Music Pen Interactive Designs

This page shows some of my design work done while I was at Music Pen, an interactive CD-ROM company in New York City. Sadly, Music Pen is no longer operating but it was a place that I hold dear to my heart. The owner allowed her artists great latitude when designing projects and I feel I really came into my own as an artist while employed there.

Character Designs

Here's a page from my portfolio that shows off some of my character designs that I've done over the years.

Most of these characters were designed while I worked at Music Pen, a now defunct multimedia company in New York City where I worked as a senior artist for six years.

Old 2D Animation Reel

This is my 2D animation reel that I cut together a couple of years ago. Most of this work was done throughout the 1990's, either for DMI Productions or for Music Pen. In retrospect, I wish I had not included the 3D work as it seems terribly dated now.

However, I make no apologies for the music, which was composed about 10 years ago.

For the record, all the artwork and animation is mine except for the following:

Caveman sequence backgrounds: Joe Corrao
"Baby's Morningtime" (girl painting on hillside) backgrounds by Richard Lazlo
"The Magic School Bus" backgrounds: Peter Carella and Joe Corrao
"Toast Of The Town" character design: Peter Conlon

Multiplane experiment

I've been playing with a program called Anime Studio 5. Anime Studio allows you to place various pieces of artwork along the Z axis, which gives a wonderful sense of depth as the camera moves side to side or in and out.

As an experiment, I quickly created a scene in Photoshop. Each layer of artwork was created on a Photoshop layer. The various elements were easily made using some wonderful brushes I downloaded from deviantart.com. Each layer was then saved out as a PNG file, imported into Moho and then spaced out along the Z axis. The effect worked wonderfully and I'm going to really try this effect out more extensively in the near future!

Jelly Telly Bumper Animation

When Phil vischer (of JellyTelly fame) asked for bumpers to be used on his new website, I submitted this animation. It's a bit dark and downbeat but I like how it turned out anyways. The 3D animation was all done in Carrara and the 2D animation was done in Moho (now Anime Studio).

Clinton Mill Historic Recreation animation

Here's an experimental animation that I did in a program called Canoma, which sadly didn't survive it's first release. The software is pretty limited but I liked the concept of being able to generate 3D models and animations from photographs. So, I've taken it upon myself to recreate parts of the city I grew up in that no longer exist.

Ballou Mill Historical Recreation animation

This is the long since demolished Ballou Mill, which stood just before the waterfalls in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. The animation was created by compiling a few images in Photoshop and cleaning them up. I then brought the images into Canoma and mapped them onto geometry to create the final animation. There's still a few problems with it but I'll replace it as I continue to work on it.

Mentor Commercial for Home Shopping Network

Here's a Flash animation I designed while working at Mentor Communications. I oversaw the graphics, animations and storyboards, though the characters themselves were designed by Herta Silva. The animation was programmed by Steven Bean. The script was written by Chuck Fuoco.

Click here to see the finished animation.

Global Guy Flash animation

Here's an animation created for a company called Global Pathways. Global Pathways was dedicated to providing high-quality, low cost computers to those who needed them. The decision was made to include an introductory animation that anyone could view that could explain how their new computer operates. I designed, storyboarded and did the animation artwork,while Steven Bean did the actual Flash programming and animation to create the final movie. The script was written by Chuck Fuoco.

Click Here to view the movie.

Verizon Flash Presentation

Here's another flash animation that I made while at Mentor Communications. I storyboarded and directed the animation production. The art was done by myself as well as the art production staff and the programming was done by Steven Bean. The script was by Chuck Fuoco.

Click Here to view the e-brochure.