Animation tests (Patreon)

I gave a lecture at Calarts last year (surreal being on the other side of a guest lecture there), but something I drummed up that I thought would be fun to show the students were the animation tests I took after I graduated from there, specifically because none of them got me hired.

One of the first ones I got asked to do was pitch a style for an animated Guardians of the Galaxy show. I believe this was right after the first movie had come out, and Marvel tv was looking to create a show out of it. I believe they ended up going with something visually similar to the movie, but before that, I pitched something closer to that of the comics at the time. Heavily inspired by the designs of the Steve McNiven drawn book at the time, I tried to keep it somewhat similar to the other Marvel tv animations they had at the time as well.

Another show around the same time I was asked to do a test for was, what I have to believe, ended up being Hulks Agents of Smash. This was much more of a traditional Character Design test were they gave me the front angle drawing and I had to do a turn of the design.

And lastly I did a Storyboarding test for Legend of Korra. I had done some design freelance for one of the show runners, Joaquim Dos Santos, while I was in school for something else and so I reached out to him to see if I could do a story test for him. I don't think I would have ended up getting this job either, but while they were reviewing my test I was told another show at Nick needed board help and they liked my test so I ended up accepting their offer and wound up working for TMNT.

as prefaced at the beginning, my point with all this is I didn't end up getting any of these jobs, and in a lot of ways im grateful for it. I think if I had entered Action TV character design right out of school I would have been molded into a designer that I dont think would have been able to be hired on to Spider-verse a decade later. Sort of being in a place where I ended up leaving animation entirely for 8 years allowed me to grow in a way where I could bring back something different for the movie, which let me thrive there.

but my second point is that dream offers can come from completely indirect paths. I got the Spider-verse offer in 2019 because I did freelance for Joaquim back in 2012 and he liked me enough that he asked to bring me on to the movie when he became a co-director.

things can grow from unexpected sources at unexpected times.