Baby Elephant Eats Peanuts

This is a shot I animated which recently had some material cut out of it. There used to be a squirrel on the ground by the peanuts, just about to grab them, and then he screams and runs away when he sees the elephant. This ended up being too distracting. Also, before the elephant stuffed the peanuts into his mouth, he blew the dust off them. I asked my 2D students for advice on which version played better, and they all seemed to agree with me on his one. Now that I have a human baby of my own, I've learned that babies aren't concerned about dirt on their food, and wouldn't blow it off before eating it!

Edit: As per comments, yes there will be a blink in there eventually to break up that long hold, and music & narration will span over the whole film.



I'd love to post more, but it's late and I need to finish some illustrations and go to bed. Tomorrow I'm driving to Portland for the Platform Animation Festival, so I'll post more recent pencil tests upon my return.

Happy Dancing Flowers

Here's a new pencil test of some happy dancing flowers! This was actually animated by my friend Steve Stanchfield from Thunderbean Animation. In the final film, it won't look like this (for one thing, it will all be in color!)...it will likely be a panning background with three or five of these flower cycles all dancing. This is just a temporary test to fill in the gap of my leica reel and see how they look. How can you not love rubbery dancing flowers?

Teaser Trailer - June 2007

Here is the first brand new teaser trailer for the film! At this point, all animation is still in pencil test format with rough layouts...no camera moves yet. The music in this trailer is a temp track only.

It all starts here...

Welcome to my new blog for documenting the production of my short film, Storytime with Nigel. Everything leading up to this point is on my previous web diary, which can be accessed thus...

At least this prior web diary, done before the age of the blog, goes up to 2005. In 2006 much of my time was devoted to other projects, namely my 'Art of Stop Motion Animation' book and the birth of our beautiful daughter Ariel.