Evolution of a Shot

I'm nearing the 7th inning stretch with the Teenage Bottlerocket music video. Thought I'd share some drawings and show the magical metamorphosis of a shot.

We start with the larvae, a detailed storyboard.

It's amazing how much information I can convey, with several deft strokes of the digital brush. Next, the shot wraps itself in a cocoon of sketchy blue lines and enters it's pupa or "rough" stage.

Finally, after hours of pupation*, a clean drawing emerges and thrusts it's gloriously detailed wings to the world.

In the coming days, the shots will fill itself with a rich palette of hues and tones. But these moments of glory are fleeting, for the lifespan of a typical shot of animation in this music video is merely a second. Such is the nature of animation.

Thanks for reading this far, and for letting me stretch that metaphor paper thin. As a show of gratitude, some extra drawings.

* First time ever using that word.†

† Look at me, I'm David Foster Wallace-ing the shit out of this post.¶
¶ I mean that in the nicest way possible. ®
® I'm sorry.

Exposure Therapy

Crowd shots and walk cycles. Two of my least favorite things to animate, and coincidentally, the two shots which have been plaguing me for the past week. They're both for the Teenage Bottlerocket video I'm working on, and I finally finished cleaning them up, and they look pretty coool- so check 'em out.

First out the gait (wamp wamp) is the walk cycle. This was a little tough because it was a 2 point perspective walk. Here's the initial rough test. Matt helped me look it over and figure it out. I didn't approach it with the best geometric planning, but eventually I came out with this.

Here's a quicktime version for better viewing.



Next up is the crowd shot. Oy vey, this took a while to do, but to see it in motion is pretty satisfying.




Surprisingly, it doesn't take too many drawings to create a convincing loop of a jump. The two characters jumping in the back are only 4 drawings. The girl in the front has a little hop and some extra follow-through, so she's 7 drawings.

What it looks like with all the layers on at once

The head nod of the girl with glasses took a little bit to figure out. In the end, it was also only 4 drawings of her moving her head up and down in an even motion. At first, I had her jerking her head up and down, to try and emphasize her nodding to a beat. It looked too much like her boyfriend with the glasses was ramming her from behind, so had to scrap and rework it. I think the final product with looks fairly non-sexual, so I'm happy with it. But the seed has been planted, so maybe now that's all you can see in it.

That's all folks, for now. Sweet dreams until I finish another interesting shot.

Some Sneaky Peekies

Lot's of work going on right now, mostly on stuff that cannot be posted on the internet. However, what I DO have to offer is a sneak peek at the video I'm working on for Teenage Bottlerocket.



It's for the song "Bigger Than Kiss" off their Fat Wreck Chords debut "They Came From The Shadows". Which you should go buy right now.



The album is awesome. All of the songs are rad pop punk jams- there's some love songs, some sci-fi songs, some fast angry shit thrown in there too- it's sweet. I don't know why I'm not writing music reviews for a living. Anyways, if you don't believe my 90's surfer-bro critique, check out the video for the track "Skate Or Die".



My video should be coming out in late November, but I'll have more updates before then, hopefully some tests and colored-in stuff. Until then, catch ya later most excellent blog dudes.

Obligatory Post About Promoting One's Boyfriend

The 11th annual sweaty, 72-hour improv fest that is the Del Close Marathon has finally come to an end. My face and feet hurt from all that respective smiling and standing. Big ups to all the performers, especially Ronin Dojo voices Tim Martin and Emily Tarver. Speaking of which-



Here's a video that was posted a lil' bit ago starring Mr. Tim Martin (Seth/Hank Henderson). It's called the Octopus Job; written by Joe Wengert, directed by my favorite improv teddy bear Will Hines, and also starring John Gemberling- whom Matt and I did a little animation for on "Fat Guy Stuck In The Internet". Naaaaaame droppppiiiiinngggggahhhhh. Sorry, I like to pretend I'm part of the scene.

And while we're on the subject of other peoples videos, For Tax Reasons will be taking part in a free animation screening this Wednesday in NYC called Midsummer Night Toons.



It will feature some sweet animated shorts and several episodes of Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga. Check out the above trailer, and come out to watch. Here's the info.

Wednesday, August 19th 2009

M1-5 Bar/Longue
52 Walker St. (b/w Church + Broadway)
9:00-9:30

Aaaand finally, I finished the poster for Carlapalooza.

