Mr. Animator, I'm Ready for my Closeup

Well, today we have received our last animated shot and it is...Zoo Pandas. It's sad that production is coming to and end and that we won't be able to look forward to the Friday deliveries of animation anymore. It was always so exciting to see the audio clips that we had heard repeatedly transformed into dialog coming from a character's mouth. The animation is so consistently good that I forget that the lines of dialog are not actually coming from that animal, even when those lines come from people that I know.
One of the things that helps this illusion is when you see the character's shadow behind the slate. It really seems as though they are waiting for the director to call action before launching into their performance. Here's an example:

Slugging Percentage

I don't have much time to blog today since we're in the midst of prepping our first two episodes that are to be audience-tested very soon. I'm hoping that they do well and the rest of you will get to see them on TV soon. I think they're really good and just hope the rest of America agrees. There is only one more day of animation and then all shots for our first season of shows will be complete. The first shot we received (the termite) was back in early July so it's been quite a process. It remains to be seen which will be the last shot we receive, but here's a still from one of the last batch which is near and dear to my heart. The voices of the two slugs are from one of the interviews that I did with my cousin and her friend. Hopefully she will warm to the idea of being an animated slug. And hopefully I will warm to the idea that my interviewing voice will be heard in the episode. Ugggh.

Taunting Across the Atlantic

Director Merlin (rather emphatically) reminds us of all the delicious Victoria Sponge Cake we're missing out on:



And so I'd like to remind him of all the gorgeous weather he's missing out on:

Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!

Happy New Year everyone! Here's picture of the slate from one of my favorite recent shots, it will be seen in our "Art" episode. Unlike some of the smaller puppets, the flies are actually much larger than life, as you can see. Check it out:

Some Christmas Cheer

Before there was Creature Comforts...

When Nick Park and Peter Lord came to visit our office a couple months back, we asked them about the genesis of the idea for the original Creature Comforts short. Aardman was commissioned to make several short films using unscripted audio for a series called Lip Synch, and Nick Park's piece was the Creature Comforts short in 1989. Peter Lord mentioned that one of the first, if not THE first animated piece to use audio recorded from real people rather than actors was Moonbird (1959) which won an Oscar for best Animated Short. John and Faith Hubley had a unique collaboration and made over 20 independent, animated films together. You can learn more about them here.

Moonbird featured the voices of their children at play and the result is a beautiful short film which has been uploaded to YouTube for our viewing pleasure:

Like Wildfire

Unbeknownst to us Aardman folk in the U.S., more show clips have been released/found their way to the internet. SO, since the cat (or in this case, the penguin) is out of the bag already, why not take a gander at one of my favorite characters:



Oh, and for those who were wondering, the rope will not be seen when this clip airs on television.

Coast to Coast with Creature Comforts

I had quite the busy week this week. After the Thanksgiving holiday I went to New York City to shoot my first "Behind the Scenes" video for Creature Comforts. I really enjoy doing these sorts of pieces and if you have the time, you can check out a DVD extra that I did called "From Scout to Screen" for a film called "Little Manhattan".

Anyway, this shoot was with two of my favorite characters, the cockroaches. We tried calling them waterbugs for awhile, but lets face it, if they live in NYC, they're cockroaches. After listening to the wonderful voices of these two ladies for 6 months, it was so exciting to actually meet them. I got to the senior center early for the interview and was there when Natalie arrived. I knew it was her right away since she has a VERY distinctive voice. She was happy to meet me too and told her friend "Can you believe this guy came all the way from California just to have a date with me?". So I spoke with her for a little while outside the senior center where all of their interviews took place, near Washington Square park. It was a surreal experience meeting someone who I felt like I knew already. As a recent transplant from NYC to LA, I find it very comforting to listen to the voices of such New York characters. Both Natalie and Lilly were very sweet and it was a pleasure to finally meet them. I also invited Lilly to come by our office when she visits California in February, but I haven't told my boss yet. I'm hopeful that I got some good footage and that it will be a part of our promotional materials closer to the airdate of the show. Here's a snapshot of me with Natalie and Lilly that Hillary, their excellent interviewer, took:



Luckily, I was told not to reveal their animals to them yet and I'm happy not to be the one who tells them that they will be cockroaches on the show. Although, in the modelmakers' defense, I think they are just about as cute as cockroaches can be. And since their set really captures New York, I think they'll be happy about that at least. Take a look:


This image is a still from a holiday promo that may air during "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" on CBS, Friday December 8th.

Cafeteria Stats

I know what you've all been thinking: "Animation Shmanimation, how much coffee do these people drink?". Well wonder no more. The distinguished Brits pictured below in their enviable canteen have consumed the following over 25 weeks of production (forgive the metric figures):

1625 kilos of potatoes
375 kilos baked beans
6,000 pints milk
15, 000 pints coffee


Tea and cake figures were too astronomic to even guess at, clearly.

Happy Thanksgiving!

What better way to celebrate than with the first animated Creature Comforts clip?

