Virgin America - Safety Video

This is my most "high profile" job, simply because of the captive audience. I conceived, directed, storyboarded, character designed (about half of the characters), and with a lucky break, did the voice over narration. Finished in spring '07, great clients, great agency (Anomaly), a reasonable schedule, and a production crew of geniuses at wildbrain.Here's a new bit of press.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/design/2012/05/how-a-federally-regulatedsafety-message-distinguished-a-brand/

Sake Commercial

This is a commercial I directed for the mighty Special Agent Productions for a dream Japanese client.This was great fun and I am eternally grateful to the talented Mike Overbeck and Tim Blair for the terrific character and effects animation.My brother did the music and I did the boards,the layouts and the design.This job had a small budget and a generous schedule and there is no one to blame for the weird story but me.

Coke Citra - Bull

Another Coke Citra commercial for my favorite Mexican clients. Dave Feiss animated the majority of the spot and designed the bull. I directed, story boarded and designed the humans.

Coke Citra - Ninja

This was a TV commercial we did for Mexican clients (who were the best clients EVER). They just wanted to cram in as many gags as 30 seconds would allow. I also got to work with the great Dave Feiss who animated almost the entire spot (one scene by the also great Dave Vandervoort) and designed the ninjas and the hero's body. I directed, storyboarded and designed the good guys and the hero's head.

my rejected hero design

my good guys designstoryboards

Gil the Honda Crab and some of his pals

This is a campaign I worked on for about three years for the Honda Element.We tested for this job early on , in fact it came in as a bid for a local commercial ,went away for a year and then miraculously came back as a series of national spots.The agency came to us with a couple of pieces of art and some scripts.At first the scripts seemed pretty minimal ,too dry even, but then we realized it was about timing and in particular, awkward pauses .So we wracked our brains for a film or TV show that would have an appropriate dialog style for a scratch track .It was my pal Nathan that came up with "Chuck and Buck",a film with truly squirm-worthy dialog and timing.That scratch track along with an appropriatly quirky bit of after -fx puppetry of a donkey and an element ,by my pal Erica,landed us the campaign.
Believe it or not each of these spots was boarded and timed out first .They might appear to be radio plays with cut out photos but we actually did work hard to push the timing to support the very well written scripts.

This was from their "urban" campaign , there was some nervousness about the sneakers on the
wire and gang implications.

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 .

These are the round of roughs that proved to be the actual design direction.

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 .

"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.

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.