Preview Clip

Here is a shot from my short cartoon "An Eye for an Aye-Aye". You can see the original pencil test, followed by the final composite. This was a slightly more complicated shot to put together as I ended up with the following layers:

1. Tim Portans
2. The Branch
3. Gun Smoke 
4. Prop Shotgun (briefly)
5. Background

I'm very happy with the way it's turned out.

This was created mostly with open source software, The sound effects are from http://www.freesound.org

Thank you to gcmax, nthompson and Alienxxx for the sounds.

"Tend to my Creations"

Ah It's so good to finally have a weekend where I can just tend to my creations, if only ever so slightly.

I've had time to sketch up some designs for a new character today and over this Easter weekend I have been Cleaning Up some more of my short film. Above is a Clean Up colour render and the original pencil sketch which it was Cleaned Up from. This is just a quick render though, the colours and background will be different in the final form.

Happy Easter!

Side by Side shot comparison

Rough Animation / Final Composite from Jeff Cook on Vimeo.

Yay! Double post day!!
Why not?

Here is a comparison shot between a rough animation pencil test and the final coloured composite.

The pencil animation was filmed on a webcam and captured in Monkey Jam (and had some compression issues), traced digitally in vector program Pencil and coloured in Inkscape. The Background was created in The Gimp and everything was composited together in Wax.
If that all sounds like gibberish then maybe you would like to know that those are all Open Source freeware software.

This is a shot of self proclaimed "Flying Ace!" Tim Portans in search of that pesky and elusive Aye-Aye.

Enjoy...

Development from Concept to Final Composite

The concept art was done in February 2007 and the rough animation was done late May in 2007. But coloured composite was just done last week.

While I was looking through some concept art I found this piece, which was an early piece that was used in my (first?...) project pitch to the tutors. Unlike other concept art in my pitch, this actually became a scene.

My character Tim Portans' outfit was almost refined enough for the model pack but his face, particularly his chin and hair style, still had a lot of tinkering to go.

Also the background design for this shot only changed slightly from concept through animation.

Cheers.