NEW WEBSITE IS FINALLY UP!

http://themadanimator.com

Jason at work...

My Demo Reel 2010!

It's that time again. Check out my latest Demo Reel!

Flash Backgrounds

I've decided to start uploading some of the work I've been doing here at YourCards.com. Here's some background art I did for various animations. Expect to see more soon.

Better Anansi Sketches

Still Working on nailing Anansi's look. Finally pretty close I think. Looking back at the last post tat had actual images in it, I am amazed by how much he's changed in just a few short weeks. Here, as promised, is my earlier photo-based concept art, plus some new sketches attempting to show some personality:

The story I have finally settled on is Anansi and the Birds. It sounds pretty animation friendly & nobody seems to have adapted it yet. The basic Story is that Anansi, despite all he's accomplished, realizes that he does not know how to fly. He is extra nice to all the birds for a while, asking only a few feathers from each in return.

At night, He uses the feathers to build himself some wings, and practices using them when nobody's around. Owl, the only one awake at his time, makes fun of Anansi & tells him that flyng is for the birds. obviously, the spider ignores him.

Soon, Anansi gets himself jokingly invited to the great bird feast in the mountains. When he pulls out his wings & manages to keep up with them, the birds have no choice but to let him come along. Once he gets there, Anansi forgets his manners and makes a nuisance of himself, eating all the food & making a mess.

Finally he gets fat & falls asleep. As they leave, the birds all take their feathers back. when he wakes up, Anansi is stuck on the mountain with no way down. He asks the last bird for help, and gets kicked over the edge. As he falls screaming to his doom, Owl flies out & saves him by showing him how to make a web to catch himself. Since then all spiders make webs to keep from falling.

And there you have it. Sounds like fun, right? Next stop, Storyboards!

MOCCA Fest

Went to the MOCCA festival last weekend for some indy comics goodness. Saw lots of cool art, met up with some friends I wasn't expecting, and got to meet the guy that draws one of my favorite webcomics, Dr. McNinja! Got him to sign one of his books too. Pretty cool... If you're curious you can see him at http://drmcninja.com (Ha! now he owes me one.)

Afterwards went to hang out with the aforementioned friends and go over our swag, plus pooling info on the art/animation world as it stands right now. Really fun event, surprised I hadn't heard about it before.

Mask Spider

So I was doing some further research on Anansi stories this last couple of weeks. Still not a huge amount of useful info, but I have come across a few stories that might be fun to work with. Promise to myself: go to manhattan Library sometime this week for further research. One thing I'm finding is that once you get past the more modern Kiddie adaptations, most African folktales are actually quite bloody and violent. Dunno if I really want to go in that direction. So far leaning more toward either "How Anansi Got His Stories" or "Anansi Flies With the Birds." We'll see where we go from there.

In my last post I was fooling around with the idea of puting a face on Anansi's thorax. Well it turns out nature beat me to it! There's actually a spider name "the African Mask Spider" that has a shape very like a mask on it's back. it looks kind of like a crude picture of an alien head, actually. When playing around with it, I stumbled upon the Golden Orb spider, which actually seems to present a slightly more fun design idea. See what you think:


On an unrelated note, saw How to Train Your Dragon, which I thought was a lot of fun, if a bit over-priced. Seems the only real complaint the reviewers really have is how it isn't different enough from anything else out there right now.

Last weekend saw the release in NYC of Waking Sleeping Beauty the special documentary with "never-before seen footage" inside Disney Studios back in the 90's. Really looking forward to seeing it, but couldn't what with the NY Art Expo & everything this week. Thinking of getting a bunch of Artist friends togeather to go check it out this weekend. Anyone interested?

Edit: Spider concept art doesn't seem to be posting for some reason. will try & fix from home computer. Jason Out.

Anansi Sketches

Starting concept work on the Anansi Project. I want a very stylized look, more like african art come to life rather than an ordinary disney-ish cartoon character. Maybe Thai shadow-puppet feel like in the Bendito Machine shorts.

http://www.benditomachine.com

Here I am trying to nail down Anansi's basic feel. Haven't settled on a specific story yet, still waiting for Amazon to send me my storybooks! Feeling encouraged so far, more as it develops.

Blog Facelift

Ta Da!! My Blog is now officially 75% more bad-ass! Last Sunday I attended Social Media SMArt CAMP boot camp, a gathering of online artists. you can find them at http://socialmediaartcamp.com There we broke into groups and learned how to better use our online-presence. It was pretty cool and really informative. The upshot of this is you can expect me to do alot more Blogging & Twittering. My Twitter Handle is "JasonDavidPrice" if you were wondering, by the way...

Inspiration struck in the shower the other day, as it often will. I'm seriously considering starting up a new short Animation on my own featuring Anansi the Spider. I'm not as familiar with African Folklore as I'd like, and figure it'll be fun to work with everyone's favorite trickster god. Problem is, I am finding it nigh-impossible to find a decent book that has stories of Anansi and isn't a kiddie picture book or something by Neil Gaiman. *shrug.* Amazon's my next stop, then perhaps (gasp!) a library? More on that as it develops.

My Website design is essentially done, just got a number of technical hiccups to overcome before I can put it up. Anyone know any AS3? Anyone? hmm. In the meantime, he's a quick sneak peak:

Lovecrafty

Been getting into a lot of work by H.P. Lovecraft lately. I had of course heard of C'thulhu, but never really went in depth with his writings before. It's really unlike anything I've come across more recently. Here's some recent sketches inspired by my newfound mania:

a baby Shoggoth

Deep One

This'll make a fun poster

It's surprisingly easy to imagine this song as a satanic chant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2F4EFYM_MA

Ok, I know I've been a bit negligent of my blog for a couple weeks now, but that doesn't mean I've just been sitting pretty. I've got a few things on the back burner, more on that to come later. For now, enjoy some rather adorable renditions of our Pet Chinchilla, Rincewind! (bonus points if you get the reference...)

Here he is enjoying a yummy treat...

Awww, he's so sleepy!

Looking somewhat more sinister, here.

...and finally some slightly more cartoony takes on the little fuzz bucket.

New E-card I animated with Christopher Partellow

Here's the link:

http://www.yourcards.com/content/ecard/cards/ecard23_tp01_gunslinger_bd.jsp?mn=gunslinger25.swf&cid=203&moreid=7

Check it out. Working on animatic now of the Mario parody. Pretty much fleshed out in flash. Will post it here on the blog when done. For my birthday, I'm thinking of buying the domain name and finally uploading my website for all to see. Wanted to go with "Brain in a Jar" as a domain name but someone beat me to it apparently. Any ideas what it should be?

So here's the deal...

I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool to animate Tenacious D's Pick of Destiny scene where

they square off with the devil?

But set to Mario's World?" So my question is : pixel or flash?

Happy New Year!

Along with doing "morning pages" now, I'll also be doing a "Thing a Week" and posting it on this here blog.