Webster Colcord

One of the lower budget spots that we did at the PDI/Dreamworks Commercial and Effects division (which was closed in 2002) was a PSA for McGruff the Crime Dog on how to deal with bullies. I did some character designs for director Larry Bafia based on the client's concept that the animation should mimic a videogame.


Click on the drawing above to see it at higher resolution, it's sort of a combination of character design and animation posing.


Here's the final spot, which ended up being done almost completely by one artist (I think mostly for budgetary reasons) - I didn't work on it as an animator but I enjoyed working on the design.

My old friend Justin Kohn recently invited me to participate in a fun project that he's doing along with some of his students from the Academy of Art. He's been making these bizarre mechanical creatures for awhile and we're finally putting them through their paces, animating them against greenscreen on the stage at the Ex'pressions College in Emeryville.

I shot for a day - it was quite a challenge as these are very heavy contraptions with a lot of moving parts. I only managed to do about 30 frames, but I think the results were pretty good for my first time with this puppet. I'll be posting more pictures and movies when it all gets put together.

Ken Priebe has just finished his new book, The Advanced Art of Stop Motion Animation and it features an interview with me and Larry Bafia about our work in the Vinton era of clay animation and beyond.

The Dandy Warhols, "Welcome to the Third World" director's cut from Webster Colcord on Vimeo.

In honor of the incident report that my 10-year old son Edward got today at school for misbehaving, I present this drawing that I did for him when he was about 5. Fisher Price marketed these macho toys called "Rescue Heroes" to little kids and they would package an animated movie on DVD along with the toy. This is a little drawing that I made for him on a piece of cardboard, the toy is on the right. The two dust spirals were Ed's contribution.

If you want to see a drawing by Edward, you can find one on a t-shirt in my store.