  a lot of my ideas end being inspired by random tracks that pop up when I do the good ol' iTunes shuffle. Whenever the song, "Chicago Falcon" by modern-day funk ensemble The Budos Band comes on, it inspires me to try to 'pimp strut' before I realize that I have no idea what a 'pimp strut' is supposed to be. The following walk cycle is my attempt to figure that out:

I've spent the last few years animating The Turtle and the Monkey on twos, and I figured that I needed some practice animating on ones again. It was also refreshing to animate a character who wasn't a monkey or a turtle. The animation is a combination of ones and twos. This cycle went through several revisions and ended up taking longer than I expected. But I'm pretty satisfied with the result.

Orange suit swag

The Turtle and the Monkey

'The Turtle and the Monkey' is my graduation project for the De Anza College animation program. It's an adaptation of a supposedly popular Filipino folk tale. I say supposedly because I had never heard of the story before developing my adaptation of it. Hurray for cultural deprivation!

Production took place over the course of almost three years. I'm the film's director and sole animator. The animation was handled in Toon Boom Studio, while the the backgrounds were done in Corel Painter. Actually, I didn't even know how to paint before starting the production process, so I went straight into line tests and animation while spending a school year taking basic painting classes. I'm better at it, but it's still mostly witchcraft to me. 

A preliminary version was completed in time for the De Anza College Student Film Show in June 2011. I'm still tweaking it for release to film festivals as of November 2011. I'm hoping to have a final version done before the end of the year. 

The following is a trailer I made for the De Anza College version of the film: