Dusty Hat

Hello, here is a model sheet for a pirate hat for Dusty in an episode of Dusty and Musty. It was quite a big hat as you can see, it also was quite a complicated shape too. Not much fun to animate in 2D.

Canopic Jar

Here is a picture of the model sheet for Musty's canopic jar (Duamutef).
When a body was preserved as a mummy, the internal organs were taken out quickly after death, as they would rot. All the same, the ancient Egyptians believed that it was important to preserve them alongside the mummified body. The heart, the 'seat of understanding', was left in place. The liver, lungs, stomach and intestines were placed in four different containers.
The wooden lids of these jars represent the Sons of Horus, four minor gods who protected the organs that they contained. They are: the falcon-headed Qebhsenuef (intestines); the jackal-headed Duamutef (the stomach); the baboon-headed Hapy (the lungs), and the human-headed Imsety (the liver). These were named 'canopic' jars by modern Egyptologists.
There, bet you didn't think you were going to get a bout of knowledge today did you?

More Designs

Afternoon, here is another design sheet from Dusty and Musty. This was Stuffy and Rusty's den made from bamboo sticks! Such detail! Made the sword fighting very special.

Dusty's Car

Morning. Here is the model sheet for Dusty's car in the series we did for Cog and HIT called Dusty and Musty. This is showing the computer model but there were situations when the car was animated in Flash. So we have to make sure the Flash animated car matches the computer model of the car. It was rather complicated as you can imagine. Especially the sequence where Dusty was in the car jumping it over a very big pile of books.... in perspective!! Mr Tom animated that sequence. It was rather special.

Rusty Collar

Morning. Here is a model sheet for Rusty's dog collar from Dusty and Musty. When he put the collar on he behaved like a dog!

A Dusty and Musty T-shirt

When I said before we never get anything, that wasn't entirely true. Occasionally we get things. Very occationally. So when we do it's always lovely to get something. Here is my crew t-shirt from our clients when we worked on Dusty and Musty.

Line Test

Here is a line test image from before the pilot we did for Dusty and Musty. This was quite some time ago now so when the client asked us to animate the mummy over a CG background we said of course we can. They wanted a test done of him walking down some stairs whilst carefully holding his canopic jar (it contains his insides) and at the same time Dusty (the dinosaur) is running around him trying to put him off. No problem we said. So we sent them 4 different panning speeds of the stairs to choose from and wouldn't you know, they wanted it the slowest speed but double as slow as we had it. What that meant is a lot more drawings and I dont remember the specific amount but it was over 600 drawings just for this character as he had a few levels and we had to animate it on 1's and didn't have any cycles (due to the acting).
When we did the series we animated it in Flash.

Blown up pieces everywhere!

Morning. So here is a pic of Musty and all his parts. You can see on the right how many levels he was made up of. His mouths at the bottom were just the forward happy mouths set. He had a happy, sad and neutral set for each head position. If you note he couldnt be flipped or left arm used for right arm due to his bandage and colours. Mr Tom did a lovely job sorting out the initial mechanics of this series. He did a lot of the library work.

A Turn Around

Here is a turn around for Musty who is built in Flash. He is from the series Dusty and Musty we did for HIT which was initially intended to be 2D traditional but we animated it in Flash in the end as the characters were so complicated. It meant we could get away with a certain amount of reuse whilst still approaching it with 2D traditional practices.

Musty swings

This is a still from an episode of Dusty and Musty. He is in flash and the BG's are computer. The BG's were supplied to us from our clients at COG. As you can see he is a very complicated character but we did it and made the series look lovely. It was never aired (I am unaware of the politics behind the decision) and it was a shame as so many people worked hard on it for such a long time. It was a project for HIT.

A Turn Around

Here is a turnaround from the character called Dusty. It was from a series we did for the Consortium of Gentlemen and HIT. This is the Flash model we built giving the animators as much assets as possible. In an average scene the animators could possibly use all the body pieces already drawn but if there was a big action scene then they would most likely have to redraw the body to get the motion of movement looking lovely. 9 times out of 10 though the animators would use the head Flash model so the characters would look more 'on model' as possible.
In each head symbol was full lip sync mouth shapes to use which also helped the animators. Basically we always use Flash as a tool and use traditional 'paper' 2d animation skills when possible.