Scott Macnab

Planet Sheen

2011-11-23T16:42:00.014-05:00

The last two years have been quite a rollercoaster full of highs and lows. I was given the opportunity to work on a Jimmy Neutron spin-off series featuring Jimmy's pal Sheen and called, appropriately, Planet Sheen. It was a great show with unique characters as Sheen 'accidentally' steals his friend's spaceship and rockets off to crash land on an alien planet Zeenu where the native language sounds coincidentally exactly like English. The directors and crew at CORE were terrific to work with and I learned a great deal. The 60 seconds-per-week animation quotas were pretty intense for a first gig, but everyone in the crew was happy to help each other out when anyone found themselves falling behind. Sadly, CORE digital pictures went bankrupt during production thanks to the McGuinty government's failure to recognize the importance of supporting Toronto's entertainment industry and more than 100 people were left without work. Only now is the work we did there being released - pretty much uncredited. A shame too, since as you can see, the show was not only of the highest caliber, but unique and very funny. The series is available for download from iTunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/planet-sheen-season-1/id392944885.

Here are some of my contributions to the character animation:

The evil Dorkus, plotting once again to ruin Sheen's reputation, reveals to his sidekick Pinter the evil force he is about to unleash...

In this episode, Sheen and his friend and foil, Nesmith, must infiltrate the high security of the Animal Control Department to rescue their friend Aseefa's pet - and Sheen comes up with a brilliant plan...

"That" Kid

2009-03-23T12:10:00.006-04:00

This is the latest of my two-character dialogues, once again with H. Jon Benjamin and Brendon Small on vocals. Thanks also to Ben McEvoy and Rob Silvestri for their insight and encouragement.

I have been told that one of the hardest things to animate is someone who isn't really doing very much - just sitting. It was quite challenging.

Eating Eachother

2009-03-02T20:29:00.004-05:00

This is a little animation I did last month for my reel and decided to post it here. The guys are in a bit of a bind, and no one likes to be chosen last for something...

Voice credits to H. Jon Benjamin and Brendon Small from the series Home Movies. I really like their vocal work as they have a natural, ad-libbed rapport together.

Walk Cycles

2009-01-21T12:14:00.001-05:00

I wanted to add some walks and a run I made some time ago but haven't uploaded yet. They're just little exercises I did to practice characters walks and making infinite loops. I hope to upload some more later.

A Nice Big Joint

2008-11-27T11:04:00.005-05:00

This is another clip from my reel that I've been meaning to post for some time now, but I've been working on my rigging skills and goofing off a little, so my blog has been neglected for far too long and it's time to get back to work. The voice is an uncredited lady commenting in Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, and I loved the double entende.

I will be adding more stuff in the near future.

The Spine

2008-08-21T13:49:00.008-04:00

When I started this blog, I was hoping to be able to update it more regularly than every couple of months ;-)

But, during my work at Seneca college, I was given an exciting opportunity to work as animator on a National Film Board short called "The Spine" by Oscar-winning Director Chris Landreth (Ryan), and Animation Director (and my professor and friend) Sean Craig. It has been both fun and a invaluable learning experience to work at C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures with such a talented and professional (and patient- LOL) team of people, and I am proud that they had such high regard for my work. Unfortunately, I can't show any examples of it here yet, or discuss details, but it is a fully 3D CGI film, modelled, rigged, textured and animated, with exciting and unique VFX by graduates of Seneca's Digital Animation programme, and by some amazingly knowledgeable and blisteringly fast pros at C.O.R.E. - some of whom also teach at Seneca with what little spare time they have. Working with Chris, Sean and the rest of the team was a joy I was sorry to see end.

My own work at Seneca had to take a back seat for a little while, but I managed to get my demo in on time and in a state I'm relatively happy with. I'm going to post various pieces of it because the files are way too big to post complete.

This character is "Derek" one of the characters we worked with at Seneca to learn full body animation and lip sync. The voice talent is Jason Alexander in Duckman - a bizarre and funny animated series.

Animating Weight

2008-06-14T16:48:00.010-04:00

Wow. I can't believe it's been a whole month since my last (or first?) blog.

Things are motoring along at Seneca and we are working on our final demo reel projects. The pressure is starting to ramp up because we only have about 9 weeks left to have everything done. It sounds like a lot of time but many people don't realize how long animation takes. It's a common thing -especially for digital animators - to hear, "But the computor does it all for you..." People can vaguely understand the work involved having to draw every picture in a traditional animation, but have little understanding that Autodesk Maya or any other program doesn't animate for you anymore than MS Word will write your letters for you. Even simple characters have dozens of controls that must be moved, rotated and keyed in time. One job the animator has is to make it all work together fluidly and naturally. The very best make you forget you're even watching something animated - the same way the greats at Disney and Warner made you forget you're watching thousands of painstakingly drawn pictures running frame by frame.

One of the harder things to do in all types of animation is to make something appear to have weight.Richard Williams' excellent The Animator's Survival Kit (click on the title for a link)has a whole section regarding animating weight in walk cycles and weight lifting that can provide more detail and insight into the subject than I can in a simple blog page - I highly recommend any budding animators of all stripes pick up a copy at the library or bookstore. Watch Pixar's The Incredibles to see masters at work. When Mr. I. picks up a car with ease, it still looks heavy, and when he thinks his family is dead, his body sags in sorrow and defeat. Here's my weightlifting project from Seneca. It's also been posted on the Animation Portfolio Workshop blog for a while.

First Entry

2008-05-17T20:30:00.000-04:00

Hi and Welcome to my new Blog!

I'm currently studying Digital Animation at Seneca College in Toronto and felt this was a good time to start talking about what I'm working on there and about animation (digital and traditional)in particular and art and photography in general. This is my first attempt at making a blog so please bear with me if things go awry.

This is a sample video of a lip-sync animation exercise we did at Seneca using a very simple character to convey emotion and thought. It needs a little polish before I put it on my demo reel but it's a good example of my early development. The vocals are by Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson in the Kevin Smith film Clerks

NOTICE:CONTAINS COARSE LANGUAGE