Chip Neville - Animation
Chip Neville - Animator
Animation is one of my first great loves. Growing up I was a big fan of Classic Warner Brothers animation as were so many in my generation. I was particularly fond of the use of music in series like Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies. Unfortunately in my early years the technology to make animation of any substance was not easily available for the unfunded independent. Still undeterred, I animated as many Post-it Pads as I could find out of pure love for the medium. Some of those still suvive today on this page (Montage 1). for me as an animator that was where the rubber met the road. To be an professional animator in thiose days meant leaving my beloved Florida and move to Burbank or Toronto. Fortunately I found lots of good work as an illustrator in the publishing business. Finally in the late 1990s the technology became available for me to produce my own animated sequences with sound. I began early working with animated gifs and then as the software evolved. Later I used Macromedia Director, Toon Boom, Adobe Flash and Adobe Aftereffects.
The Ballad of Skunk Ape was originally seen as a graduate school pencil test in 2005. It has now been converted into color and animated using Adobe Aftereffects.
Flash
Flash seemed like the answer to all my animation dreams in the early 2000s. I spent a lot of time making vector images move with the efficient tools in Flash. Unfortunately I was never able to lock down the audio stream satisfactorily as something I could rely on. I eventually stopped focusing all my animation efforts in Flash. After Effects and other DV based animation engines exporting video files proved to be far more stable that native Flash exports when viewed. I still used Flash but when Apple stopped supporting Flash player on its portable devices that chilled my interests in using Flash player to present any content. That is how this website went from an illustrative animated Flash site to a grid based html page.
Still images from Epoch episodes Dino TV and Aurthurs Breakfast.
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Videos of Epoch - Arthurs Breakfast, and Tales From Suburbia - Home In Time for Dinner
Hand Drawing animation Motion Graphics and AE animation As I began to move away from animating exclusively in Flash, I found Adobe After Effects to be very capable and much more reliable. If not in production definitely in export and exposition. It didn't take long for me to begin experimenting with digital video sequences instead or in addition to hand drawn or vector drawn animation. Soon I found great creative satisfaction in exploring the abstract side of video compositing. Prelude to the Afternoon of a Python Boot and Dream Marina videos are a good example of those efforts. Using software like Aftereffects and Premier and Final cut Pro also gave me creative tools to create standard video work like 2006s Impermeable Surfaces. Composit videos Series on Red Tide II, and Prelude to the Afternoon of a Python Boot.
