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
Tag: After Effects
Elmo’s World
- Designer
- 2D Animation
- Composite
Sesame Street: Celebrate Diwali Song! The Festival of Lights.
For this project I provided animated backgrounds and wipes. The animated Photoshopped backgrounds were composited in After Effects. I had to rebuild some of the lighting elements and use the “wiggle()” expression to have them twinkle. I also added lighting effects to the buildings for when the fireworks light up the sky. The fireworks were created using Trapcode’s Particular. For the wipes, the silks were created using Trapcode’s MIR plugin. This was the first project that I have used MIR. It has a bit of a learning curve but the results came out well. The colored powders were a stock footage asset that was keyed, retimed and recolored.
Sesame Street: We’re Different, We’re the Same | Celebrity Read Along
In this video I composited live action green screen, 2D backgrounds and animated page inserts. Once of the challenging parts of this production were the book pages. It was easy to key the live action but the book incorporated enough of the similar color of the green/blue screen that I had to go back and build out the book again. To do this I would use Mocha Pro to track the planes of the pages and export tracked masks. Then I could mask out the pages and lay them on top of the green screen footage. I also used Lockdown for some of the tracking but in most cases Mocha Pro did a better job with less steps.
Sesame Street:
In this video I was tasked to add lighting to the 3D render of the water fountain. First I created a loop-able render of the 3D render. Then I used Projection 3D to create a 3D shape to roughly match the structure of the fountain using solids. Then I used that comp to project lights onto it. This worked well for adding more realistic lights to the contour of the fountain. I even added some caustics to the lights being projected onto the sides of the fountain as if the lights were coming from under the water’s surface. Adding lights to the water was just simple masking of the water layer and setting the layers to ADD.
Elmo’s World Season 53
Elmo’s World Season 53, New York, New York
Producer/Compositor (Jan 2022 to June 2022)
Produced and composited 6, 5 minute episodes for Sesame Studios that consisted of 2D animation, green/blue screen keying and compositing with 2D and live action assets.
Other Side: Constant Music Video
Other Side: Constant Music Video, New York, New York
Compositor/Editor (Dec 2021 to Jan 2022)
Other Side, is the first solo album from Micheal Zodorozny one of the founding member of Crash Course in Science. I composited and edited on the video. I worked closely with Micheal on the project. He provided all of the original artwork. Some of the artwork were pieces he did back in the 80s. This is our second music video collaboration (Drive).
Other Side: Constant
Music Video
Other Side, is the first solo album from Micheal Zodorozny one of the founding member of Crash Course in Science. It debuts February 14th, 2022. I composited and edited on the video. I worked closely with Micheal on the project. He provided all of the original artwork. Some of the artwork were pieces he did back in the 80s. This is our second music video collaboration (Drive).
Pre-order: https://electronicemergencies.bandcamp.com/album/other-side
Produced by Matia Simovich (INHALT)
Artwork by Michael Zodorozny
Mastered by Rude 66
Press:
Conspiracy Carol
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
I was part of the digital animation team. This included rigging After Effects and CC Animate characters along with final composition work. This project had a one week turn around time. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Conspiracy Carol
Conspiracy Carol (Late Show with Stephen Colbert), New York, New York
Animator/Rigger (Dec 2021 to Dec 2021)
I was part of the digital animation team. This included rigging After Effects and CC Animate characters along with final composition work. This project had a one week turn around time.
Washingtonia
WASHINGTONIA (Comedy Central), New York, New York
Animator/Rigger (Oct 2021 to Nov 2021)
I was part of the digital animation team. I hopped on board as a swing animator filling in where help was needed. This included rigging After Effects characters, drawn animation and final composition work.
Washingtonia for Comedy Central
Washingtonia
This project was a step outside of usual projects I’ve worked on. Washingtonia is a spin off project from Stephen Colbert’s Our Cartoon President production. I knew some of the team from previous projects like Tooning Out the News. So it was an easy transition onto this project. I animated a few of the “spicier” shots in the movie, which was a lot of fun.
Team Leelu Rig Walk Through
Here is a brief walk through of these character rigs.
Crash Course in Science: Drive
Crash Course in Science: Drive
I had a chance to work with a long time friend Micheal Zodorozny on this music video. After Effects compositing.
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