Mr. Rat is a little guy who gets into a bit of trouble. The idea behind this animation is a quick and loose style that is fast and fun. Thanks to Jeremy Engleman for helping out with some nice music. I originally released this animation around 4 years ago, but this is a new HD version of the animation.

I started working on a new miniature of the glass city from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. The building are being built out of laser cut white acrylic. My nice neat stacks of parts got tumbled together in my car. Let’s see if I can sort them all out.

Sometimes you just get bizarre ideas in your head and have to draw them!…

I’m just about done with Episode 2 of The Adventures of Mr. Rat. I finished the last shot, and now I just have to wrap up the titles, and send it off to Jeremy to compose the music.

Here’s a little demo GIF of the animated Flip. He’ll be part of a bigger shot, but this was the first test of my new process. Edit: I should also mention that the noise on the coloring is from the GIF compression. I just did it this way so that it would be easy to embed online. It won’t be like that in the finished piece.

I’m starting to try out some animation on paper. It’s not nearly as quick as working on the computer, but the precision and line quality is phenomenally better. I’m hoping this process will work out for me. If it does I’ll do a post showing off my mobile animation rig. Flip is a character from the Winsor McCay comic strip “Little Nemo”. He’s going to be featured in my next animation after I finish episode 2…

I’m getting close to finishing up episode 2 of The Adventures of Mr. Rat. Here’s a quick breakdown of how I put my shots together. You’ll notice that I changed some motion between the storyboards and the actual animation due to some on-the-fly decisions while I was animating (for better or worse).

Here is an actual shot of what I want to do with the 3d CG mushrooms I posted before. After I finish this next episode of Mr. Rat I’m planning on doing another 30 second to 1 minute long hand drawn animation. The 3d mushrooms will be used as a bunch of the backdrops. I’m trying to go for more of a painterly feel with the style.

My animation is moving along nicely now. I have 50 seconds of shots completed. If any of my readers have done any animation, they will know that that’s some good progress. The way I decided to structure this animation was to have hand-built miniatures with CG characters animated on top of still images. This technique lets me crank out my shots pretty quickly. In other news I’m going to rename my animation. I discovered that the…

Animation: Greg Tatum Music: Jeremy Engleman…

I finished a little animation of a shark for the kiosks I’m working on at work. He’s pretty fun.

We had a soft opening for the left ramp on the shark exhibit. We just switched over to the other side to start painting and getting that side ready. I can’t wait until we get the rest of the graphics and exhibit items installed in the ramps. This is exciting! Oh and also I’ve been working on finishing the fiberglass casts of sharks. I ordered unfinished cast blanks that I have to sand, fill in,…

I forgot to post these. I’ve been working on my Trio of Oz miniature set. I’ve actually made more progress than this, but I’ll probably hold off posting any more until I finish. I’m hoping to be done by next week so I can start photographing it for real. I’ve also been re-working the storyboards. I’m adding a few things and tightening up some shots. It seems like when I do that it just gets longer…

Poor TikTok! Was tweaking Smasher’s rig and I decided to do a quick render. I’m really liking the way these rigs have turned out. Smasher’s hands now stay put on the hammer, and I have 2 goals that I move around to adjust the hammer rig. The hands stay rotated and fixed on it, and the arms move separate. Woot! I still need to UV texture Smasher.

I’m nearly done with all the models for my animation so I’ve started working on getting the miniature I’m animating on up to par. I decided that the clockworld was too bare and needed some nice little foliage to give it some depth. Here are some trees that I’m working on for it. Floral wire wrapped around in the shape of a tree. Then I coated the wire with a bunch of latex caulk. I bought the squeezable…

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I’m getting really excited. I’m getting close to finishing up all the characters for my first scene. I think I will be animating by this summer! I started up this project in 2006 crazy enough. I’ve not been actively working on it all of that time of course. It had fallen by the wayside but in January I really started spending a lot more time getting everything going on my animation. I of course got married,…

I had a few people asking me about my scarecrow character so I figured I would make a post about him. Scarecrow in the books was always the one with the brains who could figure things out. He also briefly ruled the Land of Oz until Ozma took over. He’s afraid of fire, and water makes him soggy. In my animation he’s going to be more of a trickster. He’s smart, but also a little tricky…