1st year student film

This was my first student film at CalArts in 1993. No sound, just a simple pencil test, and it wasn't quite finished. Somehow, it ended up in the Producer's Show that year!

dinosaur pencil test

In the summer of 1993, I was in an internship at Hanna Barbera in Hollywood (specifically Turner Pictures, which had just released "The Pagemaster" and was gearing up for "Cats Don't Dance"). One of our assignments was to animate a character getting into a cookie jar. The studio was walking distance from Universal City Walk, where I'd recently seen the premiere of "Jurassic Park" and was thoroughly blown away by the realism of the dinosaurs. Later that fall, Industrial Light and Magic flew me up to San Francisco to see my animation reel - they were looking for students who could potentially help out on the film "Casper" - and I had the incredible privilege of meeting some of the "Jurassic Park" animators. That was a cool year!

Fun game!

Back in 2005, I had the opportunity at Project Firefly (assisting a company called Cecropia) to animate on a video game featuring traditional animation, named "The Act". We had a blast working on it, and the assumption at the time was that it would soon be playable as a tabletop arcade game and eventually on a home game. As it turned out, technology took a few years more to catch up, and it's now an app you can play on your smartphone!

 Here's a link to their site if you'd like to see the trailer: http://www.theactgame.com/

Also, click here to see an early pencil test of one of my scenes (just hit play): http://roncohee.blogspot.com/2009/05/rough-animation-act-cecropia-2d-game.html

Another pencil test from "Curious George"

One of the interesting things about working on this film was that you animated every character in the scene, instead of being assigned to one particular character. It was also the first time I'd had the opportunity to animate professionally. After a decade of working as a clean-up animator at Disney (embellishing the rough drawings of the animators), it felt good to loosen up a bit. Also, working together at Project Firefly - formed after the Florida studio had closed - felt very much like the old days at CalArts. Definitely a lot of fun!

Pencil test - Curious George

Here is a pencil test for a scene I animated in the 2005 film "Curious George" (Universal), while working at Project Firefly in Orlando.

"Curious George" rough animation

I recently watched the "Curious George" film again, and recalled how much fun it was to work on (for Universal Pictures, via Project Firefly). Here's another of my scenes. While I had always enjoyed the embellishing precision of clean-up animation (which I did for a decade at Disney), the opportunity to animate in rough was an absolute joy! This was the first film for which I'd animated professionally, as opposed to final line, clean-up animation.

Rough animation - "The Act" Cecropia 2D game

While working at Project Firefly (2004-2007), I animated on a hand-drawn video game called "The Act", along with many other artists from the recently closed Disney Feature Animation Studio in Florida. This was a lot of fun. These are rough animation tests, before cleanup and in-betweens.

Rough animation - "Curious George"