Stop Motion and 2D reels

My Reels for up to 2021. Sorry They are not public at the moment, please contact me for password if you want to see them. I will constantly be updating these.

Stop Motion Animation

Tina T. Hsu stop motion reel from Tina T. Hsu on Vimeo.

2D Animation

Tina T. Hsu 2D reel from Tina T. Hsu on Vimeo.

0:02 - 0:17 Storyboard, rough and cleanup animation

0:17 - 0:18 2D Animation, tie-down, cleanup and paint

0:18 - 0:21 Animation cleanup and paint

0:21 - 0:25 Storyboard, 2D animation(rough/cleanup/color)

0:25 - 0:28 Animation tie down, clean up and paint

0:28 - 0:34 2D animation, cleanup and paint

0:34 - 0:55 rough animation

0:55 - 0:59 animation/paint

0:59 - 1:11 Everything visual (storyboard to finish)

1:11 - 1:18 Everything visual besides ship (rough animation to finish)

1:18 - 1:45 Everything visual

The Shivering Truth: Season 2

From Summer of 2019 to the beginning of 2020 (feels like a long time ago), I spent about 6 month working on Season 2 of The Shivering Truth. Now that Season 2 has aired, I am going to start posting about it. Will start posting footage and BTS photos once I get the permission for those.

For Season 2, I started as a storyboard revisionist, and later moved onto animation so I have two credits this time. Season 2 is produced at HouseSpecial, with a mix of new faces and season 1 crew.
The animation crew was split up into even and odd episodes this time, so most of my work are in the even episodes until it all blended together towards the end, as productions do. I am not sure if it was planned, but it felt like the odd episodes were heavier on the visual spectacle while the even episodes were more sensitive and emotional. And perhaps due to that aspect of the show, the odd episodes always felt more heavy duty for me on the board revision end.

Here are some BTS photos

Episode 1: The Burn Earner Spits
Episode 1 was a beast in all stages of production. I mostly re-boarded the TV shop scenes/ike and Hank's sequences and did minor redraws and added frames for the rest of the episodes. Animation wise I was responsible for a few prayer flyer shots, and the new age shop (one of the cutest sets)
Episode 2: Carrion My Son
This is perhaps my favorite episode of season 2. The majority of revision happened in the doll shop, but there also added drawings in the opening segments. Animation wise I was responsible for Gigi(girl on the phone), Conrad in the church flexing, some Reiss and mom shots including Reiss taking care of mom doll in the bedroom.
Episode 3: Nesslessness
I feel like I did a lot of rebuild/redraw on every part of the episode. The opening sequence was very complicated for board and animation I believe, and re-building the scene was a bit of a brain gymnastic. I wasn't very involved with animation except for a few elements.
Episode 4: Beast of Both Worlds
Another episode I really liked. I believe most of the re-boarding were in the thug head quarter/fight scenes so lots of violence. Animation wise most of my work was on meditation lawn and him snorting and smoking up books, and the dream girl in her dream cloud.
Episode 5: The Diff
This was a very interesting/challenging one board wise because of how abstract and out of the box this episode was. I think most of my revisions were in the limo sequence, the EMT section and some the half figures, but a lot of work also went into adjusting the very architectural opening and the optometrist's office. Animation wise I did a few shots in the EMT sequence, the hotel and a bunch of tumbling figures, a few shots of the half figures and the pretty animal/nature shot.
Episode 6: Holeways
I don't remember the board revision on this one being super heavy. A lot of it was in the dental office, Dustin tearing up his room, animals and the final field I think. A good chunk of it was kicked back to the board artists towards the end since they didn't have future episodes to work on at the end. Animation wise I did Dustin in the cave, dentist talking through his mouth (was a bit of a challenge since the head mech was not working in half of her face) and the pigs cuddling.

I always enjoyed working on this show, even though I always wished there was more time and money to make it even nicer. But that's true to most if not all projects I guess, and I certainly hope it gets a season 3!

Pâtisserie by Dr. Oetker

In the beginning of 2019, I storyboard and animated a stop motion cheese cake commercial for Dr. Oetker at Bent Image Lab. In contrast to most of my miniature/character based stop motion work, I had to animate food and life size objects for the first time. Animating food is a bit of a right of passage for stop motion animators, as most animators I know have their share of food animation stories.

