Meltdown

***UPDATE*** This piece of animation got added to a Vimeo channel called MOTION FARM. Anyone who is a fan of animation should check this channel out.

The sound clip for November's 11 Second Club contest was too good to pass up. I laugh every time I listen to it. The folks that run the website are always offering up interesting and different tracks to work with. Plus, I work best under deadlines, so there you have it.

Meltdown from bj crawford on Vimeo.

My first impluse after hearing the track was to go and look at all of my Norman Rockwell books. He's the best artist to draw inspiration from because every piece he creates is teeming with rich narrative. I try and start every animation with an idea, not a specific piece of acting, but a narrative idea, and then the acting flows out of that. Here is one of the many images of Santa created by Rockwell:



I didn't get the idea of using Santa from Rockwell, but I thought of the idea while looking through his books, so I thought I'd just focus in on using his version of Santa as a starting point.


Here is the very, very first pass I did of the animation. This test is at 50% of the size I ended up animating the actual drawings at.



Thanks again to everyone who stops by to read my blog.