Ever since returning to work, I have had to put all 3D projects on hold.  Since I devote all my time to animating “The Secret World of Benjamin Bear” with my fellow animators at Big Jump Productions here in Ottawa, I thought I should at least show my visitors what my new work looks like.

The animation for Benjamin Bear is a hybrid style of Flash symbol manipulation and traditional frame-by-frame drawn animation.  The characters are designed as a 16 point turn around with most elements on their own layers, especially the elements of the face.  So if 16 points of rotation aren’t enough, you can always keyframe individual elements into a new pose easily.  The designs look traditional and are well done.

Rather than attempting to animate the limbs on a character using rigid parts that hinge around fixed pivot points, animators draw them as they should appear in the key poses.  Even the inbetweens are drawn in most cases, but not always.  From there they lay down a new layer and create a completely cleaned up limb in the exact pose and with the correct volume required.  The use of Wacom Cintiq tablets helps greatly in this.

I have almost 5 minutes of footage to sort through. Once I have rendered it all out and edited it down to about 2 minutes, I will compile a new 2D animation demo reel.  So check back in a few days (I have a deadline for Monday, so this weekend is off-limits for anything but work work).

UPDATE: Sept 16

Okay, it’s been quite busy with all the work to be done on this show.  The good news is that there is an ever growing pool of scene to choose from for this 2 min demo reel.  I am organizing the work as I go for easy retrieval later.  So when I get some time, It won’t take long to throw some footage on a timeline and render something out.  Stay tooned