Every so often we get to work on projects that let us flex our creative muscles. Even better, when we get to work on something millions of viewers will see. This sort of thing has recently happened for Nate Vanderplas, our animator extraordinaire. AMC recently invited him to create an animated piece for their new show, The Walking Dead. Nate created the animated “outro” at the end of the piece – where you see a pistol being held in the foreground with blood running down it, while some gnarly zombies approach in the background.

Nate did a lot of Photoshop prep and animated this segment from the original comic book, The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman. It took Nate about 40 hours to create what you see–he started by breaking the artwork from the comic book apart from the backgrounds, and then had to animate the final product you see in the piece.  This work demonstrates Nate’s great talent for not only animating, but prepping difficult imagery for animation.

You can watch the entire animated teaser on AMC’s website below:

Sorry Apple. You’re too late. Not with your iPad of course. We’re sure that will of course have a variety of amazing uses (none of which will involve finding clever names for things). No, you’re too late with your latest branding artwork. But thanks though. We’re really psyched that our logo will look like an Apple ripoff from here on out.

It’s not that it’s a bad thing to have your creativity affirmed by the worlds largest inventor of awesome stuff, but nobody wants to look like a poser. So for the record… Ah, whatever.

Maybe we’ll just have to turn Grand Rapids, MI into the Silicone Valley of film production.