Thanks to a meeting with the owners and senior staff at Big Jump Productions this week, there is greater assurance that everything is moving in the right direction. Trying to design the Drupal platform (a powerful open source content management system) around an animation production pipeline has its challenges. Namely, how to pole and present the data contained within to different users.  So far, I have been focusing on the basic episodic production hierarchy of production/episode/scene.  You could also use other names like project/show/shot.  They are same but for the sake of designing a system to manage it, we’ll settle on the former example. Now I need to address the hierarchy of departments with the production.

Also decided in the meeting, was the move away from managing file uploading/downloading with the CMS .  This was mostly because of the load it might put on the system.  Productions are all full HD so some scene files coming out of Flash could top 70 MB or more.  Storyboards, which are drawn all digitally, have to be sectioned up because a given sequence of scenes could produce a Flash file well over 150 MB. It’s disappointing that Drupal can’t do it all, and who knows, maybe it can, but, for now it’ll have to be a two-tiered system.  The first tier is Drupal and very efficient, and the second tier will still have user uploading/downloading files to server folders both in-house and over FTP when connecting from out-of-house. Perhaps after things have been up and running for a while, I’ll test a small department with their file uploading/downloading needs and see how the system handles it.

So next week we set up the web server and move over the Wordpress Blog.  If that goes well, there will be time to move the Drupal CMS over as well. The CMS is a password protected site, o I am not worried about continuing development in a live setting. We’ll see how it goes. I’ve got a couple more weeks before I want to introduce users to the CMS.  There will be a lot of streamlining and the training to do before that happens. It should be an interesting week, next week.

This post is just a test for embedding YouTube videos in the soon-to-be-launched Big Jump Productions Blog.

It does give you a glimpse at what we’re doing with Flash. It’s a hybrid style of animation that combines carefully executed use of Flash’s common shape and motion tweens with hand-drawn (on Wacom Cintiq tablets), frame-by-frame animation.  The result is animation that is as close to traditional as you can get and still deliver your shows affordably and on-time.

Yesterday (Friday) marked the end of the first week of developing Big Jump Production’s new file management system.  This kind of system is better known to the web development community as a content management system, or a CMS, for short.

I am still working with the production staff to nail down the particulars of the present, all-manual system.  Once complete, the CMS will enable staff to launch a web browser on any computer connected to the internet (or the studio’s internal network), log in and immediately begin viewing messages, work assignements, notes on revisions, work that is approved and ready for invoicing, and the progress of the production as a whole. It’s a tall order and I have only 9 more weeks until the first of many modules is due to launch for users.

I am using the open source CMS, Drupal.  It’s an awesome web platform.  For community web sites, forums and blogs, it’s practically ready to go, right out of the box.  For what I am asking it to do though, there is much more customization needed.  Imagine a page dedicated to each and every character, prop, background, storyboard, or scene.  Of course, automation is necessary as there are hundreds and hundreds of pages. I still have to work out whether I can find a module to enter the plethora of information needed, or learn how to write it myself in PHP.  I am holding out for the former and not the latter. Not that I am not up for the challenge, but I don’t want to cut it too close to the deadline with custom code.  I trust I can rely on the Drupal community of developers and users to help me through it.

As an extra bonus, I will be rolling out a new blog for Big Jump, using Wordpress (which I am currently using for this very blog).  I am very familiar with installing and administering it, but the first hurdle is to get it running properly on an IIS web server.  Depending on what version of the server they are using, there might be the need to install a few extras, something I have never done before.  I guess this is where I get to work with the IT department to make this all happen.

Lastly, I will be pushing forward on an old passion of mine, writing extensions for Flash.  This is something a started back when I was with PIP Animation.  Finally, I will be dusting off some old extension projects and exploring some ideas for more.  Whenever I am given the green light to share some of them, I’ll post them here.  So add this site’s rss feed to your feed aggregator and watch for a future post on these Flash extension.

Just when I thought I couldn’t diversify my skills any further, I’ve been given the project to develope and manage Big Jump Production’s content management system, or CMS, for short.

Well, I couldn’t be happier. What’s going to happen with my plans for 3D, and even 2D work? For now, they will creep into the background, not to be forgotten, for sure.

In the meantime, my past few years experience using the Wordpress blogging platform will evolving into setting up much larger and more complex structures. The framework for all of this will be built using Drupal. I must say, I am both very excited and also terrified by the road ahead. But this is where I thrive. Scared silly but having fun. The same was true of my first foray into the world of 3D. It’s not worth doing if there wasn’t a real chance of failure. So far my impression of Drupal is that it quite simply rocks. I’ll save the details for a future post, and leave it at that.
So to all that follow this blog, no worries, I am still happily working in the animation industry with folks I respect and admire.

Having setup the ability to blog from the iPhone, I thought it would be fun to try it out while taking a break from animating at the studio. Although it can be frustrating trying to text with thumbs as big as mine, it’s amazing that I now posses the ability to post from anywhere. If I only splurged and got the 3Gs, maybe I could be editing my demo reel too

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

It’s been fun and quite the experience being a Full-time Dad these past six months.  I count myself as being very fortunate that I had the opportunity to do so.  But now the work bug is biting again and it’s time to return to the “real” world.

I’ve been adding new content to the Gallery and Animation pages.  As always, the hard part is deciding what to post when you love doing everything from 2D and 3D design to animation to visual effects.

Get the Flash Player to see this content.

Feeling a bit nostaglic, I just had to post this demo from a few years back when I first started animating with Flash.

The holidays proved to be a much needed rest and so all projects tied to this blog were temporarily put on hold.  In spite of global economic crisis, I will be forging onward in my creations, if anything, with even more determination than before.

You can expect to see a wrap up on my first blogged project, “The Pilot’s Helmet Model”, and also expect to see a completed online version of my Introduction to Maya workshop from last summer, and some new stuff that I have yet to reveal.

A small sampling of animation I have done in Flash over the past few years. Click on “Animation” in the Menu Bar above or in the side-bar to the right of this page.

In the coming months I will be collaborating with a 2D character/animator to create a character who they have designed and animated in 2D, I will model and rig it and they will take back to animate.  As a matter of fact, the character has already been animated so we know where we’re headed.  We are attempting to reproduce some of the 2D animation, but plan on leveraging the possibilities afforded by going 3D.  For me, it’s a chance to do some work that rewards me by getting into a character that I know will work.  It also has the potential to get the attention of clients who might employ us to keep going.  Second only to having fun making stuff in 3D, making money at it is the goal.

So, as soon as we reveal our work to the potential client, I will begin posting our work.