Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and are ready to dive into another exciting year of stop motion animation. As I look ahead to 2023, I can't help but feel a sense of renewed energy and inspiration for the art form I love.

One of the things I'm most excited about for the upcoming year is the continued growth and evolution of stop motion animation technology. With new software and hardware tools becoming available all the time, the possibilities for what can be achieved in stop motion are truly endless.

But of course, it's not just about the technology - it's also about the creativity and passion of the animation community and artists that are pushing the boundaries of what's possible. I'm always in awe of the incredible artistry and storytelling that goes into stop motion animation, and can't wait to see the new works that will be created in the year ahead.

Quack Fat - Behind the Scenes

I thought I'd dig into the archives and give you a peak behind the curtin on the making of one of my favourite projects; Quack Fat. This music video I directed and animated for EDM producer Opiuo, took 5 months to make and used over 240 audio cassettes, 5,600 feet of video tape, 108 floppy discs and 1 retro walkman.

Pre Production

As you may have already guessed I love retro tech, so I decided to create an animated music video using some of the objects I grew up with such as audio cassette tapes, VHS and Walkmans (yes I'm showing my age). I decided to use these objects to recreate classic classic video games – including Tetris, Space Invaders and Breakout. Another key element was to synchronise the visuals to the music. Therefore planning was key. I usually start my projects with research in the form of a mood board and jot down ideas for key parts of the animation.

I had to source a lot of the cassettes from second-hand shops. Over 240!! You'd be surprised that they were quite hard to find. I suppose cassettes aren't as popular as they used to be. They also had to be painted in the chosen colour palette.

The other items that needed to be constructed were the coloured pyramids that I used to represent sonic elements of the track. I used replacement animation to make them grow up and down. This technique involves changing out an object with another object between frames which required different sized pyramids in each colour.

Production

Once I had prepared all the objects it was time to get animating. Each scene needed to be lit, timed out to the music and camera ready for the shots required. This process took many many hours in the studio. You can watch a time lapse of the whole process here​

Exploding Walkman

The exploding walkman effect was achieved by making a series of yellow and black cubes out of card that closely matched the dimensions and volume of the actual walkman. These were swapped out and put in the exact same place as the original Walkman and animated in a fast outward motion.

Boombox

For the boombox scene I replaced the speaker cones with custom 3D printed cylinders that could be animated individually creating the telescopic effect.

Rigging

Some shots required rigging so they could be suspended for animating, Such as the final shot of the cassette tape being rewound by the pencil. The rig was painted out frame-by-frame in post.

I hope this gave you an insight into how I brought this ambitious music video to life. As you can see stop motion animation requires many skills, such as concept development, art-direction, practical craft, problem solving and a lot of patience. I'm looking forward to sharing more insights, tips and tricks about the craft of stop motion with you.

Here's to a great 2023!

Bye for now

Dropbear ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

Dropbear Emporium

Original prints by Dropbear at the Dropbear Emporium​

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