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The Phoenix Gene

by Michael Cawood October 11, 2023 in
VR Action Game, Narrative Experience and Book being developed for Meta Quest 2 and Quest 3

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Third Planet Problems

by Michael Cawood January 26, 2021 in
Animated Series Pitch

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Cupid’s Apprentice

by Michael Cawood January 26, 2021 in
Feature Pitch

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It’s a Squirrely Life

by Michael Cawood January 26, 2021 in
A wild holiday adventure that teaches the value of friendship, community, and responsibility. When all the nuts are stolen from the Oak Creek bank, George the squirrel feels guilty for leaving the vault open. If he doesn’t find the nuts, Christmas will be ruined. He goes on a journey to learn what forest life would be like without him and gets the courage to face the thief. It’s a nutty spin on the Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, great for kids ages 7+

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Headspace – Mindful Eating

by Michael Cawood November 10, 2020 in
Series

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The Wrong Rock

by Michael Cawood May 18, 2019 in
Short Film

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Eru and the Ghost Kingdom

by Michael Cawood May 17, 2019 in
Art Direction for Animated TV Series

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The Mummy

by Michael Cawood November 17, 2016 in
I worked with Proof Los Angeles and London to setup a new Previs department in Shepperton Studios near London. We worked closely with the Director, VFX Supervisor and Producer to develop sequences and explore concepts for a reboot of The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise.

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Devils, Angels & Dating

by Michael Cawood November 17, 2016 in
In 2006 I started developing a short computer generated film called 'Devils, Angels and Dating'. This film was made with the internet in mind, fully aware of modern trends. I was inspired by modern dating trends and let those themes influence the core ideas behind the film.

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Pete’s Dragon

by Michael Cawood November 16, 2016 in
I filled in as Postvis Supervisor nearing the end of production, and then hung around to animate some new shots for the last few weeks of the project.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops III Commercial

by Michael Cawood November 15, 2016 in
Previs for the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Trailer

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Skylanders: Giants

by Michael Cawood November 14, 2016 in
After the release of my short film 'Devils, Angels and Dating' I was just putting my name out there as a potential Animation Director when I came across this unique opportunity in New York. Panda Panther was recruiting for animators for their next big Skylanders job. After a conversation with the Directors it was clear there was a good opportunity here for me to help them at a high level and I was hired as an Animation Director. There were a few related projects around the franchise and the first was a number of cinematic sequences for the XBox 360, PS3 and Wii games due out before Christmas. I took a Lead role alongside a good number of other talented Leads, heading up two of the twelve sequences...

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Skylanders: Giants (3DS)

by Michael Cawood November 13, 2016 in
Hot off the completion of the main Skylanders Giants cinematics we were tasked with a set of four new cinematics for a different Nintendo 3DS game based on the Skylanders characters. This time we had to work in Stereoscopic 3D, which was actually new territory for me. I understood a lot of the fundamentals from following the business and taking some lectures from experts, but I'd yet to spend much time practicing it. There was no time to worry about it though and we dived in...

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Mario Odyssey Commercial

by Michael Cawood October 31, 2014 in
Previs for the Mario Odyssey commercial

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Megaman: Maverick Hunter

by Michael Cawood September 15, 2014 in
During my two years at Armature as their Lead Animator I worked on a number of, as yet, unannounced prototype games for a variety of publishers. This evolution of the Megaman franchise surfaced on various games news sites and video portals in 2013.

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Pokemon Sun & Moon Commercial

by Michael Cawood October 31, 2013 in
Previs for the Mario Odyssey commercial

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Volkswagon Illustrated Commercial

by Michael Cawood June 13, 2013 in
Previs Supervisor for Car Commercial

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Kameo: Thorn Beats Kameo

by Michael Cawood January 6, 2012 in
There were plenty of animatics created that dug into the story elements of the game with characters that actually needed to have performances, but this was probably the first one that I made with full animation. Previous to this all the FMV work had been cheated comic book style (semi-animated) scenes or the evolve scenes that were more spectacle than performance...

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Skylanders Giants: Trailer

by Michael Cawood September 25, 2011 in
This trailer was updated and had some new shots added after we completed the main cinematics for the game.

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Volkswagon Emoji Commercial

by Michael Cawood June 13, 2011 in
Previs Supervisor for Car Commercial

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Kameo: Title Screen

by Michael Cawood April 7, 2010 in
This group shot plays under the Title/Start screen and shows off all the characters the player can play. It went through many iterations over the years...