Final spot can be viewed here
https://vimeo.com/381577571

Most of the animation in this spot is pretty straight forward beside working around the fact food is not really sturdy enough for animation. Shot 110 (the plate wave shot) however, ran into many technical difficulties and probably ate up half of the animation budget. Since compositing live action hand footage is part of the project, we shot most of the spot with the live action Red camera instead of DSLR to avoid switching cameras between stop motion and live action. Since Red is much heavier than most DSLRs, the tilt motor would slip on the motion control rig for this shot. We ended up having to switch back to a DSLR for shot 110 specifically to work around the weight issue after struggling for days with the rig.

The plate/cake animation was the other challenge. When the plate tower grew in height, I had to build and rebuild the plate tower using hot glue and wood for each frame. When the plates and the cake flies, they all had to be rigged. Having to juggle all this without breaking any plates, having the cake fall and ruining the table cloth proved to be very challenging. Since we were tight on stage space and I had to cross the motion control track every time I need to get to the other side of the table, my stage manager even custom built me a bridge out of wood plank and apple boxes so I don't trip on the track and ruin the shot.

Here is the final animatic

Dr. Oetker spot Animatic from Tina T. Hsu on Vimeo.

Here is the process breakdown from story board -> time lapse -> animation pass -> final comp with set extension

Pâtisserie by Dr. Oetker - shot 110 process from Tina T. Hsu on Vimeo.

And if you want to see how the plate tower animation is built, here is the full time lapse of shot 110.

Pâtisserie by Dr. Oetker - shot 110 full timelapse from Tina T. Hsu on Vimeo.

Full Credit can be found here, but here are some BTS photos from my phone.

the bridge across the motion control track

Honda: Dream Commute

From February to end of March 2018, I worked on the Honda: Dream Commute campaign for North Cal Honda also at Bent Image Lab.

The project was very mixed media in that it was a 2D + 3D animation/Live action people + puppet in one melting pot kind of spot. I was involved with character design, storyboard(everything except first establishing shot) and all the 2D bird animation. Since I have only boarded for 2D projects up to this point, it was the first time I saw my boards turn into 3D animation. It was also the first time I saw my storyboards on a (not very) big board for live action shoots. I also had to animate semi blindly while waiting for the live action plate to arrive, which took quite a bit of retrofitting when the plates finally did arrive.


Honda - Dream Commute from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.

Here is the animatic I and Jesse Mcmanus did. I boarded (or at least roughed out) everything in the spot besides the opening shot. Jesse was responsible for the opening shot, building designs and also cleaning up some of my rough boards. We boarded the majority of it in two days, and then revised for a few more days according to client notes.

Honda Dream Commute Animatic from Tina T. Hsu on Vimeo.

Here is the link to full credits/BTS on Bent's website
http://bentimagelab.com/honda-dream-commute/

Some of the design work I did for this spot.
The Blue Bird I got to animate. I took the chosen concept sketch by Jesse and retooled it for final model for animation.

Some unused dog puppet concept sketches

Some cloud concept sketches that turned into 3D characters

Here are some BTS photos from my Ipad.

We Bare Bears x Nintendo Switch Game Promos

For the last three months I have been drawing bears...a lot of them. I worked between May and August 2017 at Bent Image Lab as an animation director/lead on two spots for We Bare Bears X Nintendo Switch games, Arms and Splatoon 2. This is the third project I worked on in 2017, but the first one to go live so I am really excited. Most of the commercials I worked on so far are for online campaigns, so it is new to have something that plays directly on Cartoon Network.

I did the rough animation for this spot and handed it over to JD for cleanup/color and comp.

We Bare Bears - Nintendo Arms from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.

I storyboarded/animated/cleaned up (so basically all the character line work) on this spot.

We Bare Bears - Nintendo Splatoon from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.

Here is the full BTS/Credit on the Bent's Website.

Mushroom Hunting WIP

A new story about a mushroom picking mission after a nuclear accident.
I am still working on this and will be adding or taking things out as I work :p