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

Dr Praeger's Purely Sensible Hero Vegetables

In Summer 2020, I animated on a Dr. Praeger's commercial at HouseSpecial. It was a short gig, and everyone besides me worked from home while I was still scrambling to get myself a home setup at the time. So I went in and worked at the very empty studio for about three weeks while communicating with my director/producer via internet. It was a little strange but also kind of nice.

The director was going for a retro 70s-80s cartoon look. It is an era of western cartoon that I did not grow up with since I lived in Asia and watched a different set of animation shows. The commercial is a mix of hand drawn and rigged animation done mostly in Toonboom Harmony. Since I don't work with rigs the bits of my work are all in the hand drawn portion and here's a breakdown.

0:01 - Painted additional sprouts for the dirt mound
0:07 - Pizza splitting (rough to finish)
0:08 - Pizza splitting shot 2 (rough to finish)
0:12 - C-Top turn (Rough to color and BG sans effect and rigged settle)
0:17 - Barry the Beet kick (Rough to color and BG sans effect and rigged settle)
0:23 - Smoke effect animation

Oil painting animation

In March, when the Covid situation just started to escalate in the US, I started working at Bent Image Lab on a oil paint rotoscope/animation spot. The spot was painted by me and another animator tracing/translating live action footage with oil paint on glass and photographing each painting with dragonframe. We initially pitched to animate on 4s, but eventually settled on 3s due to client request.

This is raw footage from shot 2 of the spot.

Oil painting animation from Tina T. Hsu on Vimeo.

The technique was an interesting mix of 2D, painting and stop motion which strangely fits many of my skill sets, but was definitely a new challenge for me. While I enjoy painting with traditional media, I always found oil paint a little too much hassle for personal work. I have not touched oil painting since a portrait painting class in grad school, which was close to a decade ago.

I soon found out that oil painting 8-9 hours a day in a not very ergonomic setup was far more taxing physically and mentally than I anticipated (especially during a pandemic). We were using oil paint straight out of the tube as much as possible for color consistency. To make sure the paint does not just scrape off from slick glass surface, I refrained from diluting paint and used much softer brushes usually made for watercolor/acrylic paint. Another challenge we faced was getting paint supply as many art supply stores were either shut down or bought out by I assume bored people sheltering in place.

Depending on what was happening on screen, each frame took me from 30-90 minutes. Between each frame, we had to scrape off the full painting. Considering supply, my wage and not considering other expenses, it feels like destroying a $40-$100 paintings every frame. I was a bit terrified by the process, but it was also kind of cathartic. After the job was done, the client told us they wanted to preserve some of the paintings. But since that was not coordinated beforehand all the paintings were destroyed during animation.

Here is a note on working with live action and rotoscope. It is a very useful tool in many situations, but it also relies on live action footage that is not always compatible with animation/the medium we were using. For a fast turnaround job that goes way beyond line work like this one, there was no wiggle room for me to fix and control many aspects of the finished work. Shots with subtle movements and facial closeups were especially challenging and time consuming as accuracy becomes an issue and subtle movements tend to get lost in the medium. Shots with dynamic movement tend to work much better for this medium.

Looking back, there were many could be better moments on this project, but given the fact that we somehow pulled it together during a pandemic I think we did our best. I can do without oil painting for another decade for sure.

some BTS videos and photos

Cleaning after each frame from Tina T. Hsu on Vimeo.

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

We Bare Bear Season 3 promo - Bear Berries

In Summer 2018 right after I wrapped animating on The Shivering Truth, I went back to Bent Image Lab and animated on the second We Bare Bear spot. The hardest part of this spot was animating Ice bear interacting with live action character with moving camera. The live action plate also limited some of the animation choices I could have made. Since the live action was on 1s, the animation also had to be on 1s. The shot definitely ate up more than half of the very short schedule of this job. I hope it is still enjoyable though!


We Bare Bears - Bear Berries from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.

CREA (Canada Real Estate Association) Campaign

In March 2018 I animated on a few miniature disaster films at Bent Image lab for CREA (Canada Real Estate Association). The whole campaign is based on store bought miniature models with some really cleverly engineered practical effects. There was even a celebrity goose on set one day!

I was only involved as a stop motion animator on this campaign, but I got to blow away a house tumble weed style, shave a nice neighborhood, build a freeway and turn it into a parking lot and so on. I also animated a live human being for the first time! In the freeway spot I had to pose everything and shoot a clean pass, and then ask my set dresser/hand model, Matt Lask, to come in frame and gently hold onto the shaver and shoot another pass.

