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.

Here’s a little 3d model I put together for a future project. I composited the mushrooms into a forest scene. The finished product for the scene they will go in will be an entirely different scale.

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.

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…

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TikTok is rigged! He took me a lot less time than Scarecrow did.

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…