My daughter was obsessed with Sesame Street. She started bringing me chalk or crayons and asking me to draw one of the characters by saying,"Seesee Momo? Or, seesee Butt? Or seesee Einee?". They're so simple in design you'd think they'd be easy to draw, but from memory, it's surprisingly hard. Here are some of the many drawings she's asked me to do.
They're special to me, not because of the drawings themselves, but because of all the scribbles on the pictures. Each time I drew one of these, Cammi would plop down in my lap and draw along with me. Each one represents a little father-daughter memory.
As I was making club graphics for Planet Earth a camp member asked me to make an animation based on Devo and set it to their song "beautiful world". It was a challenging request because its easy enough to create an animation based on a specific theme, but creating one based on a band is a different story. It's easy to abstractly represent "the 80's" or happiness or sadness, but how do you represent a band abstractly?
I didn't know anything about them outside the "Whip It" music video so I watched a documentary on them. Turns out that they're a band inspired by a single concept: De-evolution. (Devo... De-evolve, get it?) I always thought they were a joke band, but it turns out they were a very serious, angry, socially conscious band raging about overpopulation, consumption and the dumbing down of the "MTV generation". They also had a thing for "spuds". They were basically the most punk new wave band ever.
I decided to theme my animation around obsolete technology. The challenge though was to represent the obsolete technology and also represent the 80s, Devo AND the rotating earth theme.
Ok, that one is easy, but what else?
I started with the basic concept of a slide projector to transition between shots. I'd recently seen phenakistoscope discs and thought they'd be perfect for the animation. I found some that seemed to fi the theme of de-evolving, split each of the segments of the discs into their own parts, rotated them at 24 frames per second and sepia-toned them.
I found a great disc of an ancient map of the earth, but it wasn't quite enough earth, so I added a proper rotating earth based on the old universal logo.
Finally, I added some neon trails and particle effects to emphasize the 80's concept. Admitted, its a lot of concepts crammed into a single video. Did it work? I dunno. You decide.
I've been stewing on this idea for over a year. A simple seated portrait that someone could glance at for a split second before their gaze ricochets onto the next thing. But if you really look, you start to notice stuff is wrong. I was inspired by the old hidden image puzzles in Highlights magazine. There are 15 "mistakes" total in the image. I chose a lodge setting as an excuse to get a bunch of junk in the scene and give me more to work with. I built a set in our garage and did as much as I could practical, then photoshopped the rest. I won't go into the details because "spoilers" but if you want a cheat sheet, I've included it at the bottom of the blog.
I can say without a doubt that this was the most difficult shoot we've done so far. Less because of the setup and more because we have a toddler...
Special thanks to Santino Lascano who gave me composition advice, Eric Lyman who came over at 8am to actually pull the trigger, Jeremy Moe who lent me his camera gear and all the friends who gave me feedback and ideas.
That last one is borderline impossible, even with the hint. Good luck!
