Thursday, April 04, 2002

SPIDER-MAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES

LEAD ANIMATION DIRECTOR / SERIES R&D DIRECTOR /
OPENING CREDITS CREATIVE LEAD, DIRECTOR & EDITOR










Spider-Man! Are you kidding me?!?! Awesome! I worked as the Research & Development director for this series while we were in pre-production. It was a blast to just explore various aspects of the series: testing models, trying new looks, exploring animation possibilities, finding solutions to technically challenging aspects of the series (crowds, web-slinging, "toon" shading render issues, etc.). During this R&D stage, I began to compile our work in the avid, fool around with it in After Effects, and decided to cut together a teaser for our clients, Sony Pictures and MTV to get them jazzed about what we were doing. They loved it and when we had footage from the first 3 episodes they asked me to update this teaser with new footage. They took my cut as inspiration for cutting their own opening credit sequence for the series. I got a credit (thank you), but it's not really the same. Here's my version:


Original opening credit sequence demo (01:00)

EPISODE SELECTIONS

KEEPING SECRETS -- episode 02
Spider-Man encounters a thief called the Talon while breaking into J-Lo's loft. Though she gets away, he manages to get a look at her secret identity. This complicates things for Peter when he learns that her real name is Cheyenne Tate and that she just became Harry's girlfriend.


Spider-Man Meets The Talon (01:13)


M.J. Owns Parker (00:48)


The Talon Suits Up (01:03)

TIGHT SQUEEZE -- episode 04
A high tech group of criminals calling themselves Pterodax attempt to steal diamonds, but Spider-Man stops them. Peter then manages to sell a video of the attempted robbery to Empire 1 News with the help of a researcher named Indy. Later, Pterodax take hostages at Empire 1, demanding Spider-Man come within two hours or everyone will blow up real good. Unfortunately, Peter is a hostage himself.


Boardroom Tomfoolery (00:51)



Fight & Flight (01:54)

SWORD OF SHIKATA -- episode 11
Richard Damien has an interest in rare animals and hires the infamous Shikata to capture the next addition to his collection: Spider-Man. But the mysterious Shikata has different plans for the web-slinger after their first confrontation and demands for a fight to the death. Damien loses his head when he hears of Shikata's plan.



Cage Match (01:45)


Street Fight (00:45)



M.J. & Spider-Man sitting in a tree (01:08)