Making of Isaac's Song music video

When Asthmatic Kitty asked me to make a video for one of their new artists, they requested that it be similar in style to what I did with 'water curses'. Water Curses was about 70% made on the computer with flash and 30% hand made stop motion charcoal. I feel like I made enough random flash images to last me a life time, so I didn't feel like going back to that any time soon. I decided to apply the same concept to paper. I really wanted to stay away from using computer assisted movement, but you can see that there are 3 small segments that do. If I had more time I would have made sure everything was moving by hand.



Here I have laid out almost everything I used to make the video. For some reason I didn't feel like throwing it all away when I was done. Some parts of the video got unavoidably destroyed though. I experimented with a few things, which involved painting over some stuff. Anyway, this next picture is of a bird type thing that I made early on when I considered incorporating a light story element to the video. I think I was going to have a fox in there or something, but it really went nowhere so I axed it.



I had no idea how traditional animators sync audio to their drawings. I kind of think they use some kind of time sheet or something, who knows, who cares, not me. Every time I make a non computer video I improvise the techniques anyway so why stop here. What I ended up doing was pretty tedious but I didn't mind so much. First thing I did was create a new after effects composition at 12 frames per second. I imported the audio file and created a white circle layer on a black background. Then I converted the audio to key frames and applied an expression ( linear(value,0,100,0,500) ) to the null object it creates and linked the white circles scale to its slider.



I know that sounds complicated, but it only takes a few seconds to do. If you want to know more about audio key framing in after effects you can look around the video copilot website. Here comes the tedious part. For all the segments that required shapes to move or change in size in relation to the audio I created this grid system where each box represents a frame. When the audio gets louder I wrote in a / in the box, and when it got quieter I put a \. And when the value didn't change at all I - and when the volume hit a peak I put a O. So I used the after effects graph to show me frame by frame how the audio was acting. Id move the bar ahead one frame in after effects and write down its corresponding symbol on the graph. Yeah, It took a while.



When I was painting the frames I marked off my progress with an orange marker. The next image shows a stack of animated shapes that used the grid.



The next two images show the little flowery type things that fall down the screen about 20 seconds in. As well as the ink branch type thing that shows up around that time. For the ink branches and also the other tree type things I would put the paper under the camera, paint a few strokes, take a picture, and repeat. Also the zoom ins were all done in camera, no computer work there.





I also did some green screen-ish type stuff with some of the layers I didn't want to blend. I did this with the falling flowers and the red and purple shapes that show up around the middle of the video.



For the blue and red tree looking things I just painted them on white paper. If you use a linear burn effect on them in after effects it naturally gets rid of the white.



Here is a picture I might have shown before. Its my little animation set up. The camera goes in the hole at the top. A little stool gets the image nice and close. I use regular house lamps to light it all up. For these shots I needed the paper to line up perfectly so I used metal rulers. Also I have glass that comes down and flattens the curvy paper out.



Ok, I think that pretty much covers it. If anyone isn't clear on anything and would like to know more, just leave a comment and I'll respond. Like I said before, I just couldn't throw it all out so I keep it all in my animation box.



For the record, this is my first official music video. It's quite a milestone for me. Up until now I was just a hobbyist at best. I don't know if this video will lead to more work. But even if it doesn't I'll at least have this nice accomplishment under my belt. Thank you Asthmatic Kitty and DM Stith for the opportunity.