Mike Benson

Well this site was never intended to be a blog but it’s been way too long since I updated anything around here. I’ve been working on that recently and today I’ve added my latest reel on the Demo Reel page. Most of the new footage is from the animated feature I worked on from May last year to March this year – known as “Luke & Lucy and the Texas Rangers” in English or “Bob et Bobette et les Diables du Texas” in French or “Suske en Wiske en de Texas Rakkers” in Dutch/Flemish. I know, I know…way too many names for one little movie but that’s the way it goes in the Benelux region. We animated to the Flemish dialogue but most of the folks on the production were French speakers so I will always think of the main characters in the film as Bob and Bobette. You can check out the website for the movie here . These comic book characters have a long and proud history in Belgium & Holland and if anything they are more popular than the more internationally renowned “Tintin”. The Texas Rangers story is based on one of the original classic comic books for these characters. A few changes were made to the original story to bring it up to date for modern audiences but the essential elements of the story remain unchanged.

This would have been my entry for the Animwatch animation challenge 004 but sadly I didn’t get it finished in time.  Luckily we had a slight lull at work between episodes of Animalia so I managed to get it finished last week. I used a modified version of the Hogan rig for the characters in this clip, all animated in Maya 7.0.

Welcome to my new website, chronicling my continuing efforts in the world of animation.The old website was….well….very old and outdated due to lack of attention and an unreasonable phobia for all things HTML. Thanks to my recent discovery of WordPress I anticipate keeping this new site much more up to date. Right now I’m 11 months into working as a Senior Animator for DP Iloura on a new children’s TV series based on the Animalia alphabet book by Graeme Base. The website for the production is in its infancy but you can check out the trailer. I animated the shot of the gorilla and the iguana doing a high five and also the shot of the lion grabbing his own tail and rolling along the ground.