Jack Shannon: h2g2 Launch Animation

h2g2 is a community website based on the 'guide' in the cult book 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galazy' by Douglas Adams, who was one of the founding members and directors of the company (which incidentally began its days as The Digital Village).

At the very beginning the resident h2g2 artists created a series of bizarre animations to celebrate the launch of the website.

They were presented in the form of 'reports' on all manner of strange earth things, from galactic field researchers for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to their head journalistic honcho, Ford.

I was responsible for three of the field reporter characters - Jack Shannon the Dolphin, Sideswipe the Porpoise (Shannon's sidekick) and Toobitz, a rather strange looking two-in-one character. I designed the characters and made the animations as well.

Limited by the low internet bandwidth of the day for most users, the animations were a little clunky, but that somehow seemed to work with their overall weirdness anyway!

Above is Jack Shannon & Sideswipe's grand gala launch animation!