The test was in two parts, a storyboard test, and a writing test. For the storyboard test, I had to thumbnail out a premise that I had been assigned, and then take a piece of that premise and draw some finalized boards. The premise they gave was pretty basic and vague, this was on purpose because the show relies heavily on the storyboard artists to write the jokes and the dialogue.

These were my thumbnail boards:

And the cleaned up boards:

The Second half of the test was a writing test. Like I said earlier in the post, They rely heavily on the story board artists to write the dialogue and jokes in the show; so naturally they would test your joke writing ability.

Here is the writing test:

This part of the test was actually much harder than I expected. I was second guessing all of my jokes and was afraid I wasn’t being funny at all with the test. Some parts were scrapped and rewritten a few times, and other parts I just hit a wall and had to believe in my first instinct with the jokes. Whether or not any of it is funny, I do not know anymore… but I do believe that I did my best on the test and I was confident in my work. I learned a lot from taking this test, and I hope in the future I get another big opportunity like this one, whether it be for Regular Show or any other good cartoon out there.

Recently I finished working on a great project. Gumbo Gang on the Boogie Bayou is a series of short animations online and also as interstitials between shows on various PBS stations in the south.

From the website:

So, What Exactly IS the Gumbo Gang?

Gumbo Gang on Boogie Bayou is a transmedia platform for four to seven year old children and their families created to address the obesity and diabetes epidemic by educating them about the positive outcomes of diet and exercise on health. The animations, web site, outreach materials and traveling exhibit focus on increasing physical activity and modeling good nutrition choices – all to a cajun beat.

Gumbo was a fun project to work on, I was one of two animators at Clambake Animation throughout the whole production. This was my first project working within a team (outside of school projects) and I learned a lot about streamlining and organizing my files and developed a more efficient workflow. I was very lucky to be able to work with such a great team of talented people and I hope I have the chance to work with them all again in the future.

You can check out all of the episodes released online on the Gumbo Gang website on the VIDEOS PAGE.

H

At my table I’ll have the rest of my copies of GHOST WOOD and also two completely new books (hopefully some cool prints as well).

Health Feud is anthology of short comics that I hope to put out a new issue two to three times a year. This first issue has two never before seen comics in it. YOU CAN SEE A PREVIEW OF HF1 HERE

40 pages, B+W, linocut cover

Recently I broke my portfolio site. I was moving directories and just messed up all the admin stuff in wordpress and images were broken… it was a total mess. So, I am starting anew. Welcome to the NEW NEW Beckmanimation.com! The blog here will mainly be used to showcase what I’ve been working on professionally and maybe show an insight to my work process as well. I am more active on my Tumblr, Beckmanimation Mini (http://beckmanimation.tumblr.com) That is where you’ll find much more frequent updates on my personal work, comics, animations, etc. Well, the site is still being rebuilt from the ground up, so please pardon our dust while I get the site back up and running again.

In the meantime, check out my webcomic – ULTI-MAN, updating Tuesday’s and Fridays!