Monday, March 6, 2017


 
So there's been a couple times in the past where my animation work has been used to help get a movie greenlit...so I figured I'd try to help in my own little way to get a Wicked movie made. ;)

I actually can't believe this movie hasn't been made already...seems like a no brainer...I have a vision of taking my two daughters to the premiere of an animated Wicked film, but they are getting older and time is running out. C'mon guys!

Wednesday, March 11, 2015


I'm doing an early spring cleaning of the hard drive and created a little sampler of some of the animation work I've done over the last few years.

Most of this stuff is various prototyping, tests and work animations that are in various stages of "unfinishedness", but I thought people might like to see some of the stuff I've been working on.  The hard drive is cleaned out for now...

Unstoppable.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

After I heard this great parody song, I decided to create an actual Harley Quinn model to sing it.
The song credit goes to Hesychia7 and SydneyAmber for this parody version of the song Do You Wanna Build A Snowman from Disney's Frozen.

I included an Animation Progression Breakdown with notes about my process, but really it's just an excuse to lengthen the animation and play more of the song.

Make sure you stick with it until the end for the "surprise" ending  ;)

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Here's something for the 3DStudio Max animators out there.  Tired of the tiny, hard to read frame counter displays out there?  Well here you go...
A free renderable geometry Frame Counter to render with your "work in progress" animations.  Just place it in relation to your camera, type in the animation title, name and workflow status in the attribute holder and it becomes a great help with critiques.  You can download it from my Tutorials page here:

http://www.themichaelsmith.com/p/tutorials.html#FrameCounter

I also included instructions on how to create your own....plus included a script you can copy that will create one for you.

Have Fun and Keep Animating!!!

Friday, January 31, 2014

I'm an animator at Zynga in Austin. Woo Hoo! All the free lunches and dinners you can eat (and sometimes breakfast too)!

Friday, November 1, 2013


Grabbed some dubstep and some gameplay footage of the animation work I've done over the last few years.  So crank up your subwoofer and enjoy this sampler of a little of the animation work I've done in games over the last few years.

I put it together from various fan gameplay footage I could find online. Thanks to all those fans whose footage of my animations I used to make this reel.

Games included in this reel:
Tomb Raider: Legend
Fracture
F.E.A.R. 3
Reign of Thunder
Minimum

Thursday, October 24, 2013


Welp...I guess this YouTube thing is going to catch on...

I finally got around to officially adding my Transformer videos from back in the day to YouTube (I think you could already find the vids on there in some form or another by other people).

I did the Volkswagon transformer back near the end of the year 2000, and man...computer animation tools have come a looooong way since then.  It went viral before there was such a thing as going viral.  People had to email the video to each other back then.  Alright, I guess I'm starting to sound like the old man in the rocking chair. Enjoy the vids!