THINGS LIKE THIS - BEHIND THE SCENES — JAMES SIEWERT DOT BIZ

THINGS LIKE THIS (2020) - BEHIND THE SCENES

This video was made in the spring of 2020 and benefited from the crucible of early corona-virus quarantine. I think I was able to focus on animating in way that was rare - usually you have to juggle a number of projects. I did nothing but work on this video between April and June of 2020.

Sonic Boom approached me with the idea of making a video of nested heads, which appealed partly because of it’s simplicity. The base animation of camera zooming from one head to next could be reused and lego-ed together.

Most of what goes into the early phase of making a video is a really prosaic calculation of: Is this possible to do well? And that question more specifically boils down to Is the idea exciting enough to sustain the amount of time it will take to achieve it? And: is there enough money offered, or do I have enough saved, to afford groceries and rent during this time? All of this is considered instinctually, and usually incorrectly. But to have two reusable pieces of animation - one for the verses and one for the choruses - allowed me a feeling of security because the basic structure of the video could be mapped out in the first week of the ten week project. Everything else - the building of each individual world - was icing.

The other big experiment of the video was with alcohol ink. I’ve always tried to find ways of taking the “edge off” 3D animation, and this was an attempt to do it faster. By stacking the printed pages on top of one another the printer dye and alcohol ink commingled and evolved as the ink seeped through the sequenced layers of paper. I drilled holes through some of the pages as way of “irregating” the pages which became part of the texture as well.

In a way I feel like I had beginner’s luck with the alcohol ink - I’ve tried to replicate and expand on the effect a few times in the years since, but never managed to be happier with the result than I was here.