Branching out.

When I first moved back here to Los Angeles a few months ago, I had planned on taking time off for a few weeks to relax and work on my film. The boxes hadn't even been unpacked and I got a random call from Motion Theory to work on a new music video for Beck. The weird thing for me was that it didn't involve animation- they wanted me to design and build a set! It was a really unique job- to build a miniature version of city street out of found objects that would blend into a flea market scene. Motion Theory has a really cool technique that is based on the back cover fold-ins from MAD magazine. Using motion control and digital compositing they manage to "fold" a video image to reveal something new and unexpected. So for the set I designed- it would look like a normal flea market scene in East LA until the fold-in happens and then the boxes reveal themselves to be a miniature street. The actual build took about a week and had my wife Cindy and I running all over LA gathering stuff from thrift stores to build with. We picked up some really fun stuff- look for the matador painting in the final shot (that was one of Cindy's big finds!).

When you are done looking at my images below be sure to go here to see behind the scenes and watch the video! I'm a huge fan of Beck, and was really proud to work on this. (Got to meet him too!)

Here is the rough sketch I did to show the idea:



And here's a photo I took on the day of the shoot:

Insides.

Nothing new to report due to a long first week on Moral Orel- so I thought I'd put up some pictures of something old. This is an armature by Tom Brierton that he built to my specifications for a robot arm in my film. It is half-scale, and will eventually be covered over in mechanical goodness. I'm hoping to get to this sequence soon...

Earning the Day Rate.

Today was my first day back at my job. It's always weird going back on the clock after a couple months off- but I just can't get over how cool it is that I am actually in a place where I can get paid doing what I love. Stop-motion seems to be making a comeback and I intend to ride the wave as long as I can. It was great seeing my friends from the Robot Chicken crew again- we are about to start a new show for Cartoon Network called "Moral Orel". Can't say more than that but it should be fun.

Since I'm going back to a normal (normal?) fifty-hour week, my progress on my personal film will slow significantly. I hope to get one or two shots done a week and really ramp up in ten weeks when I should have another break.