Wisconsin Life presents “Small Talk About the Weather”
Comedian Esteban Touma takes time to reflect on cold weather in Wisconsin and how Wisconsinites cannot stop talking about it.
Getting Organized
PBS Wisconsin hired me to animate their character designs for their new animated short. I proposed separating all the provided character designs and turnarounds into separate After Effects rigs for easy drag-and-drop compositing. I created a shot-tracker for simple team communication.
My shot-tracker allowed for stream-lined team communication, file organization, and workflow tracking.
Character Rigging
I rigged 10 total character models using Illustrator and After Effects. I separated each vector shape in Adobe Illustrator onto separate layers and used the Overlord plugin to import the layers as independent shape layers in After Effects.
Lip Sync / Acting
I designed and animated different mouth shapes for the character’s dialogue throughout the short. I used myself as reference for poses and actions while acting through the script.
Steven Dorcester, ‘Small Talk’ Director
“I really appreciate your lift from proposed character design files through finished animation in AE… You did a great job of observing and listening and executing your skills and judgement to deliver really nice work and bringing it all in when needed.”
