1 Min Spelling strategies

The past week has been a mad dash to make 7 of these little spelling rules in time for Dyslexia Awareness week. We released one a day (and indeed essentially made one a day). Some really useful stuff in there for dyslexics!

I made myself a showreel!

Tom Plant's Showreel from Tom Plant on Vimeo.

New Nessy video

A new sing a long type educational video that we made at Nessy.  Usual credits: Drawn assets, animatic and direction by me, voice and script by Mike Jones, Music by Paul Taylor and Mike Jones and animation by Oli Knowles.

i g h t animation

Just released: the first Nessy strategy that I animated entirely myself without the help of a proper animator! Hope you enjoy it and get the earwormy song out of your head within an acceptable timeframe 

Merry Christmas from Nessy

Merry Crimbo from Nessy! My first attempt at fully drawing and animating by myself without an animator. Still a lot to learn but I was pleased with what I got done in the time.

Nessy animations

I've been spending a fair amount of my time recently working on short animations for Nessy to teach spelling rules.  Here's a few drawings I did for a couple that were just posted on the Nessy Facebook page:

I drew this in several background in several parts so that the animator (Jane Davies AKA Upstart Thunder) could create a  parallax effect.

More animations (most of which I worked on) can be found on our youtube page here

New intro we made for Hairy Letters

A couple of new animations for Nessy

Top video: drawings and animatic by me, script and voices Mike Jones and final animation by Oli Knowles.

Bottom video: drawings and animatic by me, script and voices Mike Jones and final animation by Sun and Moon Studios.

Professors Vnth

Another spelling rule animation that I worked on (same credits as the previous animation). 

As with Most Nuns there's a catchy song at the end.

Most Nuns Run Very Well

I've been lucky enough to get to direct a load of really fun short cartoons for Nessy recently.  This one was one of my favourites to do. Voice work and script by Mike Jones, drawings, story-board and animatic by me, animation by Oli Knowels, music by Paul Taylor and Mike Jones.

A couple more backgrounds that I drew for Monkeytown

Here's two more backgrounds that I drew for Nessy's Monkeytown. I'll post up a link to the completed program when it's online at the end of the month.

A few more backgrounds that I drew for Monkeytown

Monkeytown is an upcoming bonus games area for Nessy Reading.

Some artwork for Monkeytown

I drew these for our upcoming Monkeytown game for Nessy. I played the final game yesterday for the first time and was really pleased with it. Will be released (for free no less) very soon. Will post more artwork from it tomorrow.

Gang of 3

An animation that I worked on for Nessy featuring some shifty letters

One more Hairy Phonics animatic and animation

Here's another animatic that I made up as a guide to the animator for timing, sound and poses:

And here's the final animation. Drawings by me, animation by Oli Knowles and music by Paul Taylor:

Hairy Phonics Animatic and Animation

I've been really enjoying working on a number of short animations for Nessy Learning over the past few months.  Hopefully I'll be able to show some of them on here soon.  In the meantime I thought I'd write a post about the working process.

I start off by doing a few pages of scribbles like this, just for the purposes of discussing the idea.  The animation in question here is an intro for an upcoming app called Hairy Phonics.

Once the idea has been approved I sometimes do a storyboard, but these days because of strict time and budget constraints I move straight to animatic stage.  For this I assemble a rough sound track, very rough sketches and some crude animation in to a short video that I can send to the animator as a guide.

I then draw out the backgrounds, characters and props on a computer program (Illustrator) and finally pass everything on to an animator (in this case Oli Knowles).  And the final result:

Nessy Reading UK

Big week for us at Nessy: we've just launched the uk version of our enormous online literacy resource Nessy Reading which you can play for absolutely free here: http://play.nessy.com/freeplay/?region=uk . If you know any kids who'd benefit from it (especially dyslexics) please pass on the link.

Guy with flowers, the waiting room and life size cartoons

From the luggage rack

In the waiting rook waiting for the last train

Some cartoons I drew for Nessy a while ago have been made up life size

Finger chewer, I get caught and flower hat

This guy caught me and asked to see the sketch. He must have been ok with it because he asked me to send him a scan:

Here's list of the apps that we're working on this year at Nessy.  As well as this we're doing a load of new games and re-fitting Nessy Reading for tablets and the UK.  It's going to be a busy one!

Nessy Reading poses

A few poses that I drew for the Nessy Reading game Hands Off My Bananas