I recently finished the animation on Alan Parsons’ music video ‘As Lights Fall’ from his new album ‘The Secret’ (the song was written by Dan Tracey). In the video below, Alan turns the pages of his diary, revealing drawings which come to life. They were drawn and animated by me.
The producer/director Patrick Read Johnson found my work through this blog. By the time I was brought on, there was very little time left – 3 or 4 weeks, and about 40 to 45 seconds of animation to do. A tall order to put it mildly, especially as the animation would need to be drawn by hand to look like an ink line that came to life.
I put in anywhere from 10 to 14 hours a day. I needed to finish about a scene a day to meet the deadline (with room for revisions), and just about managed it!
Most of the animation was done in Photoshop CS 5.1. PS has a basic animation timeline, and if you know how to work with traditional techniques (timing charts, keys/breakdowns and hand-drawn inbetweens) then it’s a usable animation tool.
There are a few parts where I used After Effects. AE was used to composite the animation, combining layers and create camera moves. The ship scenes would have been impossible in the time given to animate by hand. I drew a single ship image, ‘boiled’ it with a 4 frame cycle, then applied mesh distort to create the illusion of pitch and yaw.
I animated 20 scenes in under 4 weeks, an average of 5 a week. Some were fully animated, some were single images, but all were animated with a ‘boil’, in other words, four or five drawings were done for each image, which were then cycled. So where you see one drawing of a tree or ship, there were four or five near identical drawings which are cycled 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4, to create the ‘drawing come to life’ effect.
Scene 1: Palm trees and treasure chest
This was a scene I suggested as an addition, and was one of the last scenes done. We decided not to add any animation for it, as there was little time to read the writing, and moving the leaves or adding birds would only distract from that. This serves to give the audience a nice anticipation of the live action treasure scenes.
Here, Alan’s live action comped with the drawing above:
Scene 2: Parsons’ Rock
Another scene that I suggested we add, again, at the very end of the project, when we had a few hours to spare. Another shot where we barely had enough time for it to read, so we kept it very simple – and like the opening illustration, it sets up the treasure chest scene and classic pirate setting.
In this shot, the waves begin to animate, as the drawings come to life for the first time. I also used a classic wind rose map beneath the island to give it the antique look it needed.
Scene 3: The Rock
Our first sign of the island. This was the first scene I animated when I took on the project. The animation of the waves is very elaborate, with each frame drawn by hand. A lot of the detail was unavoidably lost to the feathering effect on the edges, but the end result is nice.
The waves worried me most, as I’ve never thought of myself as a ‘natural’ natural fx animator, but the water and splashes turned out well. All drawn by hand on a cintiq.
Scene 4: Abbey Road
A fully animated 180 degree spin around from Alan’s eyes to the good ship ‘Abbey Rose’. I guess people are jaded by seeing these in CGI, where they’re far too easy to do and frankly over-used, but drawing them by hand is another thing entirely!
Scene 5: Mopping the deck closeup
A tease cut with another scene I decided to add – a closeup of the mop with suds. It was a chance to do some nice natural effects (water and soap).
Scene 6: The crew looks on
Any resemblance to actual musicians is entirely coincidental. This was a very time consuming shot. The animation of Alan was about a third, with the ship and the four crew members each eating the other third. The crew members ‘boil’ so there are 3 or 4 drawings for each person, even when standing (in order to avoid the dreaded ‘held cel’ effect).
Scene 7: Rose Floyd
Alan is made to walk the plank. Patrick Read Johnson (the director/producer) suggested the addition of the cutlass for extra drama. I’m glad he did, as it’s also a much stronger pose, and adds some motion to what might have been too static a shot.
Scene 8: Step into the air
This is a closeup I decided to add as the time for the first half of the shot was a bit long, and by adding a closeup of the feet stepping into air we could show the action, without animating a cartoony / coyote fall. I wanted the action to have as much dignity as possible, which might have been a tall order with a long shot.
