Bear Animation Walk-Through

I spent the other night working on some traditional 2D animation for use in a music video treatment. The goal was to create a simple loop of bears walking inspired by the Drunken Pink Elephant scene in Dumbo. Here's what I put out (watch in HD):



A here's how I put it together:

With that amazing Disney sequence in mind, I wanted to go as traditional as possible and get out the light board and pencils and actually do it by hand. So, I started by getting a quick bear design from the talented Mr. Tyler Jensen.

Now, I think in motion paths first because I learned animation in After Effects, so I began by planning out the basic motion of what I wanted--rather than figuring it out as I went. I knew I wanted it to be a 12 frame loop because that was the length of a beat in the song I was originally drawing to. So I drew this in pencil:


Then, using that sketch as a guide for where to put my bear over the 12 frames, I got out the lightboard and roughed out bears in varying states of leaping, stretching, and landing in pencil.


Then, when I was happy with how each of the 12 little bears looked, I used the lightboard and a black felt-tipped pen to ink them all clean-like:

Then, I scanned each of them into photoshop, removed their backgrounds and put them all in sequential layers in a photoshop file, which looked like this:
I took this file and imported it into After effects where I applied some color and a grungy texture from a Google image search. Then I looped him, duplicated him with different colors, and staggered the timing so that they jumped over eachother. I also "panned" the digital camera at the same speed they were moving forward so they remained in the center of the screen.

If I were to do this for real, I would probably do twice as many frames and up the framerate because the motion is quick enough that 12 frames a second looks too choppy. Next time...

The Video is Complete!

So, I've posted almost nothing in over a month because my life had been eaten up by a single project: animating the music video for "Chocolate" by (Latin American Grammy winners) Jesse & Joy. Here it is:

Jesse & Joy- "Chocolate" from Carlos Lopez Estrada on Vimeo.

The video was directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada, for London Alley Entertainment, and funded by Warner Music Mexico. It took us about three weeks of preproduction and a month of shooting. It is made up of 2,900 still photographs of custom made cookies, cookie crumbs, salt, and other edible goodies. By that, I mean there are no digital effects; we actually sat, lit, and slowly moved physical objects around the old fashioned way, with the help of Dragon Stop Motion. We were working our asses off. Want to see? Here's a behind-the-scenes:

Behind the Scenes of "Chocolate" from Carlos Lopez Estrada on Vimeo.

So watch it. Enjoy it. And please send it to your friends for Digg submissions, StumbleUpon thumbs ups, and other means of internet validation. Maybe I'll actually get the big bucks for future projects once this gets some--and I hate to use this term, but--viral success.

UPDATE:

We've also now been graciously linked by the following blogs:

The Dragon Stop-Motion Website Blog

Video Static

Cartoon Brew

Animation Magazine dot EU

Best of Animation/Stop Motion Vimeo Channel

Everything Animated Vimeo Channel

And for you Espanol speakers out there:

Hecho en Mexico

Thanks to everyone that has helped spread the word!

Stop Motion!

We've just finished week one of the music video for Jesse and Joy's song, "Chocolate." It's a slow going process with lots and lots of still photos of cookies. But we've been making some really cool looking footage. Here is a sample:



That is a boat made of cookies with waves made of clay rubbed in olive oil. I pre-animated a reference video to overlay in Dragon Stop Motion for these shots. It looked like this:



And here are a couple of pictures of me and fellow animator, Nate Miller, hard at work making it happen:





We've got 2+ more weeks of this. Lots more to come!

Work work work.

So, I've had a bit of a kick of paid work which has put a damper on my random crap production. So, I've got nothing new to show this week. However, the music video that I animated for D.C. Don Juan back in June finally got released online.

D.C. Don Juan - "Lookie Looky" from Cameron Clark on Vimeo.

Ignore the choruses; they got rushed by the label and I didn't have a hand in them. But I think the verses came out pretty nice. Especially considering this is what the footage looked like when I got it:



And there was no specific concept when the footage was shot. I pretty much made it up as I went along.

Clay and Cous Cous

In an effort to spend as little money as possible on a Secret Santa gift exchange this week, I made a little guy out of clay. But I liked him so much that I had to take some pictures before handing him off to his lucky new owner. Check him out:

I recieved a bunch of Boton Rice Candy from my secret Santa, which couldn't have gotten me more excited. God, I love that stuff.

I also have been getting more stop-motion practice in to prepare myself for the video I'm making with the likes of Carlos Lopez Estrada, Christian Heuer, and Nate Miller. The video is going to involve a few different styles of stop motion, and I've set up a webcam to Dragon Stop Motion to start trying some stuff out.

The first test I've done is to try out a sand animation technique that we will most likely be using. I didn't have any sand on hand, so I grabbed some cous cous and tossed it on an old briefcase. It was slow progress, what with the pushing little tiny cous couses along with a matchbook and a paint brush, so I only made about three seconds of animation. But I think it came out pretty cool. I looped it a few times so it's easier to watch and put a track behind it by my friend, Triptonikhan. Check it:

Side Project #3: Hand Drawn Animation

Being between paid gigs means more time for me to do some real time consuming side projects for fun. Plus, I saw Fantastic Mr. Fox (twice!) and was inspired to do something with some physical animation. So, this week I thought I'd get out the 'ol light box and ball point pen and take a stab at some hand drawn animation. I always have fun--but rarely have time for--working out how things are going to move by hand instead of with the computer. It's crazy satisfying. Check it out:



I drew this guy on printer paper and shaded it on the computer. Maybe someday I'll find the money to do an entire short in this style. But seeing as just that shot took me almost three days of work, I don't see that happening anytime soon. Want to fund a couple months of me making a cool short? Eh? Eh?

But seriously.

