Animax ID's

From deep in the vault...
yet another American client who wanted a Japanese look for Japanese clients but only wanted to work with an American production company .This time the client was Animax , a Japanese animation channel that needed I.D.'s .
The theme for this one was" pre-school/ romance".


This is one of my rejected girl designs, the flawless Osamu Tsuruyama ,our authentic Japanese "ringer ",ended up designing all the humans ,doing most of the layouts and animating a large portion of these ID's.
My attempt at a Miyazki inspired creature design .




The theme of this one was "pre- school /action".


This rotating spaceship was hand animated by none other than that Smokin' genius ... J.Garrett Sheldrew .




The theme for this one was "grade-school /action"




My robot monster.

....and "grade-school/ romance" .






microsoft for the web

This is a cut-down of some spots I directed for Microsoft Vista for the web .It was fun working on something that was supposed to look "Ye Olde ".The animation was done with puppeting through After Effects .


This is the character design style I was initially pushing for .

SuperNike ,Friendship

Here is one of three Nike spots for Japan I directed, where the animated characters were supposed to look "manga" style not anime , hence the comic book speed lines and sound fx bubbles .The final character designs were by an authentic Japanese comic artist and the animation was done in Vancouver by Natterjack .For the live action portions I got a chance to direct some major leaguers , Ken Griffey Jr. and a couple of Japanese players .

Hawaiian Flinstones

The sarcastic, intelligent daughter and the obnoxious son.They said I took the Flinstones thing too literally .
After the design direction changed I was relegated to secondary characters like these horny sargeants and entitled tourists .

"Happy" Faux Music Video

This was a down time project at wildbrain that was originally intended to be a quick turn around CG piece that would show off a "down and dirty" style of CG that we normally didn't get considered for. We cobbled together a couple of Yo Gabba songs for the soundtrack and didn't fuss about the story too much since it was just supposed to be a "look" piece, not a short film. Later we added the forest animal flash sequence because the story was .... ahhh .... too minimal. I wrote, directed, story boarded and designed the characters. The wildbrain CG department did a great job of modeling, rigging, animating and lighting despite the fact they thought that it was weird and indulgent. Nick Hewitt art directed and made it pretty while Nathan Stephens went crazy with the AfterEffects lens flare action.


This was the original tiny concept art.

My character turn around.


My rough color studies, later redone and made fabulous by Nick Hewitt.

House Mite Character for Feature Pitch

A more detailed turn around .


His family.
Poses and attitudes .

Big Mo' Character

We were given an audio track of an obnoxious mortgage character that sounded like Ted Knight or John Goodman .



CC Lemon

This was one of my favorite commercials from way back in my Colossal days. Japanese dream clients plus a "jungle" sound track what could be better. I directed, boarded and designed this spot.

Empowered Female Character Designs

These are empowered cross training Nike customers .


These "powerful" characters were for Midol ,our female clients kept asking for more jewelry , more sassiness and more cleavage .