I was lucky enough to be called back to work at Foundation Imaging, after the first really big layoff there at the end of Max Steel Season 1.  Most of the groundwork at rebuilding and improving the Max Steel content had been done towards the end of the first show, so everyone pretty much knew what to do.  Most of those hired back were people who knew the ropes and had been doing shows at Foundation since "Roughnecks".  The new production schedule lasted 6 weeks per show and because of the longer production times (compared to the first season), we were allowed to work on things to a more satisfactory conclusion, I think.

Below, you will find a smattering of some of the work I've done on the second season of Max Steel.  After this show, we were extremely lucky to work with Bob Forward (an awesome producer and writer!), on the new british CG show, "Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future".   Working for Mr. Forward proved to be the complete antithesis of what we'd experienced earlier.  I wish more shows were like that.

Most kids like robots.  I loved them as a kid and in the 80's , that kind of technology was hailed as something lurking just around the corner...  Well, whatever happened to all the cool things, like honest-to-god useful robots, that we were supposed to have in the future?  I blame the world's lawyers.  They ruined the "cool future" we all could have had.

Oh well, at least in kid's shows, you can fake it.  And speaking of fakes, Berto's two robotic pets (a cat and a dog) bear an amazing resemblance to Sony's AIBO.  Hmmm...

In this shot: I hand animated the kitty-bot to "meow-bark-woof" and spin it's head around, a la "the Exorcist".  As most peope know, having the actual sound to make the character act to, is ultra important.  Unbeknownst to me, the foley I was given, was changed in the final version used in the show.  It really weakened the performance.  Good thing I saved the original audio.

Berto's possessed Cyber Cat is a clear attempt by Sony to impart the desire to own an AIBO, to a young audience...  

Tiger Toys has a nice, affordable clone called "iCybie", that looks pretty cool.

Model by Jose Perez.

Here is some little known trivia about Kat:  her original name was "Jet".  It makes me think of Joan Jet for some reason.  Anyways, I like the name "Kat" much better. 

She was designed to be a replacement for Rachel form the first season, and was part of a larger retooling of the show.  I guess it was felt that Max's love interest in Rachel was too confusing for a younger audience, so a more neutral relationship with a female lead was implemented.

In this shot: Evil sentries fly out of a panel in the wall and shoot explosive laser fire at our heroic duo.  Yes, no one suspects the evil flying turtle-bots!  You can see one closing in behind Kat in the picture on the right.

Kat and Max enter a dark & creepy lab to do some snooping around, but get intercepted by evil flying turtle-bots!

Do not mock the turtle-bots!

Max has the ability to do a  few cool things, since he was infused with nanobots in a tragic accident.  Going "Turbo" and engaging 'stealth mode" seem to be two of them...

In this shot:  Max picks up and shields himself from intense laser fire.  Apparently, the evil turtle-bots can pick him out even when he's using his refractive ( and therefore invisible) body.  For the transformation to be clean, two versions of the same shots are rendered and then cross dissolved, to prevent any rendering weirdness.  Surface morphing wasn't a satisfactory solution.

The five reflected beams you see in the still, are really  one.  It's the result of the 5 pass motion blur we generally had to use for kid's shows.

Max Steel, in stealth mode (using a refractive body), fends off a laser attack from an evil flying turtle-bot!

I used "Polk Parent" for Max picking up the reflective tray, holding it, then tossing it as he ran away... Chicken!

Facial performance is something that I tried to put as much time into as possible.  I love shots where I have more than one character in a shot and I get to play them off one another.  

Lip sync supports the dialogue of the voice actor, but when other characters react to it, that brings in a whole other level of warmth and charm to a shot.  If you understand the relationships between the characters (making their actions and reactions fit the show bible & the spirit and context of the shot you're working on), you can draw your audience in and make them forget they're watching a kid's show.

The film, "Final Fantasy", was a huge let down for me.  After 5 years of modeling and animating, not only was the story terribly weak (bad sci-fi!), the characters were at their weakest whenever they talked and "reacted" to each other!  What a terrible shame that something so important to good storytelling was neglected.

"Just you wait and see!" says Kat.

She's the new girl in town and won't take any guff from a nanobot infested teen, just because he has his own show.

There are no evil flying turtle-bots in this image.

No, this is not an act of terrorism.

A mind altered college student has taken a winch and deliberately smashed it into a steel building under construction.  Max Steel is below with an immobilized hostage, who looks an awful lot like Adu Paden; a producer at Sony.  Hmmm...

I hand animated the interaction between the beams and the swinging winch for the sequence.  Bill Arbanis was assigned to technically direct the shots when the animation was completed. 

Garret, under mind control, smashes into a building with a huge winch.

Max hears and sees the tumbling steel beams of doom bearing down on him and the CG Adu Paden clone.  Our hero kicks the hostage out of the way, then does a very Martix-like back flip in "bullet time".

In this shot:  I again hand animated the debris colliding with itself and falling.  This prevents Max from getting chopped up.  Since the shadows would reveal any speed changes, the beams fall normally, then shift into "bullet time" just as Max pushes off the ground for his back flip.

The beams continue to fall and then bounce while Max recovers from his flip.   The smoke and dust was TD'd by Bill Arbanis.

Max pulls a 'Matrix' style escape while tons of brand new steel beams tumble gracefully downward.

Garret, still  under the mind control influence of the "evil" eyeglasses he was given, is torn between knowing the right thing to do and what his evil master told him.  Basically, he was supposed to blow up the building with a large bomb hidden in the basement (I put a big DETONATE sign on it, just like in the boards!), and so this show might not see the rerun circuit much, due to the attacks from 9 / 11.

It's not as unlikely as you might think.  There were two episodes of "Invader Zim" that were not released, since one of them dealt with the FBI and the other depicted a space ship crashing into a building.  I however, would have given kids (and adults) more credit and played them anyways.  Why let these muslim extremists have the satisfaction of affecting our lives to that degree?

Moody lighting... Something you don't see much of in kid's saturday morning CG shows...  We were always looking for ways to make the show visually rich and interesting.  New advances in volumetric lighting have made these kind of shots more practical.