First two collaborations with Ringlingers. Bea Sims asked if I could help with some lighting ideas for a set she was working on. Once I opened the scene I couldn't resist digging into the rest of it until I had made it more my own.
Cassie lent me her character, a goofy alligator. I painted new textures and animated a sneak cycle after reading all about them in Richard Williams's Animator's Survival Kit. I had originally made the set for a Skittles project. When it was scrapped, I re-purposed the assets for this.
Here's a still from a shot completed for that canceled Skittles project.
This Skittles title was used and, as of this writing, it looks like it'll be featured on Firstborn's own film/animation reel :)
This was another ill-fated project, a spec commercial for Ford. After our company was bought by Dentsu, it seemed inappropriate to pitch to one of their client's (Toyota's) competitors. Changing to a Toyota pitch changed the story and the set. So, here's a comp I put together of the assets I built for a New York street that 3D Ford car would have sped down.
IBM Smarter City was a fun project that happily launched. I was given free reign to design and build a social services office under Michael Kuzmich's supervision. A cool guy, his instructions to me were to, "just make it cool" because the client's "really chill." Cool, to me, means modern furniture, 15-20 foot high ceilings and a 20mm lens.
For my second project in my first computer animation class I was excitedly telling Betsy Bauer how I planned to add a lens flare. She politely reminded me that lens flares are one of the biggest cliches in computer animation. I cut the flare then, but three years later, finally added a shot with a flare to my reel. I thought it served as a nice transition to my next piece.
These were a couple of my first assignments at Firstborn. We were making an airport for IBM. I told my boss, Eric Eng, that I really wanted to build the Boeing. He let me :)
Also made this apartment for IBM, but lit and shaded it just for kicks.
My biggest project isn't on here. While working, I learned to accept quickly when a direction I'm working on is changed, or a pitch is either shelved or doesn't result in a win for the agency (and therefore a website we get to bring to a finished project). This happened quite frequently.
For three months my main task was designing characters, storyboarding, laying out, modeling and animating a medieval project for a huge client. I had an awesome creative role on the project I would have never expected to be given so quickly at such a great studio. Firstborn definitely doesn't hold you back just because you're new.
Four months after finishing the project, our creative director broke to us the news that the client's marketing department decided to kill the project. They were uncomfortable associating the brand with medieval imagery. Alas, my dreams of having a dragon and ogre on StateFarm.com were shut down. It was actually the first time in Firstborn's history that a finished site failed to launch.
Ultimately though, I'm sure I'm much better prepared to do all the tasks I did on that project at a higher level when a new project comes along which hopefully has been signed off on by the client's marketing department!
