Smashbits #30: MAGIC THE GATHERING - Sorcerer's Broom

As we approach my 28th birthday on October 15th, here's my 30th Smashbits post!   I actually quite like how this came out, but I must admit my only contribution here is about a minute's worth of facial animation... 

PREMISE:  A parody of The Sorcerer's Apprentice from Fantasia based around advertising a Magic the Gathering card that also involves living brooms.

The DIRT:

The fun part of the story is that Magic The Gathering was the client!  I drew some faces for a thing I've heard of before, so that was pretty neat, and I like how it came out so I'm proud to show it today.  

The lame part of the story is that when this started out, I was told to expect to fully animate multiple scenes and have my own separate budget that would've been heaven-sent.  And then weeks go by and they don't get back to me and finally they come back and they've whittled my work down to just a minute of faces and a week to do it-- obviously, it was much less pay, but realistically it was fair pay for so little work and it was money much needed, so I did it real quick.  The slightly cooler part of that lame story is that I really learned how labyrinthine animation production clouds are.   Even when I worked on my last Smashbits team project, I never really understood how their cloud worked, but being a little more officially involved this time around, it was fascinating how many parts of files get passed around a studio, exchanging codes and whatnot...  Seeing all those moving parts put into perspective how complicated studio work is compared to the solo work I tend to do.  

There are currently no further plans to work with Smashbits, but they tend to email me right after I say that, so I guess we'll see.  Other freelance plans on the horizon:  Strivfe, who I've been painting for throughout the year, has been talking to me about two different music video commissions, so that is a likely upcoming project.  I also did a little networking at work a few months ago and am currently working on concept art for a friend's children's book series.  That'll be very simple and stick-figurey in design but I can have fun with that. 

What I'm really hoping is that this will finally become a low-pressure enough period that I can try and regain traction with production on my Hoop-a-Joop short film (I did do a couple more backgrounds recently), and maybe even start getting Ferrets in motion.  I don't want to get my hopes up because I feel like I bring it up a lot, but I'd love if I could get more original cartoons out again in 2020.  Wish me luck, I s'pose!