The Finished Lugz Commercial: "Dick at the Pool"

All done, enjoy!  Also, watch it here and comment on it!

Lugz Commercial... Again!

Hey look, it's some animation to show for my progress!  I know this will raise a ton of questions like "... the hell?"  But trust me, it'll all make sense in the end (in some weird and peculiar way).

Your reaction!

More to come.

A Little Peek at Lugz Commercial Progress

     The Lugz commercial is coming along well.  Can't put what I animated up yet.  It's under wraps!  But these shots aren't.

Didn't shade yet.

I was thinking of John Register for this background.

     MORE TO COME!

Lugz Commercial and Such.

   Lugz Commercial!

  I've been hired to do a commercial for Lugz and their shoes.  I start animating Monday.  For now, it's centered on our plucky main character and some sexual innuendo.  It takes place at a crowded community pool.  Below's some concepts on it and backgrounds/completed scenes.

Gals, storyboards, and the main character on the left.

More boards, backgrounds, and reactions.

Some birds, and the establishing shot's background.

     Tomorrow's my meeting with the folks at Lugz, for the last time before production starts.  We solidify the story around the piece: The main character, a plucky teen named Dick sits on a lounge chair and sees some ladies across from him.  He reaches down at "something", and struggles and tugs at it while grunting and everybody looks on in shock and awe.  At the climax, we see that "something" was a sunscreen bottle.  Everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

     Simple premise, but they'll let me go wild with the reactions and make them be really exaggerated.

Baseball Cartoon Progress

     I decided to name this piece "The Golden Idol", and below's the screenshots and here's the progress again.

Music Video Progress...


     ...is right here.

     More to come!

Screenshots from Music Video for "Senseless"

Work's coming along at a pretty steady pace.  I got the final cut of Dreams from Gin's single "Senseless", and I'm getting into the really good details surrounding the first verse.  Here's the shots in color (which'll probably change later, depending on how it flows):

These colors came from me thinking of raspberry ice cream.

One mouth for every syllable sung.

4 heads, 1 face!

      I'm taking my time to make this project my best one yet.  I love contradictions, so this video's gonna be filled with wacky/disturbing freaks and mutations, all in cute vibrant colors!

New Project: Music Video for "Senseless" by Dreams From Gin!

     Uh oh, gonna put all my current projects (save one) on hold while I get to work on my new project: a music video!  It's for an indie band from NY called Dreams from Gin and the song's called "Senseless".  I'm loving this song, a quirky romp about a betrayal of the senses that's going to have a frantic and maniacal video to go with it.

     I don't want to reveal too much right now, except that the video will center on an alien puppet man named Moat fighting his demons while running through a warped, dreamy landscape.

Concept sketches of the main character and his demons.

Was going to make this into a painting.  Also, thinking about mules made me mess up the band name on the flag.

     And here's a small sample of the animation as I get this shit started!  Back to production.

Bill Plympton's Global Jam...

And my part...

  ...is coming along swimmingly.  I'm surprised with how fast I'm getting it done.

     Working on putting together a new demo reel containing my new works.  Below's my reel from late 09/early 10.




And I'm gearing to start work on a music video for a New York band called "Dreams from Gin" and their song "Senseless". Gonna give it a listen to hear how it is.

These past two weeks...

1) Continuing Animation Projects: The baseball cartoon, currently called "Inspire Me" or "My Golden Idol" is coming along sweetly, and the progress is viewable HERE.

Our hero is about to feel the true weight of the situation.

     The hero's name is Antonio Mutsarell.  He's the MVP of the league and plays for the Camden Hachi Machis.  He proudly wears his uniform everywhere he goes, and plays for justice.  I'm feeling even more pumped up for this particular project now that this wicked music composer is lending his talents to it.  I asked him to make something sad and melancholic for this hospital scene, so this'll be a real tear-jerker!

     The shaving cream prank cartoon's coming along, too.  (Give it a minute to load.)  Put that on hold for a tad bit while I focus on "Inspire Me" for a little more time.

Rest up, cat.  We'll continue this animation later.

2) Bill Plympton's Guard Dog Global Jam: I'm participating in the aforementioned event by my hero Bill Plympton.  70 scenes by 70 different animators from around the world, and I'm one of em!  Granted, my part will be four seconds long, but I'm going to make those seconds count and be one quick, terrifying blow to your senses!  It'll also be interesting to see how another animator's part will link up to before/after my part.

3) Art Trade: I did an art trade with another artist from Deviantart.  He did this piece of my character Anya...

The slippers were a nice little detail.

     And I in turn did an illustration of his character, named Nin.

I like where she got her name "NIN".

     I made the background and her expression feel like the album cover for "With Teeth" by Nine Inch Nails.  This is my best illustration so far, and the quickest, too. 

4) Pain-In-The-Ass Tutor Sessions: I've been tutoring kids with no desire to learn!  I really have no hope for the future of humanity if these kids are it.  I was hired to teach this one punk kid ALL about the ins and outs of two books in two days.  He didn't want to read them, and he ditched out on the last day when I told him to return so we could finish up.  He's 12, reads like a 7 year old, and hangs out with illiterate morons twice his age in Newark.  Really sad stuff if you ask me.  I'd hate to tutor more kids if they're like him.

