Animation & Video

Eos Wireless iPod Speaker Demo
While working for IntelliTouch, one of the biggest products I had the privilege to work on was their Eos Wireless iPod Speaker System. Not only did I design the look of the product itself, I also designed most of the marketing materials and the website. Several customers such as The Sharper Image, Best Buy and Circuit City requested a video demonstrating how the system works. Like a lot of projects, I had a very tight deadline. In fact, I only had one week to get it done! Everyone was pleased with the results.

The Watcher Movie Site
Binary Jungle was hired to create the website for the Universal film "The Watcher". They needed us to create a really dark and scary animated Flash website. I was given the task of creating a majority of the animated flash elements and screensavers. I also did the transitions from screen to screen. The movie itself wasn't that great, however it was number one in the box office for over a week. The cool thing is when the site first launched; it won "Macromedia's Shockwave Site of the Day". So needless to say, Universal was pleased with the end result.

Image Systems
This was an animation I did for a client of Equinox Studio. The company is called Image Systems. They created and patented a 3D scanning device used for shipping. The device can scan in the exact dimensions of a single box to an entire palette of packages. The animation is for demonstrating how the system works. I really tried to show that it scans in three dimensions using a 2D approach. Andre' Liptay from Equinox Studio told me that the client was extremely pleased.

My Team Captain Video Tutorials
My Team Captain is an online companion for captains and coaches of sports teams and leagues. Easily manage your roster, schedule, and team stats with one powerful application. It's a free service. The system was developed by one of my largest freelance clients. After being provided with a script and voice-over audio files, I was given the task of creating Flash videos showing how to use the system. Basically, I recorded my own actions on my computer, then synched them to the voice.

Binary Jungle Demo CD-ROM
While working for Binary Jungle, they decided to produce a promotional demo CD-ROM featuring the "Binary Monkey" character I had developed as their mascot. I had a brainstorming session with a couple of the other guys on the team. We came up with the idea of an intro showing where the monkey came from, or how he became "binary". We thought it would be cool to do sort of a Bionic Man/Charlie's Angels type of a story with a matching interface on the CD. I created all of the Flash animations, the interface and all but one of the Quicktime demos in Adobe After Effects.

Guy Sneaking (Lesson)
This is the latest version of a scene from my demo reel I'm currently working on. It's from my character animation 2 class. We were to animate the guy walking. I decided to take it to another level and make him sneak. I was the only one in the class to completely render my scene and add sound effects. It received rave reviews from the class and the teachers. Once again, pushing myself paid off. Keep checking back here. Eventually I'll post my entire animation reel.

Guy Lifts a Box (Lesson)
This is the latest version of the animation test from Character Animation I. In this test we were to use constraints that enabled the character rig to be able to pick up the box. The point of this lesson is not just the technical aspects of Maya, but also the importance of the characters feelings or mood. In my test, "Guy" is very excited about the idea of what might be inside this shiny red box. He doesn't realize the box is actually not heavy and over anticipates.

Planet Rascals
This was a HUGE project I did while working for Binary Jungle. Planet Rascals was a toy company that had a very unique product line that consisted of a CD-ROM that came packaged with a plush toy. The cool part was that each one represented a real animal at a zoo. When a parent or child purchased a Rascal, part of the proceeds went towards taking care of that real animal. On the CD-ROM there was even an exclusive web link to "Mr. B's Secret Island" with more online games and updates on the real animal at the zoo.

Vegas Jackpot Gold
One of the very first projects I did while working for Binary Jungle was a bunch of video game animations for a client called Beachware. They had a new title they were releasing called Vegas Jackpot Gold. Vegas Jackpot Gold is the most complete collection of casino games - 50 table and video favorites as well as 200 unique slot machines. Gamble your virtual cash on Baccarat, Blackjack, Craps, Keno, Roulette, Money Wheel, Poker, Bingo, and even the Lottery. At the time, Beachware had a very limited budget and a tight deadline. So to speed up the process, I used a software package called Poser. Poser is a 3D animation software designed for animated human figures. Using a combination of Poser and MacroMedia Director, I supplied Beachware all the animated sequences they needed to release the game on time. The game is still currently on the market. In fact, they just released a version for MacOS X. Click here for details.

DigiDude
This was my very first Flash animated feature. DigiDude was for a company called Ravisent Technologies. Ravisent Technologies developed DVD hardware and software solutions. Another company has since absorbed them. Ravisent had this idea for an entertainment web portal called cinemazing.com where people could go and chat, send emails, use forums and read news about DVD and other entertainment technologies. In this portal, there was going to be a monthly episode of "DigiDude", a sort of humorous little short story about the trials and tribulations of home theater and other entertainment technology. The pilot episode did quite well and received great reviews. Unfortunately for DigiDude, shortly after the pilot was launched, Ravisent was bought and the project was axed. It was fun, though! I created all the characters and the voice-overs. I was DigiDude and my wife was Janie (with some pitch tweaking, of course).

Binary Monkey Loop
On the "contact" page on Binary Jungle's old website, we needed me to do something cool with the Binary Monkey mascot, something that would look nice in a looping animation on the left side of the page. So I made a cool little animation of our monkey flying around and shooting his binary blaster. The tricky part was making the binary data coming out of his binary propulsion pack (BPP). This was actually the first animation I did for the Binary Monkey. I think it turned out to be pretty cool.

Apple Commercial
In the computer animation and video editing class at Platt College, one of the team projects was to make a commercial for Apple Computer. The cool thing was, one of the guys on our team knew someone that would give us access to a sound stage at a Video/Film school in Santa Barbara. We painted one of the walls green and used a Sony Digicam to shoot all of the pieces. We shot all of our close-up shots in front of a kiddie pool full of water and light reflecting off of it to give an interesting effect. We then brought everything into Adobe after Effects and went off. When we presented it at school, we received a standing ovation from the president of Platt College. We also submitted it to the San Diego Multimedia Users Group video contest and won first place for the "Best Use of Video". I know it's a little dated, but I'm still proud of what we accomplished.

Pedigree Commercial
The only reason I'm showing this one is to show GROWTH. This was an animation I did for a school project in the computer animation class at Platt College. I drew each cell by hand then scanned them in and colored them with Photoshop. I then brought each cell into MacroMedia Director to animate them. This was my first REAL animation that I was actually happy with. I have certainly come a long way since then.