I think today's blog title pretty much says it all. Hope everyone has a happy holiday season! Don't stress out too much over gift giving... realx and enjoy yourselves for goodness sake!
This week's SweetIM animation is another one involving "Jolly Old Saint Nick!" Here he's the more traditional Santa Claus that we all know and love, as opposed to last week's post. How Santa can fit into such a small opening in a chimney is always a point of interest to me. That's where this idea stemmed from. As you can see, it's a tight fit, and a dirty job, but somehow he manages. Merry Christmas!
Not only is Christmas week upon us, but we had our first snow storm of the season this past weekend. Aside from having to shovel ourselves out, the snow looks beautiful and just adds to the magic of the holidays. That is, of course, as long as it stays white and doesn’t turn into a slushy mess. =P
In any case, we thought it would be appropriate to sketch some North Pole scenes for today’s Monday Morning Motivators. Hopefully Santa will have clear skies for his Christmas deliveries. I can't wait!
Since Christmas is next week, I thought it would be fun to share another Johnny’s Secret Nipple! drawing I did a few years back. I updated the text to play off of the whole controversy between saying, “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays!” I say who cares... say whatever you want. Don’t we have more important things to worry about?
In any case, enjoy the drawing! Oh yeah, and Merry Christmas!
When you think about it, if not for the whole jolly, present-giving thing, the idea of Santa Claus could be really creepy. Here you have an old man who watches you sleep. He knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good. What's Santa going to do to you that's so terrible that your parents are pleading with you to be good?? That's straight out of a horror movie. The idea for this animation came from having a little fun with that idea.
Winter is practically upon us, and if you're anything like me you've already busted out your sweaters and jackets to keep warm. All of the animals over at Sifaka World are feeling the winter chill too, so 2A! created some cute winter outfits for users to keep their avatars warm.
When designing outfits for the Sifaka avatars, we have to keep several things in mind… First, the clothing has to fit all of the characters, so we have to make sure the pieces will fit over all their body parts like faces and ears correctly. Second, it's a design that has to work from all angles in which the avatars appear on screen.
For this set, we were asked to design both boy and girl-friendly outfits (of course, you can buy and wear whatever you like). We felt the traditional blue and pink color scheme worked best and were inspired by the clothes you see kids wear when they go sledding or skiing. Items like fun hats, colorful scarves, and puffy jackets.
I think the designs came out super cute and can’t wait for my avatar to sport one of these outfits! Make sure you’re not left out in the cold by heading over to www.sifakaworld.com and get one of these cozy outfits for yourself.
2A! helps put a stop to Harry the Hacker’s evil ways!
We’ve done a good amount of e-learning tutorials over the years, one of which was a fun series of shorts focused on cyber security. The series was based around a character named "Harry the Hacker," who employed various techniques like Phishing, using Worms and Probes, Wireless Hacking, and more, to steal important information off of your computer. The interactive animations were used to teach people how to keep personal information private and safe from hackers like Harry.
2A! designed and animated the series, including the characters, backgrounds, music and sound effects, as well as programming all the interactivity.
Welcome to another exciting installment of Monday Morning Motivators… our weekly exercise where we pick a theme -- preferably something we normally wouldn't draw -- and spend the first hour of each week sketching. The sketches can be very loose or super tight, but the point is to work out the weekend stiffness and draw something new.
Welcome the Thundercats’ trouble-making-tag-team, Wily Kit and Wily Kat!
I didn’t want to separate the Thunderkittens, so I decided to draw them together. Not only were they twins, but they were the only Thundercats who didn’t mature during their trip to Third Earth. I always dug that the Mutants would underestimate how “wily” they really were, so I tried to capture that mischievous look in their expressions. Plus, how cool would it be to swoop down on a sky board and toss some snappers around. Good times!
These were the last characters I needed to draw for my full team shot. So next up will be the final image!
Anyone who knows me knows that I love winter, and on top of that, I love snow! Snow brings such wonderful things as sledding, getting off from work/school, hot chocolate by warm fires, snowball fights, and of course snowmen! This week I've decided to share an animation that we did for SweetIM of a snowman who's spreading a little too much holiday cheer. Bundle up with a blanket, and check out these stills and video.
2A! recently worked on a fun project that had me designing an owl character. I love it when I get to flex my character design muscles and was especially excited to work on these designs, because I love owls! I find them to be very majestic, powerful and attractive creatures. There are so many different species out there, so it was fun to research what they all looked like.
As you can see from the number of sketches I came up with, I was pretty inspired by the material. I really felt like I could have easily pumped out more drawings. Personally, I find the best designs are the ones based on great horned owls, as I like how the little "ears" add an extra level of personality.
Once the client chose the design they liked best, it was time to ink and paint the final drawing. I used a clean, bold outline for the owl while keeping the colors simple, yet authentic.
What can I say? I love how it turned out! I am really happy with the work I did on this project, and I really enjoyed having the opportunity to explore one of my favorite animals.
2A! launches a new MP3 player featuring some sweet sounding music samples!
2A! has worked on a ton of different projects over our 8 (almost 9) years in the business. While we’re mostly known for our visuals, we also produce some pretty cool audio to accompany them, and have partnered with a bunch of great audio designers over the years. So be sure to swing by our Portfolio Page and have a listen. Then give us a ring to discuss how 2A! can help bring your next project to life... with audio! ;)
Welcome to another exciting installment of Monday Morning Motivators… our weekly exercise where we pick a theme -- preferably something we normally wouldn't draw -- and spend the first hour of each week sketching. The sketches can be very loose or super tight, but the point is to work out the weekend stiffness and draw something new.
