Background Design: Bonzai & Ned

When 2A! was working on the Bonzai & Ned's Anthill Adventure game for Sifaka World, we had very specific layout to follow. The client wanted the game to be reminiscent of the classic Pac Man arcade game, where each level was a fixed background with interior paths that changed with the difficulty of each new level.



Here is my original sketch of the background with a nice picnic clearing and an anthill in the center. Jungle plants border and contain the playing area, with exits on each side that connect to one another. Part of the trick was keeping everything proportionate to the main characters of Bonzai and Ned, while allowing enough room for movement and interchangeable walls for the levels.



Above is the proposed color mockup for the background. We chose lush, bright colors very similar to the Jungle Floor background we did. We felt that cherry color scheme worked well with this game.



Here's the final background. When we delivered it we omitted the walls that are shown here so the programmers could use them as separate assets and create the various levels. I really am happy how this turned out as it feels very spacious and allows for lots of customization for harder levels.

Why not head over to www.sifakaworld.com and give it a try? Let me know what you think. ;)

Copyright © Sifaka Productions, LLC

HP Character Design!

Ha, ha! I recently found this little dude hiding in a remote corner of our archives and just had to pull him out. 2A! created this fun character design for HP way back in 2005. I believe he was printed up life-sized and used at various technology expos to help point people towards HP’s innovative new products.


Here’s a few more shots of the little guy posing with some HP products.



I love searching the archives and finding these little blasts from our past. Hope you like them too! ;)

Copyright © Hewlett-Packard Company

Monday Morning Motivators: Giant Robots!

The basic idea of Monday Morning Motivators is to 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.

This week's theme is... GIANT ROBOTS!






Copyright © Two Animators! LLP

Fun Art Fridays: The Thundercats' Snarf

Welcome the Thundercat’s comical sidekick, Snarf!

Originally I was going to include Snarf with Lion-O -- considering he's technically Lion-O's protector -- but once I started sketching him I dug the pose so much I decided he could stand on his own. Plus, Snarf has become something of an icon to me… I mean, who hasn’t used his name as a phrase? “Snarf, Snarf!” I’d say I use it at least once daily. ;)

Snarf is part of a larger Thundercats team drawing I'm doing for fun. Figured I’d post each character as I finish, then the whole image once it's done. Be sure to also check out my takes on Lion-O, Panthro, and Cheetara if you haven’t already!

Until next time... "Thundercats HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Illustration © Joe Costantini

Character Design: Tui the Tortoise!

Here’s another cool character we designed for Sifaka World. His name is "Tui the Tortoise" and you can find him at the entrance to the Mystery Beach activity. I’m really happy with how he turned out and thought I'd share. Hope you like! ;)

Head over to www.sifakaworld.com to see Tui in action. You can also check out more Sifka World designs by following the links below.

Sifaka World Mascot
Sifaka World Mascot Part II
Ring Tailed Lemur
Sifaka World Albatross

Copyright © Sifaka Productions, LLC

Character Designs: SweetIM Characters

As Tom mentioned in yesterday's post, 2A! has been working on lots of different animated emoticons for SweetIM. For our first batch the client wanted us to create characters that would appeal to women aged 30-45, which was the audience they wanted to target.



Everyone in the studio created strong designs to present, but the client latched onto the extremely cute and saccharine characters that I submitted. I proposed sketches of a cat, a mouse, a moth, a pony, and a little panda for the vignettes. They are all round and curvy in design with big eyes that give an overall cute appearance.



I fleshed out the designs a little more once they were all approved. Here you can see how I explored the cat's face and how she'd look at different angles and expressions.



Then came the color mock-ups, and you can see we played a bit with the colors of the mouse. I wanted to use bright, happy colors and I tried to find a color that brightened up her gray fur. After trying both purple and pink we decided to go with the purple as we felt it was more refined. We also played with adding more eyelashes, but decided "less is more" in this case.



With all the designs and colors approved, I was very excited to begin animating these characters. You can check out all five of our animations by downloading the FREE application at www.sweetim.com. So what are you waiting for?

Copyright © SweetIM Technologies Ltd.

