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“Snowbot” — New Animated Short

Victoria — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:57:06 +0000

One of the Android blogs I follow had a video contest, so I put this little film together in an evening. It’s all After Effects + Illustrator, and done on my teeny tiny S10 netbook. Animating an HD film on a 10″ screen is probably insane, but at least it saved me a trip to the office!

Alas, much of the evening was spent dealing with render errors (lesson: overflow volume settings are REALLY IMPORTANT on a netbook), so I only managed to upload the rough version before the contest’s midnight deadline. Oh well, maybe an extra couple hours is ok?

People are clearly pretty intense over their entries though… within seconds — seconds! — of posting the rought cut I had a flurry of one-star votes and comments like “GARBAGE.” Oh YouTube. At least no one’s claiming that my film is an Obama conspiracy yet. But seriously, if you’re that into winning a Nexus One, just go buy the thing. It’s a phone, not fifty grand.

The snowed-in robot idea was suggested by Chris Needles (thanks Chris!). I simplified it into something I could animate in a couple of hours, storyboarded it out, then found an .ai of the Android logo (which is Creative Commons licensed! Hooray open source!) from which to build my puppets.

The sledbearing penguin is just the robot colored black and white, with the addition of pointier arms and a beak. And he’s not an intentional Linux reference, although I’ll take the free geek points. He’s actually there because my stuffed Android tends to hang out with a penguin-shaped pillow, and they make a cute pair.

Rigging the two puppets was unbelievably easy… no knees or elbows or hands or feet or even a neck to worry about! All I had to do was move the anchor points to the right place and parent everything to the torso. The backgrounds and snow piles are just shape layers and a couple of gradients, very simple stuff… even the effects don’t get any more complex than default CC Snow and a standard vignette. Still, it’s pretty incredible to me that I can start storyboarding at 7:30PM and have a minute-long film before bedtime.

It’s so rare I do anything narrative, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the process. Having to figure out the quickest, clearest way to get the story across — with no time at all for experimentation or style research — is an interesting challenge. You’re really forced into being decisive in ways that bigger projects don’t require:

“Okay, I can use two characters, but they have to be built from the same model.”

“Do I have time to make three sets if one is just a wiggly shape? What if I use the same basic background for all 3?”

“I need a couple title cards, but there’s no time to animate them. Plain text it is!”

The crazy thing is, it’s actually fun having that kind of rush deadline! Normally I’d tweak things endlessly and fiddle with unimportant elements for hours on end, and not just MAKE SOMETHING. But this time I followed my original storyboards almost exactly, and even ended up putting back the only thing I’d initially taken out. And I went to bed with a FINISHED FILM. When does that ever happen?

Amusing Phrases from Spam Commenters

Victoria — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:16:47 +0000

Akismet does a wonderful job of blocking all the spam comments my site receives. (I get a ton!) And part of the fun is reading the posts it has blocked, particularly the ones with dummy text designed to hide a random link. Here are some recent highlights:

The Generic Blog Comment: “I was studying something else about this on another blog. Interesting. Your perspective on it is diametrically opposed to what I read in the first place. I am still contemplating over the various points of view, but I’m tipped to a great extent toward yours. And regardless, that’s what is so great about modern democracy and the marketplace of ideas on-line.”
Travel-related comments on a Photoshop tutorial: “Fellow Tourists April should be good for a Long Island Romantic Getaways .Options are many- I grew up near that area, so I would definitely like the Places to visit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Until my financial situation improves, you can’t beat the Places to Visit in Florida Any thoughts?”
Full, detailed rules of Backgammon, too long to post here.
The purely baffling: “After the sewing machine needle has continued in its’ upward motion to a point at which it is above the fabric, the feed-dogs rise”
Ditto: “Bgure hurrying through the rain. Down the steps and along the corridor, to take the buy cialis online day—of the rain! I punched up the”
In response to a post about my inflatable cube-frog: “Hey Wassup? My name is Jett I’ve been browsing these forums for a long time now, and I finally found something worth writing here:
I bought my wife a motorscooter, repaired our kitchen |,but the thing that excited her the most was without a doubt my intention to Buy Loose Diamonds for our silver wedding anniversary. These Loose diamonds are Emerald diamonds,and are engaging. The Diamond has reached to our home via messanger.”
And that age-old question: “So true, with so much to stay on top of though how do you balnce it all?”

