The Capheads

Many years ago, a friend, Carl Baker and I had a few too many beers.

We had a discussion about the silliness of how things are named.
Somehow, the conversation led to countries where things were made, and morphed into vegetables and finally mushrooms. “Isn’t it crazy that mushroom names sound like where they’re from?” quipped Carl. “PortaBELLo” sounds like an Italian. “Crimini too!” “That would make a great cartoon!” I replied, knowing what it took to make it happen.

An idea was born.
That was 1996.

Over the years, the concept took form and I attempted various pitches to different networks. I fine tuned the idea and wrote storylines, created the show bible, drafted character canons and expanded the environment. There have been countless rewrites, mockups storyboards and through the collaboration of friends, both amateur and professional alike, the concept grew into a show-ready property. Despite connections with some of the industry’s best known producers, professional animation companies and a world class agent, pitching to a network is like inviting yourself to a party at the President’s house. Pretty much impossible in a very impenetrable industry.

Despite my efforts, and those of a professional Agent, the series has not taken off. Nonetheless, the concept still elicits laughter. Below are a few of the show elements - most created in the early 2000s.

The Art of Movement

After spending a few years dabbling with rudimentary 3-d programs and working on small projects using the Amiga, I started doing more drawing. My love affair with 3-d began to wane, as my attentions shifted back to the 2-d arena. Ironically, the world went the exact opposite direction and began producing large scale features in 3-d with teams of hundreds of animators.

Be that as it may, and when it comes right down to it….most times, I’d rather draw. But 3d is a medium in which I continue to refresh my skills.

Inbred Jed - Spec project for MTV - early 90s

As any animator can tell you, animation is a love of the art, a love of the process and the art of the sacrifice. Caffeine and bad music are a staple for projects with near-impossible deadlines and endless pressure to not only meet the challenge, but to walk away proud of the effort and the finished project. In the end, the work is fun. But it is work. Lots of it.

Enjoy below the many aspects and elements of 2-d projects throughout the years. The styles vary in as many ways as the subject matter and projects themselves did. As with most animation projects, there are many elements in the work that need to come together for a piece to work. These are usually done by multiple artists with differing styles. I’ve presented below projects and work on almost all roles with the art form. Also showcased are examples of shorts and other projects I’ve worked on throughout the years. Some companies I’ve worked with include: Plural Pictures, Animink, Happy Trails Animation and others. Of the many tasks I’ve been working on, I have been a writer, producer, director, illustrator, background designer, character animator, key frame animator, cleanup, production, frame painter, and many, many others. Hell, I’ve even been known to water the plants.

In a perfect world, if I could work full-time on my own animation projects, I don’t think I’d ever quit.

characters

sketches

layout and backgrounds

life drawings

below: watch the award-winning, Jimmy’s Donut (2018)
Jimmy’s Donut was a story my mom used to tell about my brother and I when we were little.
Although she passed away in 2016, her legacy lives on and her mastery of story-telling lives on in this funny little piece.

My intention was to do a series of these and animate her stories, but unfortunately, I was only able to record a couple of them before she left us.

Early 3d Techniques

Sometime after 1995, I had a conversation with an animation producer about how to get a job in Animation. His advice was two-fold. 1. Get a copy of a 3-d computer program, then called Playmation, and teach myself how to do it, and 2. Move to LA or New York. I followed exactly half of his advice.

It took considerable time, effort and even money, but over the course of a year or so, I was able to do rudimentary 3-d animation. I burned through two hard drives and tied up the phone line for endless hours downloading models and textures from the BBS, but was able to learn the ins-and-outs of the craft while I experimented with the modeler and the stage setup. With each new version of the software, there were exciting new features within the physics, spline modeling and interface to play with. So I learned the basics of inverse kinematics, ray-tracing, texturing, lighting, refraction and other concepts which are built into the new programs automatically these days. You have to remember, at the time the brand new “Toy Story” was at the forefront of the industry. Other than that were short films and test reels - and not much else. Today’s programs and platforms have gone beyond what we were imagining in those days. Unreal engine and Blender do for free what would cost $25,000 plus (minimum) in those days. And my Iphone has more computing power than ten of the IBM 486 machine I owned in those days.

Test of an Old Man

To put this all in perspective, at the time, many objects would not connect hierarchically. So you had to place them next to each other on each and every frame. Additionally, as there was no way to lock down the footing of a character yet, much effort was needed to prevent your dude from sliding all over the floor. Add that to flipped polygons and software bugs, the whole process was very labor intensive.

That being said, I was able to learn a lot about the craft of 3-d animation and stage direction, lighting and the art of movement over the course of 5 years or so.

I still do 3-d for a myriad of projects, which include not only animation, but physical projects in 3d printing and CNC tooling. These skills are very versatile for use in Animation, CAD, and 3-d Printing.