“Archer”

ROLE

  • Animator, After Effects Department

OVERVIEW

  • "Archer" is a 22-minute hybrid animation comedy series that follows the character, Sterling Archer, as he navigates the changing landscape of the spy world. “Archer” was created by Adam Reed and is executive produced by Reed, Matt Thompson, and Casey Willis at the animation studio, Floyd County Productions. The series is produced by FX Productions.

  • Link: https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/archer

DUTIES

  • Animated over 75 episodes and promos from season 3 through season 7 of FX's Emmy winning series "Archer" using Adobe After Effects. The After Effects Animation Team was one of three animation teams. The other two were the 3D Animation Team, and the Toon Boom Harmony Team. Together, we collaborated on the animation for the series. The After Effects Animation Team was responsible for the primary character animation for the series.

  • Averaging 30 - 60 seconds of animation per day.

  • Character animation

  • Lip-sync characters with 7 to 54 different mouth shapes. Create transitions between mouth shapes. Building on existing naming convention practices.

  • Compositing

  • VFX

  • Character rigging through the use of puppet pinning, mesh warping, and hierarchical grouping

  • Environmental setup

  • Pipeline management.

  • Assisting in the training of new hires

  • Creating manuals outlining the studio’s best practices for lip syncing characters.

  • Collaborate with adjacent departments to create a feedback loop for more efficient production pipeline.

  • Track shot and access completion progress for production

  • Trouble shoot asset errors and complications in the most efficient way possible. Sometimes this meant using simple patches, other times it mean redrawing assets myself. Things I had to consider were: can this process be replicated in the future easily? Can

  • Communicate with the Animation Director to ensure each shot stayed on vision.

PROGRAMS

  • After Effects : Primary software used for animation

  • Toon Boom : In-house training for continued education

  • Google Sheets : Shot organization

  • Jabber : Internal Communication

  • Wiki : Custom learning platform for us to achieve manuals and workflows

PROCESS

  • Read script

  • Watch animatic

  • Setup characters

  • Setup scenes with necessary shots, characters, animatic, audio

  • Animate

  • Track progress

EXPERIENCE

  • Notable projects include animating content for Animation Domination and Comic Con San Diego. Working with characters from “Family Guy” and “Bob’s Burgers”.

  • During my employment, I was trained in character animation on Toon Boom Harmony and participated in company-exclusive figure drawing sessions.

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Animator