The Mad Bull Developmental Work

Concept Development work of city scene

Early production still from city scene

Building our city and assembling the Minotank

This was most complicated scene in the project and was the one I had the most fun assembling.  It was like building cities with legos as a kid. 

The purpose for building lego cities is self-evident; they are built to be destroyed. 

The real tragedy for me is that all this work is only up there for a few seconds. 

The Minotank was also great fun to assemble.  I love steam-powered, clockwork machines.Or at least, I love the idea of steam-powered, clockwork machines. 

Danny, who constituted the entire animation team on this project, worked some real magic in making the Minotank come to life.  I gave him a baffling assortment of gears and plates and pistons and smoke and I think it nearly killed him, but he pulled it altogether. It was really exciting to finally see this thing stomping around, knocking over buildings and billowing smoke.  

Early storyboards

There is a story contest for this on the Portland Studios Blog. 

I am really curious to see what people submit for this. 

The Mad Bull

The Mad Bull is a spot animation that I have been working on Portland Studios.  Its a mini commercial of sorts, involving the efforts of several magical creatures who work here at the studio.  

 

I provided the imagery and conceptual development work. I am not really much of an animator, and most of the moving elements are thanks to the effects work of our in-house, digital guru Danny McNight. 

Although I am relatively new to the animation field, I love working with moving pictures and sequential art. There's something wonderful about making worlds come to life with movement. And although painting imagery for animation has many similarities to the illustration I am more used to, it is interesting to me just how different an undertaking it is to doing static images for animation. 

I will be posting some of the development work next week.  Until then, drop in over at the Portland site and check it out.