SNY "More Sports" 15 Second TV Spot

I recently had the pleasure of animating this :15 second TV spot for Sports New York for Real Art. I did all the animation from start-to-finish, and I'm very proud of it! It's all hand-drawn, and I got the chance to use some multiples and smears - something that I really geeked out on. Buck did 4 :30 second spots and they set the tone... the look, feel, pacing, etc with their spots - my job was to animate this in a way that it stayed consistent with what they had already done. It turned out great! Andy Nick art-directed it. Jamie Golsch managed the project. I had some help coloring in some of the sequences from Susan Jauss and Shelby White. Adam Haroff did the sound design. Debbie and Arturo from Real Art's new york office wrote the script, worked with the client and with Buck on their :30 spots, and gave our team creative freedoms that really allowed this thing to shine. Proving that even though you may get to animate the whole thing - it really is a team effort at it's core. I'm looking forward to doing more hand-drawn animation in the very near future!

SNY MoreSports 15 Second Spot from Tom Davis on Vimeo.

Make Friends, Play Tennis TV Spots

Two TV commercials I animated for Midtown Athletic Club/Real Art Design Group. I was responsible for all animation and visual production of both 15 second spots. All animation was traditionally animated with pencil and paper for client approval, then scanned and cleaned up/vectorized in After Effects. Directed by Andy Nick. Original concept/design: Arturo Gigante and Debbie Kasher. Sound design: Adam Haroff (adamharoff.com). Production-side project management: Matt Zolman. Client-side project management: Todd Blair.

Make Friends, Play Tennis - Porcupine/Balloon Animal TV Spot from Tom Davis on Vimeo.

Make Friends, Play Tennis - Astronaut/Alien TV Spot from Tom Davis on Vimeo.

Some Scraps - Doodling During Render Time

Here's some scraps from my doodle-pad I did today just before lunch. I really like this playful little guy! Hmm... Scraps sounds like a fitting name for him. Maybe I'll animate him soon...

My New Animation Reel and Website Is Up

If you've been following along, you may already know that almost two years ago I went back to school to really iron out my animation chops. I've recently graduated from Animation Mentor in the 18 month Character Animation Program, and I've decided - along with posting my new Animation Demo Reel - that I'd go ahead and to a total "reboot" so-to-speak. I've launched a new Portfolio Site where I'm keeping my current reel along with samples of my illustration work. From time to time I'll be posting new work here on the blog and on my site, so please subscribe and check back once in a while to see what's new!

That being said, I'm going to send you on over to my spankin' new website to check out my new reel and then some!

Click here to check it out: www.tomdavisart.com

New Lighting and Compositing Test

I've been trying to get my head around lighting and compositing across my 3D applications (in this case Cinema 4D) and After Effects. This weekend I threw together this little test. To me - this is feeling just about right. Once I get this concept down, I plan on animating characters in live-action footage.

Lighting and Compositing Test from Tom Davis on Vimeo.

Facial Poses

This term at Animation Mentor, we were required to find facial poses that conveyed a clear emotion and mimic that emotion with the Bishop character. It's really a fun exercise and helped me wrap my brain around facial posing. Here's some of the poses I did that I feel were pretty strong!

Something Else...

You might have noticed if you watched my previous post that there's a couple picture frames on the wall in the background. I created a couple "paintings" in photoshop yesterday morning that I'm going to de-saturate a little and put into those frames when I come back through and do my final render. Jenny flipped out about these and really like them, so I thought maybe they were worth putting up here. I had fun doing them b/c I gave myself about a half hour timeframe to complete them! Hope you like!