Since some of the spots were live action/stop motion hybrid, this was the first time I had to shoot the animations on 4K RED cameras instead of DSLR. This meant I was shooting mini movies clip for each frame and the editor had to go into my clips and extract single frames and then stitch it together for animation, but it also meant we did not have to switch cameras mid shot.


CREA - Residential - Directors Selects from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.

Here is the link to the full campaign with BTS and credit on Bent's website
http://bentimagelab.com/crea-campaign/

Some BTS photos from my Ipad

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.

Dairy Farmers of Canada - A Glass for Santa

Christmas season starts a lot earlier for commercial studios and animators. Around late September to Halloween, I was working on a Christmas commercial for Dairy Farmers of Canada at Bent Image Lab (Agency: DDB Toronto).

I animated about half of the spot. The puppets and sets were all made of felt (with armature and under-structure, of cource). It was the first time I animated felt and real milk with very fancy motion controlled camera moves, which definitely added a layer of complexity. We tried to hide the rigs as much as possible, and since there was a lot of object interaction with the puppets, many things were just pinned downed instead of rigged. This mean I was constantly getting stabbed by needles while animating. It was also really funny how the music took over everyone's brain and you could hear everyone singing/humming/whistling the tunes toward end of the project. It was a really fun project to work on and I hope more projects like this happens in the future.


Dairy Farmers Of Canada - Merry Christmas from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.

Here is the link to full credits/BTS photos and look development via Bent Image Lab
http://bentimagelab.com/dfc-merry-christmas/

Some additional BTS photos I took with my very old Ipad on set.

Estée Lauder - Ballerina

I worked as a cleanup&paint artist on an Estée Lauder's holiday ad campaign recently at HouseSpecial. I had been in talk with them for a really long time, and finally timing worked out this time. I did the animation tie-down/paint for 030(full body spin, the shot the thumbnail is from), and painted 040(full body spin/dance) and the second half of 080(last animated shot, goes from dance to wipe transition). It was a really short schedule and I did all the work mentioned above within an eight day span.


Estée Lauder - Ballerina from HouseSpecial on Vimeo.

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.

El Jimador - Day of the Dead Spots

Another recent commercial project I did for Bent were three 15 sec spots for Tequila Brand El Jimador's Day of the dead commercials.

Although I have worked at Laika, this was my first paid gig as a stop motion animator, and it was a project that had to be pulled together extremely quickly. We started animating before all the puppets were complete (I believe the puppet fab team made about 10-11? puppets in about 2 weeks. All with wire armature). I animated for about 1.5 weeks alongside two other animators and completed about one shot each day, which was about 2.5 - 4.5 second per day. I animated mostly on the wide bar set and the green screen set, and spent a day on the down shooter for the sign. What usually happened was I would animate a shot and wait for the stage to be set up for the next shot, and set up for first frame for the following day. Or I will finish a shot by the end of the day, and the following day starts with stage setup and I don't get launched till later in the afternoon. Besides a few re-shoots for continuity reasons or client notes, almost everything was animated and approved in one take, which pretty much never happens when I animate for myself.

It was really nice to work with sets/puppets made by other people since I always dread a little about not having tools/space and how long it takes to fabricate everything myself before I can animate. This was also the first time I had to control up to 4 puppets at once, and that was a lot to keep track of. Having to wait around for sets/puppets to be ready/approvals from many people before I can start was also strange for someone who came from 2D where I usually just sit and draw all day.

Overall it was a super fun experience and I learned a lot for sure and here are the end products! Enjoy!


El Jimador. Drink from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.
I animated the crowds and in the end shot, which is the same for all three spots. I animated the sigh drop, sugar skull and the right half of the crowd.


El Jimador. ID from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.
I animated the opening shot, the cheer before the end shot, the foreground/background crowds, and the end shot as described in the first one.


El Jimador. Wallet from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.

I animated the skeleton cheer and the white guy in the cheer before then end shot, crowds and the end shot as described above.

Cap & Kith Spots

I recently worked on a few 2D animated spots at Bent Image Lab for an AD campaign for collaboration of New York street wear brand Kith and Cap'n Crunch and I thought I would share them here. It was a quirky and super fun project to work on, and also the first time I went completely paperless for 2D animation.


Capn Kith - Kith Ahoy from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.
I animated all the characters and effect, cleaned and colored all the characters and got help with cleanup and texture painting on effect animation, I also did most of the compositing. The effect animation probably took more time than the characters.


Capn Kith - Kings Of Their Castles from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.
For the 60 sec spot I only animated the staircase fist bump and the cereal falling in the shot right before (00:38-00:41). The staircase fist bump shot went by really quickly but I got to design it from scratch and poured a lot of heart and soul into it.

I also did an Interview with Bent Design Lab about my process on this project if you are curious enough to read about it. Enjoy!