How many animators are posting/lurking on here?

[gaijinking]

Hey Gang,
I was at a fellow animator buddy's house helping him setup Hyperspin last weekend, and when I was gazed up at his collection of Dragon's Lair and Space Ace cells on his wall, while talking about arcadecontrols.com forum it occurred to me just how much I was influenced by video games growing up. Which made me wonder how many other retro gaming obsessed animators are on here? And besides the Don Bluth animated Laser disc games, what other retro games inspired you to get into animation?

[opt2not]

<wave>
Besides animated films and the Don Bluth games, the ones that stuck out in my mind in terms of animation quality has mostly come out of the 16-bit era of gaming.
Earthworm Jim, Aladdin, Lion King all for the snes (I had the pleasure of working with the original animators of those games a few years ago -- great guys. It was a trip to have that opportunity) ...prior to that, Street Fighter II, and Prince of Persia have influenced me a lot.
SFII for it's strong posing and impact, PoP for it's realism and weight.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Ever seen the vhs clips of the guy the PoP animations were drawn from?

[RayB]

Gajin, youre talking classical animation?

I only did sprite animation.

[opt2not]

Ever seen the vhs clips of the guy the PoP animations were drawn from?

I haven't. I wonder if I can track them down, would be interesting to see how the rotoscoped animations compare to the real footage.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

[opt2not]

Very cool! I recognize the standing jump as well as the run. Thanks for the link!

[gaijinking]

PoP had some great realistic animation. I remember playing it on my Apple II. But before it came out, I was obsessed with a game called Karateka:

 I also used to play Out of This World and Flashback on my Amiga.
But yeah, the 16-bit era consoles had some pretty amazing sprite animation. Earthworm Jim is such a cool game. Doug TenNapel is seriously talented guy. I didn't discover the original The Neverhood until the sequel Skull Monkeys came out on Psx. I actually work with a couple of guys that animated on those FMV stop motion sequences in Skull Monkeys.
It's funny though over the years I've owned/played Dragon's lair on just about every system that it's been released on, including the Coleco Adam version, which was surprisingly cool.

Rayb,
cool. what era of games sprite animation did you work in? Do you still animate?
Opt2not,
do you work in CG games or film? I dig some realistic stuff, but I'm more of a cartoony animator. I've been working in Stop motion, doing puppet animation for TV.

[opt2not]

Earthworm Jim is such a cool game. Doug TenNapel is seriously talented guy. I didn't discover the original The Neverhood until the sequel Skull Monkeys came out on Psx. I actually work with a couple of guys that animated on those FMV stop motion sequences in Skull Monkeys.

Doug TenNapel is talented, but most of those sprite animations (if not all) were done by 2 guys -- Mike Dietz and Ed Schofield. It's a the common misconception, because Doug was the designer and the public face of Shiny back in those days. Mike and Ed were also mainly responsible for the animation in Neverhood, with help from others (they've told me stories of hiring traditional carpenters to help build their sets and backgrounds -- amazing!). When I worked with them, Ed gave the animators of the studio a few lessons in stop-motion. Wow, so much work and forethought is involved, I was impressed.
Ed then moved onto animating other stop-motion projects, including a show called Battlebots Boombots, as well as the short lived Bill Cosby show called PJ's.

Mike and Ed have been running their own animation studio now, called Pencil Test Studios.
Great guys.

Opt2not,
do you work in CG games or film? I dig some realistic stuff, but I'm more of a cartoony animator. I've been working in Stop motion, doing puppet animation for TV.

I too am more of a cartoony guy. I leave the realistic animations to the mo-cap monkeys. I'm a game animator, for both 3D and Sprite work, but take up contracts on the side (mostly TV -- commercial work -- as well as art projects for you fine folks) to supplement my arcade spending. This ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- ain't cheap!  

[RayB]

Rayb,
cool. what era of games sprite animation did you work in? Do you still animate?

C64, NES, SNES, Genesis, PC (late 80's through 1990's) I don't have a huge body of work, as I also did producing and design, and then dipped into web and multimedia.

In my most recent game project, we used mo-cap.

[gaijinking]

"in stop-motion. Wow, so much work and forethought is involved-"

Yeah, it's mostly problem solving, one frame at a time. But it beats the fatigue I get from staring at the computer all day when I do cleanup in After Effects.

Boombots, as well as the short lived Bill Cosby show called PJ's.

Cool! I hadn't heard anything about Boombots:


I wish it was Bill Cosby involved, but instead it was Eddy Murphy who created/produced the PJ's. They actually did 3 seasons worth of shows (48 episodes). To this day I think it was the highest budget episodic stop motion TV show ever to air. Which is sad, because all those high production vales didn't make the show any funnier. But a lot of amazingly talented people worked on that show. Half the animators I worked with came from Celebrity Death Match, while the other half came from PJ's. I got burnt out working on a series shows, and have been working on mostly commercials and some insert shots in 2d animated shows.

C64, NES, SNES, Genesis, PC (late 80's through 1990's)

Cool! any specific titles?

[opt2not]

Ah crap, yeah, it was Eddie Murphy... The other comedian that's not funny anymore. . Memory is getting bad these days.

[RayB]

C64, NES, SNES, Genesis, PC (late 80's through 1990's)

Cool! any specific titles?

Best known title is Cool Spot. That annoying hermit crab in the very first level is mine.
Other titles listed here: http://rayb.com/published.htm