I Can Haz String

I've been trying to set little goals for myself lately. I spent most of August and September pressed up against two massive deadlines, so figured a change of scale was in order.

These short-term objectives include exercises, mostly illustrating 'character animation' since I feel somewhat lacking in that department, but also tests using different techniques and programs as well.

First up, I hadn't done a whole lot of 'tradition' hand-drawn animation in a while. Doodles of my cat, Behemoth lead to a quick little test digitally drawn with the Wacom and then 'inked' and 'painted' in Flash.

Early Rough Animation

After clean-up, I exported PNGs with an Alpha from Flash and brought them into After Effects. For a background I wanted mixed-media, something like a dollhouse or diorama. I Googled about and found this incredibly talented woman's blog. I grabbed an image off of her blog* and dropped it in AE after separating out the foreground from the back in Photoshop to create some depth.

Finished MOV

Next, an exercise in 3D layers and camera moves in After Effects with digitally created cut-out characters. Will post character designs when finished.


*Call of the Small - I hope this is OK! I promise I'm only putting this on my reel and would be happy to send you a MOV of the animation for your own use as well!)

Liesje Kraai, Animator

And apparently Crazy Cat Lady. At least borderline according to New York Magazine.


I was super surprised (not really - they told me last week) to find my face on a full-page spread this week in NYMag's Look Book. I'm also excited I got to drop Behemoth's name as well as get the tag 'Animator' featured so prominently. Maybe I'll actually start believing it.

Thanks NYMag for (hopefully) directing traffic to my new reel on Youtube, Rachel for the nice interview and Pinkyotto for the adorable, Master & Magarita (at least I like to think so) shirt-dress.

Fresh, Juicy Reels!

Headed up to Ottawa for the annual International Animation Festival (more about that later). Before hitting the road, I made sure to squander some of my down time at work on cutting together a new reel.



It was time for an upgrade (new website coming shortly as well) and considering there may actually be folks looking me up now, I figured I should post it online in the meantime.

Enjoy! Suggestions are welcome!