Oh, and I am still thinking about the music video that will utilize that stop motion dolly from last week's post. Here's a little animation test I did on the computer really fast to take a look at the animation style:



Now, imagine if each of those little images was a physical cut out of paper. And that instead of one move it was a full choreographed dance with multiple dancers cut out of different colored cardstock. Now imaging that they were all placed frame by frame like a domino rally (or a growing time-catapillar?) and shot with a nice digital SLR moving with dolly shots. Because that's what I'm thinking. I'll do a sample shot soon. Possibly by next week...?

And I'm still looking for a modern dance choreographer for that. Know somebody?

And because this post seems to be playing on the test animation theme, I'm going to put this old one up that still makes me laugh. It was my first experiment with lip synching in After Effects and was from a longer script. Enjoy:

Side Project #2: Stop Motion Camera Dolly!

Dolly!

I spent this week designing and building a camera dolly for stop-motion camera moves. I have a stop motion music video idea a-brewin', and I knew I was going to need something for dolly shots. It seems that the demand isn't high enough for any one company to make premade stop motion dollies. But I had seen a design that I liked by one Brady Whitcomb that a google search turned up and knew I could fashion something like it myself. His was controlled by a long threaded rod that was spun at one end to scoot along his dolly platform. However, I had no idea how to cut all the aluminum that he had used. So I sat down and thought about how I could achieve the same control with wood and PVC pipe because I knew how to cut and screw those substances.

After a lot of head scratching and procrastinating I drew this last tuesday:


I then hitched a ride with E.T. Hazzard to Home Depot in Oakland to stock up on some hardwares. I bounced my ideas off of him over the almost two hours we spent walking around and grabbing random things. He took my one-pully idea and proposed using two to avoid the wire catching on itself. He also cut the angles and the metal for the handle. He's really a handygod among handymen.

Without a car, it took me the rest of the week to buy some skateboard wheels--Thank you, 510 on Telegraph--and to take a few more trips to hardware stores--thank you AC transit--as I figured out I had not gotten everything that I needed the first time. It's really a miracle that I yesterday I was able to drill, screw, and sand my way into making this little doozy (all for under $80):

It's controlled by a crank in the center of the board that when spun, slides the dolly along a steel wire down the track. The spitfire sticker came with the wheels. Hella custom rig, yo.

I put a protracter on the bottom so that I can turn the handle by a standard degree each shot and plan out speed ramps to and from a stop.


I have E.T. to thank for this pully design. I was originally thinking one pully with the steel wire making a full rotation around it, but this works a lot smoother and the wire doesn't have to touch itself. Plus it looks really classy.

And here is my very first dolly shot ever. Made with the help of my screen writing buddy Austin Zumbro. Keep in mind this is shot with an old point and shoot still digital and I had yet to put the protracter in and was just eyeballin' it for the rotation. Expect more (smoother) test shots in the coming week.

But although I am very proud of my dolly, that shot is kinda boring. So instead of leaving you with that, I'll leave you with an old bit of stop motion that me and Austin made a couple summers ago. It's silly:

And a couple doodles from the week:

Until next monday...

Side Project #1: Daft Punk Tribute!

View from inside our pyramid! Watch out for ghosts!

For the last two months I had teamed up with DJ Bosko Dahmer to throw one of the finest Daft Punk tribute shows of all time. Now, to some, this leads to the reaction, "Wait, what's a Daft Punk?" or "Why would you commit yourself to such a colossal waste of time and energy?" And to those people I suggest you stop reading now because the following will make little sense. But to those who are lucky enough to understand what a Daft Punk show is like, you can understand how excited I was to be involved in a recreation attempt.

Here's a link to some cellphone footage of a real daft punk show. I saw them at Vegoose in 2007 and it changed my life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78z4ARaRgFk&feature=related

In a clear display of insanity, I spent two months going through the DVD of their show minute by minute and recreated all that I could of their light show from scratch in After Effects. We then coordinated with the carpenter from my film Mr. & Mrs. Pratt, E.T. Hazzard to build a 15 foot tall pyramid on which to project my animation. Then, with replica helmets aquired by Bryan, we mounted the pyramid and performed a humble homage to their Alive 2007 tour in front of a unsuspecting crowd of Halloween revelers in Chico, CA.

Keep in mind, no one gave us permission to do this. We knew Chico would be crazy on Halloween and without any advertising and without charging admission, we set up our show in the parking lot of a apartment complex and sent out a few text messages and let the subwoofers draw a crowd. Oh, technology.

The cops showed up a little after 2 a.m., very confused and very angry.

A highlight from the night was overhearing someone seeing the pyramid who clearly had never heard of Daft Punk. They had pulled out their phone when they saw the lit up pyramid to call a friend and say, "Dude, you HAVE to get down here. There's some crazy party, and they've got a rock teepee!"


But I think I should let the pictures and video do the talking:

Mastermind Bosko Dahmer and carpenter E.T. Hazzard set up his brilliantly designed and crafted pyramid/DJ booth.

E.T. putting the final touches on his pyramid as the sun starts to set.

Bosko, Me, and DJ Ryan setting up the projectors.

Us being Daft Punk before the lights turned on.

Some of my animation...

...and some more animation!

Me in the aftermath.


The whole crew that made it happen.

And although everyone was too drunk to capture any really good video, we've got what E.T. happened to grab with his digital still camera in video mode. Watch:

Daft Chico from Bosko on Vimeo.

So, after all that, I needed a vacation. I went to New York and Boston for a couple weeks and just got back. Although I did a lot of things with a lot of cool people, I took no pictures. The only proof that I was there is these drunken doodles I made in central park, and a sketch an elderly man drew of me on the street for $10. Enjoy!

Oh, and here's the only proof I was in Boston: