JOKIER JOKES
I had the privilege to animate for my old friend and mentor David Dacosta’s series
of illustrations for his children’s joke book, “Jokier Jokes”.
THE ASK
I was brought on to create a series of short-form animations tailored for Instagram Reels.
They were designed to grab attention quickly and feel native to the platform. In addition, I developed a set of custom stickers for Instagram Stories that extended the campaign’s reach—giving users fun, shareable tools to interact with the brand and keep the visuals consistent across multiple touchpoints.
BEHIND THE SCENES
I used a combination of DUIK rigging and path animations for these characters,
leaning heavily on my traditional animation background for timing and movement.
DUIK, a robust and highly technical rigging plugin for After Effects, allowed me to build flexible skeletons and controllers for each character. This gave me the ability to fine-tune joint rotations, overlaps, and secondary motions without having to keyframe every single detail manually.
For areas where more fluid, organic motion was needed, I integrated path animations—drawing directly on classic principles like arcs, squash and stretch, and anticipation. The mix of rig-based precision and hand-crafted path work created animation that felt both technically sound and expressive, balancing efficiency with personality.