Sweet IM Animations!

2A! creates some sweet IM animations for SweetIM!

SweetIM is an online application that allows users to get tons of free Emoticons, Winks, Games and more for AIM, MSN, and Yahoo Messenger. If that weren’t cool enough, many of the animations actually interact with your IM window, making your chatting experience even more fun. Just check out the sequence below to get an idea of what we're talking about...



Our first set of five animations has just gone live and includes the following:



2A! developed the concepts, designed and animated the characters, and provided the audio. Be sure to download the FREE application to start making your online chats a little bit sweeter!

Copyright © SweetIM Technologies Ltd.

Monday Morning Motivators: Fish!

The basic idea of Monday Morning Motivators is to 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.

This week's theme is... Fish!






Copyright © Two Animators! LLP

Fun Art Fridays: Looking Forward To Fall!

My favorite time of year is just around the corner! Following in the footsteps of my summer-themed desktop, I was all too eager to create my fall-themed desktop. There are so many fun things to enjoy: fall leaves, cooler temperatures, and apple cider to name a few. I decided this year my theme would be a pumpkin patch, complete with dried cornstalks and a spooky twilight to match.

Here's the initial sketch I made for the piece...



And here’s the final. I took it into Flash for ink and color, and then applied a texture over it to give it that spooky, gritty look.



I hope you're all looking forward to fall as much as I am!

Copyright © Sarah Gencarelli

Background Designs: Poochinos' City Street

Here’s a look at one of the backgrounds we designed for what we’re now calling The Lost Poochinos Episode! I stumbled across it the other day while searching through the 2A! archives and thought it would be cool to post. It’s one of my favorite backgrounds from the Dog Mafia productions.

First off, we have the rough layout for the “city street” establishing shot. You can see the Barkland Bridge in the distance, where the lost episode starts off. This rough was drawn by Joe during the animatic stage..



Next up, is the tight pencil clean-up done by our good pal Jimmy Nock. I’m pretty sure he knocked this out in Sketchbook Pro (pun intended). Great stuff!



Finally, here’s the Photoshop painting by our other good pal Greg Kleid. He was really able to capture the dark and gritty look that I was hoping for with this shot.



Also, be sure to check out The Poochinos animated short we created, as well as some more behind the scenes production art. Enjoy!

Copyright © Dog Mafia, Inc.

Character Designs: Sinful Snacks & Plaque Monsters

While watching Colgate’s How To Have A Bright Smile video (which was released last week), I realized that I blogged about the main character designs, but totally forgot to mention the villains of the piece… the sinful Snacks and evil Plaque Monsters!

Since plaque is such a vague thing, I played around with the idea of making them look like little amorphous blobs. To make them more identifiable, I gave them large, creepy eyes and a mouth full of rotten teeth. The soft, gel-like consistency of their body allowed them to form around teeth and gums, and even grow arms when necessary. We then decided on a putrid green color to make them look even more disgusting, and finally applied textures and shadows to make them look like cut paper.



The snacks were a little more challenging, since I had to find out a way to keep the style of the Plaque Monsters and apply them to identifiable food. Choosing the types of food was easy, as everyone knows what their favorite childhood treats like cookies and candies are. From there, I gave them the same sort of eyes as the Plaque Monsters, and completed the design with the addition of whimsical 1930's cartoon styled arms and legs.



You can see the Plaque Monsters and Snacks frolicking in the final scenes below.




I think we did a nice job making the dangers of poor hygiene more apparent with these designs. We created characters that were gross but not terrifying, and that work as a great visual motivator for kids to remember to brush their teeth. :D

Copyright © Colgate - Palmolive Company

Character Designs: Sifaka World's Albatross!

It’s time for some more character designs. Today I present… the Sifaka World Albatross!

I just love the way this character turned out. He acts as the pilot who transports Sifaka World players from one continent to another. Just hop on his back and it’s a quick flight from Sifaka Island to North America, Africa or Australia.



But as you can see from the image below, his design was originally going in a completely different direction. We got all the way through ink and paints -- and even animated a bit of this guy – before it was decided that his look might be too reminiscent of Orville, the character from Disney’s The Rescuers movie, which I think was a good call.



