D.R. Greenlaw Demo Reel, 2019 Edition

[Greenlaw]

It's that time again! Here's my 2019 demo reel featuring work created for DreamWorks Animation since my previous DWA reel (2017 edition).



Direct Link: My 2019 Demo Reel (Just in case the above movie isn't visible.)

This 2019 edition features work from 2016 - 2018, which includes Captain Underpants, Trolls, Kung Fu Panda, The Croods, Puss-In-Boots, and Boss Baby. (I worked on other DWA shows too but those aren't featured here.) You can watch the shows in their full glory on Netflix and Amazon Prime. This reel represents many long hours of hard work but the animation was a lot of fun to create too.

For 'Boss Baby: Back In Business', I created many of the the 2D puppet rigs which were animated by myself and five of my team mates at DWA. This was a new experience for me because I didn't previously build 2D puppet rigs for other artists to animate. This task proved surprisingly challenging because, not only did I have to anticipate new character actions from the storyboard artists, I also had to anticipate how other animators would use the rigs.

Since I was the resident 'Moho Expert' in our department, it became my unofficial job to teach the team how to use this software. The reward for me was that, in working so closely with this amazingly talented crew, I became a better animator myself.

Enjoy!

[synthsin75]

As usual, great work, Dennis.

[uncle808us]

Very cool.
And you also find time to help others, Thanks for the vid.

[ORWAH]

that is very good work, thanks for sharing.

[amanandink]

Looks Great Denis, I really like the Trolls fabric look
J

[Daxel]

Nice work! So inspiring

[mrc]

Inspiring work on this reel!

But at the beginning I found it too fast paced. Towards the end, with the longer scenes, I found it easier to watch and better to appreciate the animation and art style.

Was Kung Fu Panda also laid out and animated in Moho?

Marc

[Greenlaw]

Looks Great Denis, I really like the Trolls fabric look.

Thanks! The scrapbook elements were a lot of fun to make. The animation is mostly AE work with a bits of Moho and LightWave animations worked in for the more complicated stuff. Towards the end of the reel is an early Trolls 'Big Guy' test made entirely in Moho.

Was Kung Fu Panda also laid out and animated in Moho?

Yes, the KFP footage on the reel is all Moho. Po was the most complicated rig I had built with Moho at the time. It's all puppet-rig animation except for a few frames when he somersaults into frame, which was an early use (for me) of Moho's vector-based frame-by-frame tools (Freehand and Blob Brush). Normally, a puppet's head is just an 'apple on a stick', but Po's head, neck and body had to flow together as one continuous shape. To accomplish this in the puppet rig, I made four Smart Bone 'turnaround' Dials for his body (waist, mid-section, upper-section/neck, and head) instead of the usual three. The texture and lighting effects are more complicated than usual too; I used Moho's Reference Layers and Layer Comps window to break out custom masks and texture-only passes, and then used these elements to texture and light Po inside After Effects. This helps make the texture look like a single seamless sheet of paper, rather than the sectioned parts more typical in a puppet-rig setup. Sadly (for me), the footage was replaced by an entirely hand drawn version. It may have been decided that the Moho animation looked too smooth compared to the non-Moho scenes surrounding it, which I agree with. I'm glad for the opportunity to try this though; I got to figure out new rigging and animation techniques from this experience which later I was able to apply in other shows.

[Penny]

Great Work! As we all know Moho is quite underrated but this reel demonstrates how powerful it is!

[ulrik]

Great Demo, congratulations!

[Greenlaw]

Thanks for the nice comments guys!

I hope to have more stuff to share soon, starting with new Animaker videos.

[DK]

I really like the felt animation. Love to know how you got the light shading on the blue felt character when he turns from side to side?

Cheers
D.K

[Greenlaw]

I really like the felt animation. Love to know how you got the light shading on the blue felt character when he turns from side to side?

That was an experiment I did way, way back during development. I created 'shading' layers for the character's body parts. The fuzzy texture is actually very flat with no directional lighting and it just slides around inside masks but the static 'shading' layers on top make the texture appear to have roundness and depth. If I remember correctly, this was rendered 'in-camera' inside Moho, so no post compositing. (Which is unusual for me since I normally render for compositing.)

Thanks for liking it.

[Greenlaw]

Which reminds me...

It surprising how much you can fake convincing 3D effects in Moho. For example, in the black & white car chase sequence, you might think there's a lot of 3D in it but the only 3D element is the car in the single shot when it turns around the corner. The truck, which looks 3D, is actually all 2D vector shapes filled with painted textures and controlled using Smart Bone Actions. We didn't have time to model and rig a 3D truck so I built a 2D Moho rig for a painting provided by our art department. (Funny, even I forgot this wasn't a 3D truck...and I animated this scene!)

[synthsin75]

For example, in the black & white car chase sequence, you might think there's a lot of 3D in it but the only 3D element is the car in the single shot when it turns around the corner.

Nice to know I was right. That car turning the corner was the only thing I pegged for 3D.