It's a punk benefit for the National MS Society, September 25th-27th in NYC. Lots of sweet bands playing for a good cause.

Ok, I'm going to go rehydrate. Tomorrow, the drawing marathon begins.

A Hastily Thrown Together, Vaguely Themed Post

"Geology is a study of pressure and time. That's all it really takes, pressure and time. . . that and a goddamn big poster. . ."-- Red, The Shawshank Redemption

So here's a quick post about a couple things I've been working on. This is a rough version of the poster for Carlapalooza 2009. It's a punk show Mr. Chadd Derkins puts on to benefit MS. I drew the poster for the 2007 show and Chadd was nice enough to ask me back.

So for this year I decided to run with the battle theme again. Check it out. Looking a the old poster, I felt like it was a bit flat. I decided this year I should make the angle a bit more dynamic- throw in some perspective. It should be my official motto for 2009- "throw in some perspective". That or "fruit on the bottom". I don't know, I've been eating a lot of yogurt lately.

The project I've been steadily chipping away at is the Teenage Bottlerocket video. (this is my attempt to stick with this post's theme.)

One thing I've learned, while making this video, is it's hard to draw hands holding drumsticks. I don't know why, but it's always looks weird when I do it. I think it's the thumb placement.

It's double-y frustrating when you have trouble drawing hands. Not only are you failing at something so essential and basic, but you have the perfect reference right in front of you and you still can't figure out where a knuckle should go. Baffling.

Something I DO need photo reference for are the dreaded crowd shots.
It's always tough to come up with a bunch of random characters and poses. I usually have to look up some photos from shows and just pick out people from the crowd. Otherwise, I end with these really lame, unimaginative people cluttering up the scene.

Thank goodness for the internet and Flickr though. Because I mean, seriously, how often do you look at a man's crowd shots.

Hardly Art, Hardly Garbage

After wrecking my way through 4 silk screens- I now present TWO NEW RONIN DOJO COMMUNITY COLLEGE T-SHIRTS!

The first one is a sweet baby blue number, which you can see Mr. Tom Callow rockin' in the picture above. I don't know if anything else could make that shirt look as cool, outside of a dragon or something.
The second is a yellow and black on white number, in a very punk rock fashion aka I line all this shit up by hand, so it's got a fun DIY feel to it.
I don't have a cool picture of someone in this shirt, but feel free to order one and take some picture of yourself in it that challenges the epic-ness of flames and a staff.

Both are hand printed onto American Apparel fine jersey tees. Available in the For Tax Reasons merch section in about every damn size that exists INCLUDING the lady sizes- or "girly" sizes as they're called in the industry. Seems more polite to call them lady sizes though.

We're hoping to have some more non-clothing merchandise up soon, but until then go check them out, buy one, and take funny pictures of yourself in it. It'll be sweet.

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

Still getting over the post-Otakon euphoria/withdrawal. I never went to sleep-away camp when I was young...er, but I assume this is the feeling you get when you leave camp. You're back to reality, your same old routine, and don't get to hang around all your camp friends all day who are dressed up like Street Fighter characters. That's what happens at sleep away camp right? I mean, I went to day camp. I just assumed when you went away for more than one night, dressing up was a pre-requisite.

Anyways, several news updates. Firstly, Matt and I have some made some massive For Tax Reasons plans for the upcoming months. We're hoping to release some merch to fill out our very small selection. Planning to have some posters and a new t-shirt design.

We WOULD have had the new shirts for Otakon- BUT I've been struuuuggling with silk screening lately. Everything that could possibly go wrong in the making of these new shirts has gone wrong. I've gone through 4 screens now. But I'm not giving up! I have put TOO much money into this operation and have too many blank American Apparel shirts that aren't my size.

Anyways, we should have new shirts coming up soon.

Secondly, I finally joined the Twitter machine. So if you want to see the random thoughts I have as I sit around animating, follow me: twitter.com/ben_levin

Finally, I'm back to work on the music video for Teenage Bottlerocket. We've switched things up and I'm now doing a video for their upcoming full-length debut release on Fat Wreck Chords "They Came From The Shadows". It'll be dropping September 15th, which means, I cannot reveal details of the super secret new song that's in the video. But I will give you a peek at the storyboards I just finished today. Check it out.

I know, right. Total album spoiler. Ok I'm out, my back hurts.