Below are just some extra goodies, including Sarah’s original sketch -- which was the basis for the first design -- as well as an alternate outfit test the client requested where we put him into a more modern pilot’s uniform.



Be sure to head over to www.sifakaworld.com to see this guy in action. You can also check out more Sifka World designs by following the links below. Enjoy!

Sifaka World Mascot
Sifaka World Mascot Part II
Ring Tailed Lemur

Copyright © Sifaka Productions, LLC

Monday Morning Motivators: Keys!

The basic idea of Monday Morning Motivators is to 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.

This week's theme is... Keys!






Copyright © Two Animators! LLP

Fun Art Fridays: The Thundercats' Cheetara

Welcome the Thundercats' staff-spinning-speed-demon, Cheetara!

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to say this out loud, but Cheetara is hot! That’s right… I’m calling a cartoon character hot! Come on, you know you agree. Not only would she knock you out with one twirl of her staff, but she’d do it so fast you wouldn’t even know what hit you. ;)

Cheetara is part of a larger Thundercats team drawing I'm doing for fun. Figured I’d post each character as I finish, then the whole image once it's done. Be sure to also check out my takes on Lion-O and Panthro if you haven’t already!

Until next time... "Thundercats HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Illustration © Joe Costantini

Production Design: Cut Paper Style!

Following up on yesterday’s post about the release of Colgate’s How To Have A Bright Smile video, I thought it would be a good time to take a look at the cut paper style 2A! used in the short.

It was important to Colgate that while this short would feature Dr. Rabbit, that his look be different from previous animated incarnations. They sent us some pamphlets that featured very cute and simple, cut-paper-styled illustrations that they wanted to replicate for the look of the characters. Our task was to find a way to create a look in Flash that would mimic cut paper.

I was excited to solve this problem since it goes back to my first thoughts of Flash puppets when I started working in the program… it was exactly like creating a cut paper puppet for stop-motion animation. So I came up with three ideas which would translate into this type of look. The first was making the characters look textured. Second, was shaping the cut paper pieces as if they were done with wide-edged scissors and leaving sharp points. Third, was the addition of a drop shadow that would make the pieces look like they weren't sitting completely flat against the backgrounds.



I applied these three techniques to the symbols when I built the character's puppets. I drew each puppet piece with childlike edges, giving them that "snipped with scissors" look.



I then scanned some watercolor paper and layered that with a slight transparency and mask into each symbol for texture.



Lastly, I painted a drop shadow on specific edges to give it that raised look.

We then had to apply this style to the backgrounds as well. I used each of the techniques on different elements of the background so it didn't come across as too busy. I overlaid texture on the walls, then used the drop shadows on furniture to give it that nice raised look.




There you have it! A pretty convincing cut paper style in Flash... if I do say so myself. I really love design challenges like this and it's very rewarding to see the final outcome.

Copyright © Colgate - Palmolive Company

Colgate Video Released!

The educational video we created for Colgate titled, How To Have A Bright Smile is now live on the Colgate: Bright Smiles, Bright Futures website!

2A! wrote and directed the 5-minute Flash animation, which stars Colgate’s popular Dr. Rabbit character. Be sure to head over to the site and give it a watch!

Copyright © Colgate - Palmolive Company

Monday Morning Motivators: Ferns!

Hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend! Although today is officially a Tuesday, it’s still the start of our work week which requires we loosen up with some Monday Morning Motivators!

This week's theme... Ferns!






Copyright © Two Animators! LLP

Fun Art Fridays: Cobra Commander

I'm back this week with the addition of "Cobra Commander" to my villains sketch. In my opinion, no self-respecting 80's villain sketch would be complete without him. You definitely don't see cartoon villains like this anymore. I guess the leader of a terrorist organization isn't marketable to kids nowadays. Go figure. :)

I really wish the recent G.I. Joe movie had included him in it, as opposed to the character that looked and acted nothing like him. Oh well, my memory of the real Cobra still lives on in this drawing! Next time look out for "The Evil Lord of Destruction!"

Illustration © Mark Pingitore