I am the Animation Producer/ Director at Snowflake Films NYC LLC. I head a team of in-house character riggers and animators. Our team produces, After Effects character rigs, reusable animations and effects for the series that then is shipped out to the animation studio in Ireland. We create the design and look of the show. I also worked on the first season of the original series created at Little Airplane Productions. The new series premieres on Apple TV+ on December 13th 2024
Apple TV+ Official Press Release
Awards
52nd Annie Awards Nominee – Best TV/Media – Preschool
One of the unique opportunities I had on The Wonder Pets; in the City! was using a skill I learned over the past few years which was 3D printing. This was something that wasn’t available years ago on the original series. I created quite a few 3D printed props for the show. Earlier on I was asked if there is a way to create cuter hands for Izzy the Guinea Pig. The solution I came up with was to 3D printed an armature, and learned how to felt on the hand and fur textures. Pictured below is an early prototype of the hand with 4 fingers and a thumb. But it was decided to lose one of the fingers to make it cuter. I would then pose the hand, it mount to a turntable and photograph every possible angle of each pose that would be needed. For the final rig we trimmed down the number of hands and color matched it to Izzy’s final design. Those hand poses then could be selected in the rig as needed.
Another unique prop was Izzy’s sneaker. Jennifer Oxley along with one of our Lead Designers Etsu Kahata created the initial look if the shoe. The issue was that the shoe was heavily modified from the original source image for the concept art. And for production the character rig required multiple angles that did not exist. Etsu and I talked about how we could create these alternate angles. The process we came up with was that I would 3D print the shoe to match to her final design. I even used the real shoe laces as a scale reference when sculpting and printing out the final design. Then I shot all the angles that we would possibly need for the character rig. Etsu would then take the photos pass the finish line be color matching to the original design. For all 3D prints, I printed in a matte grey color which made it easier for the designers to color match the props to the original design.