For more on this duo, go to their myspace page! And eat lots of turkey (or tofurkey) tomorrow. :-)

Taking it to the Streets

Did I just get that song in your head? Oops. The reason I bring it up is because Eyeballs and Fishlips, everyone's favorite marginally secret unofficial blog about an animated television production imported from Bristol, England, is becoming less secret. That's right, with our first promos hitting your house turkey day, the powers that be have said that we can indeed take it to the streets. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. They said something more along the lines of "Who? What? Why? Okay, sure, whatever". Which was considerably less exciting and didn't involve any Michael McDonald songs. Sigh. Boring powers that be.

So if you're new around these parts, welcome! Take a look at the archives, especially here or here for some background info. And come back, because a few of the Bristol folks have come on board to write about the show from a more "British, working with the clay on a daily basis" type of perspective. Which should be great, as long as we're able to translate correctly. Here's lesson number one: "cheers!" means "bye!".

On that note...Cheers!

From Animatic to Build

Here are some of the animatic stills (which serve as blueprints for the characters and sets) along with pictures of the final models on their sets. I'm always amazed when we see the character builds after viewing the animatic sketches for such a long period of time. Sometimes the sets change a great deal from initial sketch to final build, and sometimes, they look like the sketch come to life. See for yourself:

POODLES



SALMON



FLIES



Okay, there's a glimpse at 3 of our characters, so 3 down 112 to go...

Welcome to America!

Our newest coworker Dan Sinclair, an interviewer from the British series, arrives in the U.S. only to immediately learn the perils of audio recording in Los Angeles.

It's a good thing we said yes to that renter's insurance...

The Golden Ticket (Part I)

Our office trip to Aardman's studio in September was truly a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory moment for me. I couldn't believe that we got to see the models up close and got a chance to see the animators at work. It is a process like no other art and the work they do is so seamless that you forget that these characters are created with one tiny movement every 24th of a second. So, straight from the stages where Wallace and Gromit battled with the Were-Rabbit, here's a little video glimpse at our painting gorilla character from "Creature Comforts"

More Fun with Extra Footage

The Toucan and Gecko Laugh Hour are awaiting your friendship at myspace.

previous fun

Calling Characters

As promised earlier, here's thrilling video of a call to a character. But instead of Abe calling the Bees, it's one of the story editors, Casey, calling our Rhode Island penguin, with guest appearances by Megan, Lauren, and Abe's voice. Enjoy!

The Voices Behind the Creatures

As we head towards the show airing, our publicist wants contact info for the people who were interviewed and animated. It is my very lucky job to call these people and make sure that's all right. Now don't get me wrong...normally a phone project sucks, but these are people I have grown to love over the last months. I know way more about them than I should, and I have seen them as clay animals. In some cases, the people don't know they're going to be on the show, and so my call is a bright spot in their day. In all cases, they don't know what creature they've been animated as, so I get to hear them guess, or talk about what they absolutely don't want to be. It's like being reunited with a long-lost friend. A long-lost friend who doesn't know a thing about you and about whom you know many secrets. Yeah.

Because I couldn't stop gushing about what a blast this has been, some other people have volunteered to call a few of their favorite characters. Stay tuned for video of some calls (like perhaps Abe calling our New York bees?).

The Battle of Chaka Khan

One of the issues we face in putting together episodes of the show is similar to the issues faced by traditional documentaries and that is rights clearance. Unlike a scripted show that knows ahead of time what each character is going to say, there are unpredictable moments that we want to include in the show but cannot always do if they violate copyright. One of these moments that we're dealing with now involves one of our characters quoting a sample from the Chaka Khan song "I Feel For You". It's a classic 80's jam and you should check it out if you haven't heard it. At first, the show's lawyers said we could not include it since the song was written by Prince and he is notorious for never giving permission to others to reference his songs, not even Weird Al! Luckily for us, the sample in which the DJ says "Chaka Khan" was NOT written by Prince and was in fact referenced in an episode of "The Simpsons" in which Homer installs a turntable rig in his car. In honor of YouTube's flagrant copyright violations, I have uploaded the clip so you can check it out:

Happy Halloween from Creature Comforts!

Here's Abe's dog, Julius, dressed as a fire hydrant.

He gets a little excited when he's in the office so he ended up wagging his shiny silver hat off. But Julius don't need no shiny hats to be adorable.

Check out more dogs in costume here.

My Interviews

Even though there are Creature Comforts interviewers throughout the country who are doing a great job and are constantly sending us minidiscs, I have gone out and done a few on my own. Even though it's generally more productive to interview people that you don't know, I have interviewed a friend of the family and my young cousin. I also did an interview at the San Diego Zoo a few months ago where I approached people at random and asked if they would be willing to be interviewed for an animated TV series. One woman who I met was a supervisor in the sanitation department and had a lot of great zoo stories to share. You can look for her as a meerkat in our "Zoo" episode. Since my first zoo trip was productive, I decided to take my cousin Maya to the LA Zoo a couple weeks ago which was lots of fun. She's a real animal lover so she had a lot of opinions on all of the animals there. My first attempt wasn't very successful:

But after that, I found a more responsive subject:

The interview process for the show is really challenging since the material that we're looking for is very specific. But it's very exciting to see something start out as an audio snippet from a documentary interview and make it all the way to the stage of being animated. I haven't done nearly as many interviews as our story editors have and I think you definitely get better with practice. But as in all documentaries, ultimately, the final piece is only as good as your characters.