This is something I love doing: animating logos, but in this particular case, this San Francisco pizza artisan has a mascot.
Chip from TheorySF got in touch and asked if I could take a crack on it. I jumped to the opportunity, this was such a cool character, but despite the experience I have on animating bipeds this one wouldn't be a walk in the park. The agency came up with some Willy coyote references with tumbles and smears that I never did before.
References grabbed, I looked for tutorials and found... none??? That's weird.
When in doubt, go for the animation survival kit, they do have some process on smears but are more about how to emphasize blurs and stretches, I needed some circular motion.
AH! My boy Eric GoldberG for sure has that on his wonderful book Character Animation crash course(I'm a bit shamed to admit ya that I haven't got to read the book in its entirety yet) this legend has created the Genie for Disney, he for sure has the answer...
When in doubt, go for the animation survival kit, they do have some process on smears but are more about how to emphasize blurs and stretches, I needed some circular motion.
AH! My boy Eric GoldberG for sure has that on his wonderful book Character Animation crash course(I'm a bit shamed to admit ya that I haven't got to read the book in its entirety yet) this legend has created the Genie for Disney, he for sure has the answer...
Great references and tips
On the chapter about smears...
BUSTED! Guilty as charged, this guy knows his audience...
Anyway after some studying I remembered that on a animation podcast the guys form ice age said how they did a rig for scratch that would have tons of eyes everywhere so to sell the spinning effect. found it for ref on the Ice age short, then I managed to create a system for the smears, put a lot of repetition and distortion on it.
By the end I had to go a bit away form the rig and do some frame by frame poses for the start of the tumbles then transition to the wheel and its done!
Finally, it wouldn't be complete without the logo's fire animation
Man that Was fun.