Scene 9: Alan and Eric Woolfson
Alan teams up with Eric. Two actions were needed, which could have done with two cut scenes, but I decided to try to do them with one, and tricky staging. First, the close up of tankards clashing…
…then a pull back to reveal the heroes as their ship ‘The Project’ appears behind them.
Scene 10: The Christening
We wanted a few of the scenes to have a free-flowing impressionistic character to them. This wasn’t always needed, but this is one shot where I was able to do it. The camera follows the bottle as it nears the camera and smashes into the ship. Notice how the hand and bottle fill the screen at one point (this is one of the rare points in the video where I switched to ‘ones’, i.e., having those few frames on 24 fps instead of the usual 12.
Scene 11: Sailing to the sunset
The scenes with the ship are the only ones in the video that use digital tweakery. Because of the pencil mileage on the ship and the tight deadline, inbetweening changes in the geometry of the ship would have been a show-stopper. So I created a static image of the ship on 3 layers, one for the hull and two for the masts. These were then distorted in After Effects to create the illusion that the ship is pitching and yawing as it sails to the horizon.
Scene 12: Map
Another wind rose (or compass rose) map, showing the classic ‘Raiders’ progress toward the New World. I took an antique map and deleted some of the visual detail (dotted trade routes) and changed some place-names from French to English. I also used After Effects to pitch and yaw the ship, but the foam between the ship and the map is hand animated.
Scene 13: The Grave
Originally I animated a dramatic turnaround for this shot, but it was inappropriate for the melancholy setting. So in the bin with that! Instead a much more subdued staging.
Scene 14: A Salute at Sunset
And because of the time available, a simple over the shoulder shot with the setting sun.
Scene 15: Steering in the Storm
My favourite shot, as it turned out so close to what I imagined before starting. The shot was animated layer by layer in Photoshop, like all the other character work, then I brought the layers into After Effects for compositing, added the up/down bob on the ship, camera move, etc. There’s a nice feeling of Alan against the elements and persistence.
Scene 16: A New Crew
This shot shows Alan with his new crew – these are the musicians you’ll see in the live action video.
Scene 17: Pulling the ropes
Actual sailors will probably shudder at this shot, because I have no idea how a sail is pulled into position (and our 3 to 4 week deadline did not permit me to take a course on a tall ship). I did use this as a chance to animate a very dramatic and impressionistic action though, to try to capture the power of the sailors and the wind.
Scene 18: Lift-off
Again, the ship sails to the horizon, but this time lifts out of the water (again, using After Effects to create a nice illusion of geometry on the ship).
Scene 19: To the Moon
This is a shot that I did by accident. Originally there was going to be just the model shot for this, but a crossed wire (in my head) ended up with me doing a plus-one. As it turned out, it worked nicely, and ended up in the video. Glad it did.
Scene 20: The End
By this point in the production I was very tired! Still I decided to suggest a final addition, knowing that it would be a pretty big addition. Ended up taking best part of a day and a half I think. Much of it doesn’t end up in shot, because it was necessary to animate past the feathered edge, and some of the wave cycle isn’t used, but again, no avoiding that. If you watch the leaves, each one was drawn 4 times and boiled / cycled, to neuter the dreaded digital tween effect, and to keep the hand drawn effect to the last frame.
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SUMMARY: Yikes. Not too shabby for one guy in a little under FOUR WEEKS. BTW, the live action mattes that you seen behind Alan as he drinks were created by Rocco Gioffre!
In my 30+ years in animation, working with Alan Parsons, Patrick Read Johnson, Dalton Price and the team was a career high. It is rare for a production to go so well. Other than the unavoidable problem of workload / deadline, everything that could go right went right. And (other producers note) when artists / designers / animators work with decent and competent people who respect them, they’ll often go the extra mile or three.
At some point I hope to do a series of youtube videos on my animation channel which illustrate some of the techniques used in this video. Please subscribe if you want to follow those.
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