MAKING STUFF from Chopsy / Darren Robbie on Vimeo.
“MAKING STUFF MOVE IS EASY…BUT…MAKING STUFF MOVE YOU IS HARD”
The line came to me while pitching on some commercial or other & trying to explain what I loved about animation, & what was particularly hard with certain kinds of animation - trying to get that emotional connection out of a basically inanimate object. I think I was also attempting to explain to some agency people that, yes, I could animate a particular foodstuff (even though I didn’t have that on my reel ) because, guess what…I’m an animator!
Rather than try to tell a particular story I decide to animate the actual words, & in as many ways as possible (by the way, I love typography). I wanted to include every kind of ‘traditional’ model animation technique that I could within the framework of the film - from modelling clay balls to pixilating human hands & bodies, from animating food (the chopped peppers) to timelapse (the scene in the woods), from 2D drawn animation to moving sand, etc.
The whole thing was shot in camera using the Canon Eos 5 (I really wanted to keep that certain ‘feel’ you get) with a bit of cleaning up in AfterEffects in post.
I would like to give a big thanks to everyone who helped, especially:
Sam Morris (cameraman)
Gary & Cat at Scareycat Studios (where I shot most of the film, & who gave me a huge amount of help with modelmaking)
Kev Harwood (who helped me with production)
Emma Kingsnorth at UN1T (for post work)
Dave Reynaud (for composing a fantastic piece of music especially for this film - I’ve always loved the juxtaposition of electronic music to stop-frame animation)
Mcasso music production ltd. for providing the audio track
