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I was the Animation Director, Director of Photography, and a bunch of other stuff for this new educational animated series! My partner (Lex, art director extraordinaire) and I have a small animation business called Threadwood, and for this project we set up a temporary large studio space and hired a few employees to help us out. It was a ton of work and I learned a lot about studio and business management!
Back in 2024 I worked on a claymation sequence in the Smurfs movie. This was shot in Los Angeles at Screen Novelties. Before traveling to the studio, I helped the team decide what clay to use (Jovi) and troubleshoot other clay puppet pitfalls. But no matter how much preparation is done, claymation is hard and you'll run into a bunch of unexpected issues. I also got COVID during my trip out there and had to stay locked in my tiny airbnb for a week. It was difficult, but fellow animator Colin Lepper and myself managed to get it done!
I went out to Portland for 5 weeks to animate some shots on the upcoming Pinocchio film, directed by Guillermo Del Toro and Mark Gustafson. Everyone working on it is extremely talented, and every little bit of this movie is beautiful. All of the shots were blowing me away and I would frame through them like I did back when I had just started animating. I am so proud that I was able contribute even a very small amount of animation.
My wife (Alexis Deprey) and I have our own animation business called Threadwood. Our latest job is lighting and animating a short film called Jump Start Man (@jumpstartman2020 on Instagram). Here's a little time lapse of me animating one of the shots!
This is the eighth episode of the Magical Cat series, a little claymation show created by my wife and I, aka Threadwood LLC. This episode was a very tough one for us. Our very own Magical Cat, and the inspiration for this series, passed away shortly before we animated this. Years ago, he bit into a tiger lily (POISONOUS TO CATS!!!) that did a number on his kidneys. After that happened, we had to put him on a special diet and administer fluids every other day. He hung on for as long as he could, but one day it was obvious that something wasn't quite right. We took him to the vet and he never made it back home.
So we collected our videos of him, and pulled some audio for the meows and purrs that you hear in this episode. Love you buddy! |