Can you believe it’s December already? With winter and the holiday season fast approaching, that also means it's time for another seasonal wallpaper featuring my chibi characters!
The inspiration for this winter's wallpaper was how pretty Christmas lights are, and how much fun it is to just bask in their glowing colors. I wanted a composition that really featured the Christmas tree and the lights, while also keeping my characters as a focal point. After a few sketches, I decided I liked the one above the best.
I had a really fun time playing around with the colors for the final piece. While the lights and tree were easy to do, getting the right hues for the snow and shadows were a bit of a challenge. I soon discovered the trick was adding a warm, pink transparency layer that gives the lights a nice glow.
I'm really happy with how this wallpaper turned out. I think it conveys the peaceful and festive feeling I was shooting for. :)
Well, Thanksgiving is over, and you know what that means... time to break out the Christmas decorations. Our good friend Ms. Cat from our very first batch of SweetIM animations is back, and she's putting the finishing touches on her Christmas tree. The only problem is that her streak of bad luck doesn't seem to have ended.
This was one of my more ambitious SweetIM animations. You'll see that the animatic is a lot looser than what I usually do. I started out using just stick figures to get the complicated motion that I wanted. I was more worried about getting the action right than putting the character on model. After that, it was pretty much the normal process of tightening everything and inbetweening. I'm pretty happy with how she turned out in the end.
2A! had the pleasure of working on an animated greeting for American Greetings last year. We were given a beautifully painted watercolor image of two polar bears and a cardinal, and were asked if we could mimic the style in Flash. Always up for a challenge, we dove into the project!
There were many parts of this project that required a lot of planning in the design phase. The first thing I did was to study and play with how I could mimic the gentle colors of watercolor artwork. I found that if I loosely painted the shapes and variations, trying my best to mimic the random spread and fading of the colors, I could re-create a pretty convincing watercolor look in Flash.
Another thing I noticed with watercolor is that it's very subtle and minimalistic, which is part of why it’s so tricky to re-create as vector art. You only paint where colors are completely necessary, so it's ok to have lots of white and light color washes over large areas.
I'm really pleased with how the vector art turned out. I feel that we were successful in adhering to the specific style in Flash, and creating a piece that looked and felt very similar to the original art the client showed us.
2A! get's into the holiday spirit with our SweetIM Christmas animations!
Our latest batch of SweetIM animations (pictured above) has launched just in time for the holidays. They’re all Christmas themed and include humorous takes on classic holiday characters like Santa, a Snowman, Jack-In-The-Box, Santa's Elves, and more!
2A! developed the concepts, designed and animated the characters, and provided the audio. Check out some frosty screen shots below, then head over to www.sweetim.com to download the FREE application.
Welcome to another exciting installment of Monday Morning Motivators… our weekly exercise where we pick a theme -- preferably something we normally wouldn't draw -- and spend the first hour of each week sketching. The sketches can be very loose or super tight, but the point is to work out the weekend stiffness and draw something new.
2A!'s been hard at work on a new Johnny's Secret Nipple! graphic novel -- which we can't wait to share with you -- but for now we thought it would be cool to revisit some of our existing JSN art. So here's a Thanksgiving greeting I drew back in 2002, which seems like the perfect place to start given that tomorrow is Thanksgiving!
Get your umbrellas ready, because it’s raining adorable little frogs in this addictively fun Sifaka World game. Inspired by classic games like Puyo Puyo and Tetris, the object of Frog Invasion is to score as many points as possible by lining up frogs of the same color, thus clearing them from the game board and causing damage to your opponent. The last player standing wins, but be watchful, because your opponent has some sneaky tricks up their sleeve to throw off your game.
2A! designed and created all of the front-end visuals for Frog Invasion including the characters, animations, music and sound effects.
Since Thursday is Thanksgiving here in the US, we thought it'd be cool to dedicate today's Monday Morning Motivators to what’s typically considered the main course for this holiday… Turkeys!
Have you ever really looked at a turkey? I'm not talking about when it's all cooked and slathered in gravy... I'm talking about real, live turkeys. They're some pretty crazy looking animals! In any case... that doesn't change the fact that I'll be stuffing myself with this tasty fowl on Thursday. Gobble, gobble!
I've been playing around with some critter designs inspired by a recent project 2A! worked on. I like the idea of taking two types of animals and trying to combine them to create something new. Thus, we have my breeding of a Penguin and an Otter to create... drum roll please... the Ottguin! This dude was a ton of fun to draw, so I'll definitely be playing around with more critter designs in the future.
Two Animators! LLP (2A!) is a full-service animation production and development studio.
Founded in 2001 by brothers Tom and Joe Costantini, 2A! creates content for animated series, shorts, music and explainer videos, commercial spots, games, apps and more. We’ve had the opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects during our 14+ years in business, from full-blown television series to online virtual worlds (MMOs) and mobile apps. Our team works in many different styles and can adapt to your specific production needs, and of course we’re always excited to design a unique look for a brand new property. We love creating new characters, worlds and storylines, and can help transform your ideas into fully developed IPs (Intellectual Properties) ready for pitching, producing or selling.
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