MY LATEST MOVIE

Make sure to check out PUSS IN BOOTS this Halloween weekend. I saw it last weekend with the crew and it turned out amazing. The imagery is beautiful, the animation is incredible and it's genuinely enjoyable from beginning to end. Antonio Banderas steals the show again as Puss. The best thing about this movie is it doesn't feel like a sequel to Shrek. They don't even mention Shrek. It really stands on it's own as a great animation adventure movie.
Go see it and let me know what you think.

P.S. If you're curious about what I animated in it. I did a couple shots with the old crazy man in the prison, I did a bunch of shots during the wagon chase, the campfire scene, the golden egg scene, and the giant goose. I came on pretty late in the movie but I got a couple fun shots.

DAVID STOZOMBIE

So my friend Elaine Bogan has started drawing a zombie every day in honour of Halloween coming up (check out her blog in my links below) . She's been doing amazing work.
It got me inspired to draw and do my own profile picture of myself as a zombie.
I hadn't drawn in a while so it was nice to just sit and draw again. Hopefully now that I drew this it will inspire
me to get a move on and start my damn short.

SMEARS AND MULTIPLE DRAWINGS CONT'D

TRANSITIONS, SMEARS AND MULTIPLES

So a lot of you have been commenting about funny frames in my Harrey Podder short.
As most of you probably know when there's a really fast motion in 2D we don't have the
added benefit of motion blur in most cases like 3D does so we resort to drawing smear drawings
or multiple drawings in one frame to capture all the information that is happening in that tiny amount of time.
I actually wish we had this much control in 3D animation. I really enjoy doing this kind of stuff. This to me is the
most fun part of 2D animation.

I thought I would break some of my scenes down for you to show you in detail how I tackled these situations.
Probably the most fun was the transformation shot of Harrey into a bunny. I hope you enjoy looking at this stuff. I'd love to hear what you think or if you have any questions about my process please let me know.

Some of the images are really small on this page so be sure to click on them to zoom in.

My first published interview.

I was contacted by a friend that writes for Animation Career review and they posted this great interview with me.
Take a gander at it. It sorta sounds like I know something about the animation industry. Enjoy.


http://www.animationcareerreview.com/articles/dreamworks-senior-character-animator-david-stodolny-talks-animation

THE ROUGH ANIMATION STAGE

One thing I've already learned from this process is that a lot of people are genuinely
interested in the the process and then making of. Which is great. I know I always love the behind
the scenes stuff in movies.
Here's one step further.
Here is the entire short (minus titles and credits) in rough animation form.

This is the step where I don't worry about a perfectly clean line. I'm just drawing
roughly to try and get the motion and timing down for the animation.
I then take this and clean it up later after I'm happy with the animation.
When you're looking at 2D movies like Aladdin or Lion King. And you here the name of an "ANIMATOR"
this is what they are doing.
There are a bunch of other steps to go past the animator till it gets to the big screen.

YOU GOTTA HAVE A MAKING OF...

Here's a little montage I put together of the process of creating HARREY PODDER: Say the Magic Word.
If give you a little idea of what goes into the planning and execution of a short.
I'd love to hear from you and know what you think.

IT'S FINALLY DONE!!!!

In honour of the final Harry Potter movie. I give you....... HARREY PODDER: SAY THE MAGIC WORD.
Please comment and let me know what you think.

Finally starting to add some colour.

After coming to a complete hault on this project due to clean up. I finally was able to start colouring my Harry Potter spoof in. By the way it's officially titled. HARRY POTTER: SAY THE MAGIC WORD. Doing clean up was really tedious but it's finally done. I wasn't going for a perfectly clean line or anything. Just trying to draw lines to fill in. I'm trying to get this short out by the time the last Harry Potter movie comes out which is this weekend so I'm in full panic.speed mode right now. Wish me luck. There's no effects in this test yet. I just wanted to post an update. Enjoy.

A brand new official trailer for the movie I'm currently helping to finish. PUSS IN BOOTS.
It comes out Thanksgiving this year. I can't wait to see it. Let me know what you guys think.
Enjoy.

NEW CHARACTER

One of my ideas changed for one of the sequences in the short so I needed to do this last minute model sheet before continuing animation.

Still Animatin'

Only 2 more shots to go in animation. Then I do a clean up pass. If I want to get the thing done in time for the last Harry Potter movie then I'd better speed up. After the clean up pass I'll fill the colour in and then comes the effects pass which I'm really looking forward to. I started my animation career as a 2D effects artist at Nelvana. Designing effects for numerous saturday morning cartoons. Should be fun.

FIRST PENCIL TEST

Some of you have been asking for an update on the progress of my short. So here's a small taste of what I've been up to.
This is just a pencil test of the first two shots. I'm leaving out all the jokes for now. You have to leave something as a surprise.
But here's a rough pencil test. ROUGH!!!. Still just plowing through this.

LAST BACKGROUND BEFORE ANIMATION

1. Rough thumbnail drawing

2. Colour key

3. Clean up drawing

4. Final painted background.

So here's my last background for my short. Next step is recording the dialogue and
then starting to animate. Keep checking back. Lots to come.

