Baby Yoda Animation

"Flush you will. Wash your hands you must." Based on my Baby Yoda illustration for Star Wars bathroom prints on Etsy.

Animation by Yarden Sharon

On the Big Screen

My wife and I went to opening night of Avengers: Age of Ultron and were treated to a happy surprise.

About a year ago, I created an animation with Cut to Create for National Amusements' chain of theaters to publicize their Popcorn Club for kids.

You can read my blog post HERE.

The 45 second animation was to air before each (Most? Some?) movie and although we had been to that theater four times in the last year (we don't get out much!) we had yet to see the short.

This time, we were sitting back popping popcorn and waiting for the previews to start when suddenly my animation came on! I'm not sure if my eyes were wider than my mouth as the realization hit me. Holy Moly! It's one thing to work on something on the computer in front of you but to finally see it projected on a huge screen in front of a hundred people? Very satisfying.

And it looked really good.

You can watch it below:

After a short while I shot a couple of pictures as the animation played (a little silly, but I'm sure you understand!).

ELEPHITTEN animated GIF

I'm working on a new chapter book for Petimals Books called Elephitten (combo of an elephant and a kitten) and I decided to try something new. I created this animated GIF of the title character after reading a tutorial on digitaltrends.com (scroll 1/2 way down) and taking apart someone else's GIF to see how it all works.

How's this for my first try?

By the way, this is also the first look at Elephitten (only the author and my kids have seen him/her). Cute, right? The chapter book will be coming out sometime in May or June. 

Animation for Oilpro.com's Homepage

Oilpro.com is a new social network for the oil and gas industries. What sets them apart from Linked In and Facebook is that you don't have to wade through the noise and posts which are not relevant to you on Oilpro.

The owners of Oilpro contacted us because they were interested in finding a way to show newcomers the benefits of this site to drive conversions.

To that end, Zach of Cut To Create, and I wrote the story and then I created the storyboard and all of the assets (characters, icons, fake kitten poster...) for the animator to put together.

The animation is (currently) on Oilpro's homepage

Popcorn Club Animation

A short time after I designed the 1-2-3 Go Box (Happy Meal) for National Amusements/Showcase Cinemas, the art director contacted me to explore the possibility of creating an animation. They were considering having a short created utilizing the characters from the 1-2-3 Go Box to highlight their Popcorn Club for kids.

A few pages from the animation storyboard

I've been creating animations with production by Zach of Cut to Create for a few years now and the above is one of our latest. Together, Zach and I wrote the story (based on conversations with the client and their goals) and once it was approved I began work on storyboarding and creating the (many, many) characters and backgrounds as well as other assets for the animator.

We produced a three second test animation with Timbuktoons which completely floored me. It just blew my socks off and was immediately approved by the client, and we were on our way!

Getting the theatre background right was a bit of a task. We didn't want to overwhelm the viewer but we also didn't want to shortchange the cinema chain by showing a less than stellar viewing room.

Here's one of the versions (with some characters only partially drawn):

The above felt too stark so we upgraded by widening and adding another row for the final animation:

I considered using photos of the 1-2-3 Go Box for when they parachute down but instead decided to recreate them to look more simplified:

As part of the project, I designed 36 characters for the animation, some of whom were based on characters in the 1-2-3 Go Box and the rest completely new. Here are a number of my faves:

The animation hit theaters in the Summer of 2014 and plays before every movie at theaters offering the Popcorn Club or so I'm told. See it in person here. 

This project then led to me designing and illustrating cardboard standees (6 feet tall, die cut) and posters for display in theater lobbies. More on that soon.

Thanks for reading this far!

See my Youtube channel for more animations.

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

New Animation for V.I. Labs

This was our second video for V.I. Labs and this time it's geared for compliance officers of software companies. The software that V.I. Labs has created lets you track who is using your software and on how many machines, to work out whether a company is in compliance with their licensing agreement. It's really fascinating how this works!

I collaborated with Zach at Cut To Create on the writing of this animation and then I created the storyboard. Once the animatic was approved, I then set to work drawing and layering all of the illustration assets for the animator.

Some still images:

Animated Fishies

I've been so remiss lately with my blog because I've been hunkered down in my studio working on many deadlines. I hope you haven't missed me too much!

The fish are part of an animation project I'm working on for a client: V.i. Labs. The storyboards have been approved and now I'm in the midst of creating the assets for the animation.

Similar to real fish, these guys won't be doing all that much - just swimming back and forth.

You can see the previous animation I created for V.i Labs (with Zach at Cut To Create) on Youtube.

More pieces of the animation to come...