How do I balnce it all? Well, spam filters help.

What have I been up to lately?

Victoria — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:24:06 +0000

Things are busy here at The Documentary Group.

I’ve been working on several different projects over the past few months. The biggest one is Lafayette: The Lost Hero, an hour-long documentary which will air in April on PBS. Here’s the trailer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ve also done a lot of animation for three Constitution Project films: two about Supreme Court cases, Ledbetter v. Goodyear and Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Company, as well as one about the Bill of Rights which will be turned into an interactive game. Once these have made it through the final online edit, I’ll post some of the fun things I’ve made for them as well as links to where you can watch online.

Next month, I finish up Ledbetter and start on a project about jazz and American history. Meanwhile, DocGroup is embarking on their biggest-scale production since I began working here (big enough we’ve run out of office space!), and I’m really looking forward to it. It’s a four-part PBS series about the history of TV called America in Primetime, and I’m really looking forward to working on it.

Help My Friend Start a Farm!

Victoria — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:41:34 +0000

Mihail is starting a farm in upstate NY, and he needs your help!

A quick blurb:

“We are a group of passionate horticulturalists who want to experiment with a new way of life and commerce. We are starting an organic farm on 110 acres of land and developing a collective of Earth-friendly cottage industries that will bring prosperity and food security to our local community.

Anyway, IdeaBlob has a contest where he can win $10,000 to help him get started. And all you have to do is vote for him.

You can read more about his plans (and buy seeds!) here.

Happy Constitution Day!

Victoria — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:53:32 +0000

You can now watch a bunch of the Constitution Project films online! Click here.

China Inside Out Emmy Nomination

Victoria — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:16:36 +0000

China Inside Out, the ABC News Primetime special I worked on last year about China’s global economic impact, has been nominated for the Emmy for “Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story – Long Form.” Most of my coworkers have a ton of the pointy gold statues, but this is the first project I’ve worked on that’s been nominated. I’m excited! We find out who wins Sept. 21.

DocGroup Needs Interns!

Victoria — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:38:00 +0000

Going to be in NYC this summer? We need a motion graphics/graphic design intern here at The Documentary Group. If you’re interested, shoot me an email and I’ll give you the details.

Korematsu Trailer

Victoria — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:23:26 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

The opening few minutes of our Constitution Project film about Japanese internment during WWII and Korematsu, the court case that upheld it. The graphics for this one were subtler and more subdued than the ones we created for the Yick Wo film.

Yick Wo Trailer

Victoria — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:13:00 +0000

Check out the trailer for one of our recent Constitution Project films:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Yick Wo v. Hopkins case happened long enough ago that there is very little related visual material, so we had to create lots of puppets and sets in order to tell the story. The graphics in the trailer are mine but Hiro did a lot of really amazing work on this one and it’s worth watching the long form of the film to see it.

Watch “Ten Trillion and Counting” online!

Victoria — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:18:23 +0000

Our new documentary, FRONTLINE: Ten Trillion and Counting premiered Tuesday. You can watch the full show online, though:

I designed the graphs and animated all the photos and documents. This was a BIG PROJECT and I’m really happy with how it turned out. I’m also looking forward to getting a good night’s sleep again.

It’s been funny seeing the comments on the Frontline site. Several people have said we should have represented the debt as percentage of GDP. WE DID. There’s only one spot where we point out the actual number, and even that’s on the GDP graph. The numbers are just that big. Also interesting to me is how many things people said we should have included that were originally in the cut, but were dropped because it’s such a complex story to fit into an hour show.