I am insanely proud to have worked on the new StoryBots : Answer Time show!
We were already HUGE StoryBots fans in our household, so I cannot thank Evan Spiridellis enough for taking a chance bringing me on board for the new series. I don't know who was more excited, me or our kids (it was me).
I worked on a few things for the show but my main contribution was working on these two new bickering bot buddies, Dink and Doink.
Only once I'd begun work on the first short did Evan reveal to me that the two actors voicing them would be none other than Dave Goelz and Frank Oz! Both of whom are not only absolute legends but also personal heroes of mine. It was truly daunting to have to animate, knowing how good they both are as puppeteers and performers!
This is the first Dink and Doink short I worked on for the show (where they're arguing over how deep the ocean is). The characters were created and written by Nate Theis, with art direction by Romney Caswell and overall direction from Jeff Gill and Evan Spiridellis.
Design, modelling, rigging, texturing, animation, rendering and post production by me.
My concept sketches for the shark character
After my work on the first short was complete, it became clear that doing these solo was simply going to take too long. So, I transitioned to a role where I would design and a model the characters, environments, props, textures and lighting and then hand these over to Lauren Hammond, a brilliant animator and technical artists, who rigged and animated them. I then worked with Robert Showalter to translate my materials and lighting settings over to Maya, so they could render and composite the final shorts.
Rendered style frame for the Desert short
Concept sketches for the Vulture character
Rendered style frame for the Trees short
Rendered style frame for the Snow short
A much friendlier Walrus
My concept sketch for the Walrus and environment, with Jordan Koch's wonderful board versions of Dink and Doink
Rendered style frame of the Jungle short, with my 2d sketch for the snake character
Rendered sssssstyle frame of the Jungle short, with the full sssssssnake model