Animation direction
I’ve established the look and animation style for several hit and award winning mobile game titles
FAMILY GUY: QUEST FOR STUFF
Translating TV Quality Animation to Mobile
Role: Animation Director
Role: Animation Lead
Based on Fox’s hit Emmy award winning television show “Family Guy,” I oversaw translating the show’s original characters and animation from the television screen to mobile. Working closely with the original creative team over at Fuzzy Door Productions, I strove to capture the humor and style of the show with our animation team and carry it forward to mobile.
Among my chief concerns as animation director and lead was balancing the requirements of the original IP holder (Family Guy) with the needs of the many guest IPs that the game would often have, such as Star Trek, DC Comics, Power Rangers, as well as multiple Celebrity appearances. Oftentimes, it was a careful balancing act in order to concept and animate actions that appeased both the creative identity of Family Guy and the needs of various IPs/celebrities and their representatives.
Some of the changes we had to make in translating the animation style from the tv show for mobile was that the humor of Family Guy relies heavily on spoken dialogue. For our game, we had to rely on visual gags and acting to relay the humor. To ensure the readability of our gags, we had to make sure to push the posing and timing to read on a mobile scale.
Roles: Animation Director,
Animation Lead
Based on Fox’s hit Emmy award winning television show “Family Guy,” I oversaw translating the show’s original characters and animation from the television screen to mobile. Working closely with the original creative team over at Fuzzy Door Productions, I strove to capture the humor and style of the show with our animation team and carry it forward to mobile.
Among my chief challenges was balancing the requirements of Family Guy with the needs of the many guest IPs that the game would often have, such as Star Trek, DC Comics, Power Rangers, as well as multiple Celebrity appearances. It was a careful balancing act in order to create actions that reflected all parties respectfully.
For our game, we relied on visual gags and acting to relay the humor. To ensure the readability of our gags, we had to made sure to push the posing and timing to read on a mobile scale.
FUTURAMA: WORLDS OF TOMORROW
Building on Success
Role: Animation Director
Based on TinyCo’s success of translating the Family Guy IP to mobile, Fox approached us to work on a mobile title for Matt Groening’s Futurama.
Building on the success of Family Guy, we were able to implement a new and more efficient pipeline to create large scale animated content for Futurama. Early in production, I met and worked closely with engineering, product, art and my animation lead in order to set the stage early for success.
As production needs increased, I worked closely with multiple outsource studios to support the increased content needs of all our titles by tracking assignments and providing preproduction guides. I directed and provided feedback to the original IP holders and to the third party contractors.
MARVEL AVENGERS ACADEMY
Establishing TinyCo’s First 3D Animation Department
Role: Animation Director
For TinyCo’s first 3D animated mobile game “Marvel Avengers Academy”, I helped to establish and build our first in-house 3D animation team and crew. This game laid the foundation both in crew and pipeline for all subsequent 3D games created at TinyCo/Jam City, such as 2018’s Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery.
I first identified the members of our 2D animation team proficient in 3D animation in order to create early prototypes, while at the same time, I interviewed a number of qualified candidates to help crew and staff up our 3D animation department. I worked closely with our 3D lead and our art director to help design the tone and style of the animation, as well as concepts for our character actions.
Among my chief concerns for setting up and establishing an entirely new animation department at TinyCo was striving to maintain the high level of quality in our animation that we had established in our studio’s 2D animated content of our games.
SPELLSTORM
From Casual to MidCore Animation
Role: Animation Director
Diverging from soft casual games in order to appeal to a mid-core gaming audience, SpellStorm was TinyCo’s first foray into battle oriented action with heavy use of 2D VFX. For this original IP title, I worked closely with engineering to help push the scope and quality of our studio’s animation style and content.
I am proud of the team I was able to build and direct at TinyCo, who were all versatile and talented enough to pivot from the soft casual animations of TinyCo’s early IPs to impressive monsters and combat VFX. One of the biggest challenges of the increased engineering capabilities of our game engine was the unlimited canvas on which our animators could now work, and it was oftentimes necessary to rein in overly ambitious animations in order to stay on schedule and on budget.
TINY IPS
TINY CASTLE, TINY MONSTERS, TINY VILLAGE,
TINY PETS, TINY ZOO
Roles: Animation Director,
Animation Lead, Animator
I first started at TinyCo as a character animator on Tap Resort and Tiny Chef. I expanded my role into Animation Lead on Tiny Zoo, and by the time Tiny Pets was in development, I was given the opportunity to oversee the entire 2D animation pipeline for TinyCo as Animation Director. The games we went on to produce would include Tiny Monsters, Tiny Village and Tiny Castle, in addition to three unshipped titles (two original IPs and one large IP).
The department grew from a small handful of 2D animators to over 25 2D and 3D animators working on multiple mobile game titles.
I established and built the entire 2D animation pipeline over this time, continually working hand in hand with engineering to build better, more efficient systems of animating that could handle the increasingly complex animations and sheer volume of content being pushed into the games.