I seem to be the only guy in the art department when these things come in…This is an intro animation for a segment where our sports guy Larry Ramirez goes to Sea World and asks different animals who will win the big high school football game. The animals don’t really pick. Larry just hides food inside the helmet of the team he wants to win and lets nature take its course.

I automatically thought about Brian Fellows on this assignment, and I there was no other way to go…You know, Brian Fellows from Safari Planet.

I broke out my digital camera and shot Larry against our green screen. For the animal photos, I had to go online to the free stock photo sites and pray there were some marine animals that would work. I built the first two scenes in After Effects and the last one in Cinema 4d. I didn’t realize it until afterwards, but the music I used is the same music they use on the Girls Gone Wild commercials. Just another layer cheese on an already cheesy animation. I like cheese though and I think Brian Fellows does too.

Since it is that time again I thought I would dust off these animations. In 2004 I art directed these vote animations at News in Motion. Some of the modeling was done by my coworkers. We did these over a period of a week I guess. The pacing feels a bit slow now, but for web explanation videos they work. The voice over you hear is a dummy track we sent with our feeds. Pete Daniels is not voice over talent. He does play the hell out of a blues fiddle though. Catch him at The Zoo Bar in D.C. sometime. Violin blues riffs work.

Remember Puffy Daddy with his “Vote or Die!” slogan. Boy that worked didn’t it.

Here is the current version of my reel as of September 2008. This includes a number of projects from the time I have been working at KSAT-12 in San Antonio, Texas. Everything was conceptualized and animated by me in KSAT’s quick turnaround atmosphere.

Expect a newer reel soon. I just got my new Mac Pro and it should make the editing process better, stronger, faster. I think I’ll call it Lee Majors since it cost so much.