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Red vs Blue: Season 10

by Michael Cawood March 15, 2010 in
I returned to Rooster Teeth for another stint on Red vs Blue, this time kicking off the new Maya department for Season 10. Previously Poser had been their primary 3D package and it was still in use for this season too, but it was becoming obvious that they'd need to develop a more widely adopted package for most things in order to expand the goals of the show. I headed up the initial stages of that, built up a team, techniques, tools, work flow etc...

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Kameo: Intro

by Michael Cawood December 5, 2009 in
Funnily enough this sequence was originally conceived for the purposes of a trailer. Nick and I (our concept artist and a past animator) both felt strongly that it was time we did an advert that eluded to the story of the game rather than just quick cuts of the gameplay. So after a meeting about what we wanted, I designed this idea of seeing mini pivotal scenes from throughout the story glimced briefly in the clouds before the camera sweeps down to the castle below to start showing off the characters in action. It was enormously effective and ...

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Kameo: End of Game

by Michael Cawood April 6, 2009 in
The magnum-opus of the entire game. This huge sequence had to top everything you'd seen, push the capabilities of Kameo beyond what you'd previously experienced, draw together numerous story threads, introduce a twist in the plot and give the player a satisfactory ending. It was developed towards the end of the game's development so was under pressure to be completed fast and there were other...

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Kameo: Evolve Pummel Weed

by Michael Cawood January 6, 2008 in
All the Evolve scenes were very complex pieces that required a lot of R&D, but they presented fantastic opportunities to do something imaginative. The only rules were that it had to start with the baby monster and it had to transform into the adult monster, ideally through a method that reflected their elemental theme. I've included an earlier version of this Evolve cinematic developed for the original Xbox. I later decided to upgrade all the FMVs to HD resolution at the same time as changing the characters to match their new Xbox 360 designs.

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Tenkai Knights: Website Intro

by Michael Cawood December 10, 2007 in
I'd worked with the client a couple of times before for some pitches, and this interactive website was one of the ones that got commissioned. I was able to work from home, which made for a nice change. There was a good number of ...

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Panda Pander

by Michael Cawood June 28, 2007 in
Panda Pander gathered a few million hits at Crackle before they changed their format. After Two Face Tabby I didn't want to spend so long on my next project so I did some one off exercises to flesh out my showreel while I spent a few months developing the pre-production material for Panda Pander (working title "Shelf Life").

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Kameo: Evolve Flex

by Michael Cawood April 6, 2005 in
Like all the evolve scenes Flex was a unique problem. He had to look like water and be completely malleable. So this required looking into water and water shaders, and some hand painted frames to blend between elements. There was another water themed scene, but I've not included it here because I only did a polish job on the effects and final look of it and the animation was done by Neil. Both scenes turned out pretty well though and I was lucky that they didn't change too much when the rest of the characters were being updated (spikes wouldn't have looked good on water!). Here's the animatic for the Flex scene.

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Guardian of the Highlands

by Michael Cawood December 21, 2004 in
I spent six months in Glasgow, initially as a Senior Character Animator but quickly taking over as the Animation Supervisor on this CG feature film featuring the voices of Sean Connery, Alan Cumming, Gail Porter, Ruby Wax, Richard Briers, Miriam Margolyes.

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Kameo: Theena Gives Book

by Michael Cawood April 7, 2004 in
This deleted sequence started life like most of the others as an animatic. But at this stage storyboards and animatics were fairly new to the team and they liked them so much they thought we didn't really need to do any animation. This wasn't initially a popular decision with the animators but ...

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Kameo: Evolve 40 Below

by Michael Cawood April 6, 2004 in
I originally created the Snowman Evolve scene with a more snowball like theme but as the character designs all changed this scene had to be updated as well. All the characters were generally made to look more detailed and aggressive, mostly through the addition of bumpy surfaces and spikes. In this particular case I actually preferred the original 'Snowman' design and I think he lost his snowball qualities in the update. So you can see both the final and the original versions here, along with the animatic I originally story-boarded below.

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Two Face Tabby

by Michael Cawood June 9, 1998 in
This started with a mythical legend I researched that I have completely forgotten now. My old friend Scott helped me find it, he's good with things like that. The legend formed the basis for the story and provided the name of the beast: Fenrir. The I didn't make any attempt to retell the legend, I just borrowed the idea for the characters and formed my own story from them in a similar setting. My plan for this was ambitious so I never actually managed to completely finish it. Some of the scenes are lacking ...

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Archer: Software Demo

by Michael Cawood May 18, 1998 in
During my last summer holiday as a University student I found a local company that built and sold video editing suits, they were also the UK distributors for a number of different pieces of software. I approached them, pitched some ideas and I was asked to do some animation for a video that would showcase and demonstrate the basics of an animation coloring system...