Friday 26 September 2014

Animatronic antics

So this is what I've been working on recently, a short animation based on the popular horror game "Five Nights at Freddy's."

The animation was done entirely in flash over about 3 weeks (it should have taken no more than 2 but September is the birthday month for the Laver household so staying on a computer was no easy feat) and features one of the games enemies, Foxy, dancing to a song from the Lazytown soundtrack (an oddly appropriate one at that).

Here are the three videos I uploaded, revealing a small insight into my process.

Keyframes



In-betweened rough animation, featuring a planned background 



Final cleanup and colour (now featuring Photoshop-made backgrounds and effects created in After Effects)



This kind of blew up over the internet after it was uploaded (at present it's my most popular animation to date) and I couldn't be more grateful (albeit baffled) about it. I'm incredibly pleased with how it came out, so knowing others are too makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Next time you see an animation from me it'll be a collaboration piece with another animator and some amazing voice-actors (featuring this character and his mascot buddies) and then I'll be doing my own original character animation once again. Next update will more than likely be on the art front.

Until then

Sunday 21 September 2014

Spider-man

Or is that man-spider? Well it's a mix of both.

Lucas "Legs" McCowl has a (more or less) finished design after all these years, and now that I've uploaded a full-body picture you can finally see what earned him the nickname "Legs."
Considering he's in a universe where humanoid creatures are commonplace, being an animal with multiple limbs wouldn't be anything particularly special. The namesake came about because Lucas was one of the earlier attempts at mutations and, with the process still being experimental, he and the other earlier subjects had defects. Lucas' being that two of his legs didn't develop properly and just hang out from under his shirt twitching occasionally.

Hope you enjoy him...and his bowling shoes

Next time I'll be posting up my most recent animation

Thursday 18 September 2014

Genie...you're free

This is the drawing I wasn't able to post until recently on other websites; in fact I was unsure about posting it at all when I was able to for fear of opening up wounds for others, but it does need to be spread around.



I drew this genie as part of a huge Robin Williams/Genie tribute piece (made by 90 people) after his tragic passing, the comedian was a huge part of my childhood and he had a huge impact on so many.

I was unsure about spreading this until the actual collab was up (though it has been on DA for about a month), but now that it is I can share it with everybody.

The collab is available here:

http://zimeta.deviantart.com/art/Disney-Club-s-90-Genie-Robin-Williams-Tribute-477190888

and here:

http://zimeta.tumblr.com/post/95405296648/90-genies-robin-williams-collaboration-by-the-good#


Next time we'll focus on something a little happier, more animals.

Monday 15 September 2014

Gator got glasses

A quick update on the art front before I bring up my most recent animated project and more drawings of my ever-growing animal crew (which are evolving every day!) as well as a tribute that has been up for a long time but was kept back because it was kind of exclusive to one site for a long time for reasons I will explain.

Though it's not apparent in my other self-caricatures or any photos people may have seen of me, I do wear glasses. They are solely for distance/glare so I only really wear them when necessary as my vision is not utterly terrible yet (give it time, my job involves staring at a screen all day) but I recently got a pair that were a rather extreme shape, and I've thought of worse reasons for a drawing so:


So now you can see me as a bonkers bespectacled basket-case. Not much, but a little something.