Climate Change - Conservation Agreements

A few months ago I finished working on this interesting project for the NGO known as Conservation International.

I had not done anything like this in years so it was both fun and challenging to develop all the art on my own (most of the times I take the artwork from someone else and animate it). The process began as usual: I got a script which I turned into a storyboard. Once it was approved it was time to get into production.

What's nice about a storyboard is that it makes it easier to illustrate all the artwork. You have a solid reference to work from, right? Well, in this case it was even better! The client just loved the style I used on the storyboard so there was no need to develop a new style, it was already there in the paper. So I scanned those pages and took them directly to Toon Boom, drew over them, tweaked a few things here and there and then started putting some color.

Once all the illustrations were colored it was time to take them to Photoshop. All of you who have read my previous posts know this is what I do: take the original illustration from Toon Boom and add some lights and shadows in Photoshop. Keep in mind that all these illustrations were exported as separate layers if they were going to get animated.

Now that the whole package was colored, I started all the compositing work in After Effects. Every object was in place just like the original B/W storyboard but fully-colored. It was really nice to see this thumbnails coming to life even though they were not animated yet.

All the animation process went very smooth. I have to admit this is the way things should go every time you work on an animation project on your own but they just don't. Due to time constraints, most of the times you just start animating the whole sequence on-the-go.

The end result is something that I am really proud of. I take credit for all the artwork and the animation. Sound effects and music were added by someone else after I delivered the video file.

Now go ahead and take a look!

Eye Fixation

It's been years since the last time I painted something just for fun. So I was there sitting in front of the screen playing with brushes and blending modes. That's how this multi-layer thing came to be an eye. I had no intention on painting a realistic eye so there was no research, just my imagination and the intention to make it believable. Some might say it looks like a deity or some sort of mystical creature, and the truth is any of those interpretations is valid because (like I said before)I just did this for fun!

Animation Reel 2014

This animation reel shows some of the work I have done on TV, film and videogames. All rotoscoping, character animation and motion graphics were done in After Effects while illustration was done in Toon Boom Studio and Photoshop.

DEMO REEL 2014 from Nicolas Calderon Eader on Vimeo.

Tracking - Labels over images

A few months ago I got on-board this already-started project. The Ecuadorian secretary of industries & productivity (MIPRO) requested a TV commercial where all items inside this house were labeled according to the "INEN standard". So EVERY product that is manufactured or imported to Ecuador is registered under a specific code determined by INEN.

On this case I used a lot of reference points as tracking points, every label is at a different position and depth. On a couple of labels I had to move the "tracking Null object" frame by frame even though the camera movement was very smooth.

Brazil 2014 FIFA World Cup TV Spot

The Ecuadorian financial institution known as CACPECO launched their latest savings-investment campaign in late 2013. "Ahorro Inversión" was targeting the 2014 FIFA World Cup (to be held in Brazil) and that means: most of the country. Ecuadorians are such big soccer fans, that most institutions, financial or not, like to offer LCD TVs in exchange of their products/services.

The first 15 seconds were shot on location, the rest was shot on green-screen. So, my job was to put on screen all the products the financial institution was giving away as part of their deal. I had to sync all of it with the voice-over. Now the fun part was working on the green-screen footage. After dealing with the yellow jersey and masking the feet on a couple of shots, the job was done!

All designs were developed by a designer and then passed on to me. I take credit for the green-screen & compositing stuff.

Color Correction

This was the first color correction job that I had and also very important. This video was released on several huge-LCD screen around Quito (maybe other cities too). Behind the scenes images are black&white, so there is not much to say about it. The real deal relied on the color-images. Models were dancing in front of LCD screens, which caused a lot of moire-effect noise (see still images), so getting rid of it was a bit of a challenge.

The important thing was to match the skin color on every scene. Then I was able to remove specific colors from the overall image. There is only a couple of scenes were I had to mask the girls in order to keep the detail from the LCD screens. Apart from that, the end result was achieved with filters like Hue&Saturation, Curves, Levels, and Color Balance.

The video is the property of their respective owners, I do not own it.

Animatic Sample

This is just a fraction of the original 9-minute long animatic I worked on some time ago. It tells the story of young Ecuadorian guy who becomes a hero after standing against some bad guys. He has this companion -a female Condor- who aids him on his journey to fight the injustice and the corruption in Ecuador.

The hero has his ongoing comic book series known as "Capitan Escudo." He is developed by Zonacuario, which is based in Quito, Ecuador. These illustration/storyboards were handed to me as photoshop files, constructed on a few layers so I could animate each character on its own. Since this is an animatic I did my best to make it feel as close to what the finish product should be in terms of timing & pacing. Everything was done in After Effects with some puppet pin application over the characters.