CELEBRITY DOODLES FOR CHARITY!!

This is a doodle I did for National Doodle Day. It's an auction of doodles by celebrities and celebrity artists to raise money for Neurofibromatosis research. Celebrities and artists such as Jeff Bridges, Martin Sheen, Simon Pegg, Julianne Moore, Seth Green just to name a few have contributed doodles. Take a look at the site, browse, bid on some art. Have fun, all while helping people.
Just click the link below.

WATER TEST

I was talking to my brother Paul (who works as a lighter/compositor) about my short. He asked me what water effect I was going to do for the sword shot. I told him that I was probably just going to animate some 2D bubbles to show that it's water. In a couple of minutes he sent me this and I instantly was grateful and inspired. Hopefully he can help me out with other little things like this.
Thanks Paul.

MOVING ON TO A NEW SCENE

Well here's a background from another scene in my short. Something a little a little warmer than a dark forest.


1. Rough layout

2. Colour key

3. Clean up line

4. Final colour background.

BACKGROUND NUMBER DEUX

As I promised I'm posting more often and it seems like people really favour how I'm posting my process while I work.
So here's another background for my Harry Potter spoof short.



1. This is my rough layout to get an idea of where everything will be placed in the shot. You can see that I drew the character in this as well. I have to draw him in to make sure I'll have enough room for him and still see everything else that's going on. I also drew the background a little wide as well because in this shot there will be a camera move. So I made sure to leave room
for that to happen.

2. The colour key: a rough representation of the mood and colour palette for the shot.

3. The cleanup drawing to make sure I have a nice clean guide to paint in.

4. And the final piece. For those of you Harry Potter fans out there. You can clearly see what scene I'm going to
be spoofing by this painting.

PAINTING THE BACKGROUNDS

Over the past two nights I painted the background for scene 1 of my Harry Potter Short.
For those of you that are at all interested in my process when I paint here it is.
From the bottom up.


1. Drew a rough thumbnail sketch of the shot to get the layout the way I wanted.
2. Painted a colour key which is a very rough, simple, low detail painting that describes the colour
palette and explore the mood of the shot.
3. I then drew a tighter, cleaner line drawing so I could have a better guide to paint. Think of it as a colouring book.
It's a guide so I'll stay in the lines and not go too far off the original idea.
4. Then layer by layer I painted all the different elements of the shot. This is the middle ground where the majority of the action
will take place.
5. And finally here's the final background as it will look in the short which I will animate on top of.

REDESIGNING.

On second thought after looking at the designs that I posted last night I decided that because my short is a comedy,
my designs were way too generic and not cartoony enough. So I went back today and redesigned Harry as well as
Hermione and Voldemort. Hopefully you like the changes.

YOU HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE

So now that I've got all the equipment ready to go I'm finally starting to work on my own
animated shorts. I'm starting off with something simple and quick so I can learn all the software needed
to complete a short. I'd rather do it that way then jump right in and find out something doesnt work
on a really complicated piece. As my first short I'm doing a little parody/spoof on Harry Potter.
All the HP films are so inspiring to me and I can't get enough of them. So it'll be a fun way to familiarize myself
with the process again.
Here's my first pass at designing Harry for my piece.
Check back soon because I'm going to start posting more often.

STODOE STUDIOS is here

Well, I've finally gone out and started putting together the equipment and software that I need to do my own work. I've decided
that I'm tired of having ideas for films and shorts and not doing anything about it. So Now that I actually have a computer that can handle it, I'm proud to announce that I've started to create my own animated films, shorts and skits. So I bring you my production company, STODOE STUDIOS.

Stay tuned for my upcoming work.

FOOSBALL COUPONS

I know this is a wierd entry to start with after not blogging for quite a while.
But I thought I drew it, I might as well post it. At work my friends and I have little
foosball tournaments and we've started betting drinks. The loser has to get any drink
for them at any time of day. And to make it easier to keep track of who owes who we
agreed to all make drink coupons.
The actual coupon that I'm giving is the one that reads "DAVID IS A FOOSBALL GOD. EVEN IF HE DOES OWE ME A DRINK.
Why did I feel the need to post this? Simply because I havent posted anything in a while.

PO DOING SOME KUNG FU:a little animation I did

Kung Fu Panda 2 - Short Clip #1 - Happy Year Of Awesomeness
Uploaded by cinemakervideo. - Classic TV and last night's shows, online.

Here's a little kung fu sequence I animated of Po for the Dreamworks Marketing team.
I can't release anything else yet obviously because the movie isn't out but hopefully I'll get more
of my animation from Dragons and Panda up here soon.
I promise to start posting more everyone. Keep checking back.

DRAGONS GETS OSCAR NOD!

Well the Oscar nominees are finally out for 2011 and I'm very proud to annouce that HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON was nominated for best animated feature. We have a lot riding against us knowing that TOY STORY 3 won the Golden Globe but I still firmly believe that our film was original and something new that the world hadnt seen in animation and I'm really hoping the academy sees that.
I'm so proud to have worked on this movie with such an amazingly talented crew.
Congratulations to everyone who helped make this movie such a success.