He looked more or less like this, but with more hair over his eyes.

5) Collaborations and Other Stuff: I'm also collaborating on an upcoming game with a few fellows on newgrounds.  It's set on halloween and it's about demons and bird-themed assassins!  Can't say too much since it's in the secret starting phase, but's looking to be a hoot!

     Also, I got me a lucky cat!  Here's to even MORE artistic endeavors in the future.

"Inspire Me" - New Cartoon's Backgrounds

     These are two backgrounds from another in-progress animation called "Inspire Me" for now.  It's a twisted tale about a baseball superstar standing up against staggering odds make good on a promise he made to a terminally ill boy.

The scene of the heart-breaking pact between a boy and his hero.

     This takes place at the halfway point of the film.  I wanted to do this scene first, as it has the most (and only) dialogue between three characters.

Like rolling thunder chasing the wind!

     Hospitals always seem sad to me.  Like being in purgatory, or on a twilight.  And I went with the orange sunset color washing over the place as it's contradicting how a sad threshold on life can bathe in such a beautiful and cheerful color.  Sorry for sounding all poetic like.  Yeop.

More to come!

Summertime!

   Finished this last week.  It's an illustration of a character I made named Anya.  It's fun as hell drawing cute girls with lots of bright colors and highlights.  I normally animate and draw angry, scary material, so this is a great departure.  Especially when it's a different style than how I usually draw.

Original line drawing.

Inked, then cleaned up.

Base color!  (I was thinking of strawberries, so I went with this color scheme.)

Final product!  Shadows, highlights, and background.

     Nice!  I'll do some more of this once I find some time between the 3 animated projects I got going on (went up one after a new one I started today).  Back to work.

Sneakers from Philly.

     Custom sneakers done by me for a customer to the Ubiq shoe store in Philadelphia.  The event was a lot of fun to attend and (get paid to) participate in.  For a one day special event in the summer, I did custom designs and illustrations on people's Converse sneakers.  With just some markers and the VAST IMAGINATION of my clients.  How'd the event turn out?

     The second person I had wanted the above sneakers done with his little website logo.  He wanted the robot to loom over the city.  It was my idea to add the waves, graphics, and cool colors.  They're also my favorite colors (green and grey).

     I wish I had a picture of the DBZ sneakers I did.  Those were my favorite.  One customer wanted a sneaker with anything Dragonball Z related on it.  On one side, I did Picolo shooting his Special Beam Cannon, and on the other I did Goku starring down Vegeta.  It was an explosion of color and badassry that blew the mind the sneaker's owner.  Another also wanted something relating to Naruto drawn on it.  I did Sasuke since he's the only character from that that I could draw from memory.

My original idea.  I couldn't fit all of it on the sneaker. :(

The event ended on a slow note, when this one dopey girl asked me for sneakers with neon zebra/leopard markings on them and said it'd be a "challenge".  Lame.        

Current Project: Misshapen, Well Meaning Kid Fucks Up Prank.

   It's been a few weeks since I finally got to starting this piece, but I wanted to make a simple, funny cartoon that can serve as a showcase to as much absurdities and amazing animated flourishes as possible.  I want this cartoon to be both hilarious and fun to watch.

     It's about a kid named Eddie playing the ol' shaving cream prank on his sleeping grandpa downstairs.  He's too excited about the mischief he's going to cause to care about anything else.

  
     Hopefully, he doesn't screw up such a simple practical joke!  The joke is meant to serve as a template for me to do as many insane visual impossibilities as possible.  Kinda like stretching my legs after so many years of being in an art school that put so many restrictions on surrealism.  In a cartoon.

     That'll be discussed another time.

     How well does his shenanigans turn out?  Well, aside from a few small sentences near the beginning, there'll be no dialogue in this cartoon.  And a majority of it will be devoted to the old man's reaction at it. It's going to be a blast once it's done.  It's going to be a bit of a while, but I want it to be perfect.  Each and every frame will ooze character.

     I'll post some snippets of the finished portions of animation over here along the way.

Hello World, I'm [Jaime R.]

                                                      

Hey all, this is going to be a log for all my progress in animation and illustrative art.  I'm a traditional 2d animator schooled from Philadelphia and stationed in New Jersey.  Now I'm a freelance artist, while I work on my own material and hope to get done and ready for the festival circuit.

     Examples of my 2d work include My kick ass 2009 Demo Reel, the octopus cartoon "Phillip's Song", and a gaggle of illustrations on my Deviantart page.  Like my hero Bill Plympton, I aspire to make it big in animation through the traditional, hand drawn means with lots of imagination, character, and surreal elements.

     Progress is a tad bit slow since I do it all on my own, but I've got a lot of big projects in the works.  And I'll update on those works every other day.  Tomorrow night, I'll start with my current project that's coming along quick and well.