James Lee Animation

Planet Nox #04: Making 'Save Us Elon' (Patreon)

Published:

2022-12-31 09:38:40

Imported:

2023-01

Content

I hope you all had a great Christmas. I’ve been taking a long needed break, and its been nice switching off.

This month I released my first big video since the Patreon launch, which is also the first big VFX project since getting a compositing guy onboard. It all went very smoothly, despite the fact that I got covid and had to take 5 days off a week before release. I can’t tell ya what a difference it’s made having the resources to get someone helping out full time.

Check out this quote from Elon, that hit my newsfeed just hours before release:

Above: Elon Musk's Tuesday evening.

The video ended up getting demonetized, for a very minor policy oversight on my part. Again, the income I get from all you guys goes a long way in shielding me from the negative effects of youtube policy. It’s not just edgy branding to say you guys really are having my back.

But also, a lot of things really just fell into place this month. It’s exciting to see the parts moving, the gears turning and the whole machine working just as I hoped it would.

I noticed a lot of interest around my music recommendations last month, and it’s been awesome seeing your own, which I’m still going through. So this time I’m trying out a little ‘vibe of the month’ section, and I’m curious if you guys have your own gems that might fit a little compilation. Lets see where it goes.

Lastly I just want to ask you all what content you’d be most interested to see on my main channel in 2023. Having feedback to gauge interest does go a long way in helping me decide on projects.

I’ll catch you all in the new year!

Can you describe the process for Save us Elon?

I gave myself more time for the audio component for this one. About 2 weeks. Letting it stew for so long really helped it all come together.

I wanted it to have a more animated feeling than usual, but didn’t have a lot of time. So I built most of the acting around psuedo-3D head tilts from a rigged front and 3/4 view. Traditional animation was to be used on mouth and eyes only. If there was a crazy camera angle, the body would be static, and I'd use the prefab head. If the body required animation, then the camera would be primarily side view. This stack of constrictions meant I could really fly through the animation.

I made sure during boarding that there wouldn’t be a single complicated shot. And for the more complex VFX shots we had plenty of fallback and plan B solutions in case we started hitting roadblocks. This was the first bigger video working in collaboration with Ramy, my new VFX and compositing guy. He did such a bang up job, and knocked it out in about 2 weeks.

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Below: Animation shots. Head movement only:

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Below: Animation shots. Full body puppet rig:

How do you handle creative block?

There’s moments in production where I gotta be in the ‘get this shit done’ mode. Usually animation and compositing shots.

But that doesn’t work when I’m coming up with the main idea. I gotta feel like I’m playing around. Similar mindset to being kid and playing with figurines. If I’m ever staring at a blank page struggling, it’s usually because I skipped the more playful part, which seems to happen naturally for me anywhere except in front of the computer. If I'm struggling I'll take a whole day off just to think of an idea.

What resources do you use?

The most valuable resources I have are ones that I’ve built up over time. So for my stock music library, it’s not the fact that I have access to tracks that makes them valuable to me. It’s that I actively listen to them, that I’m intimately familiar with them and have a whole bunch that I’m dying to use.

I keep a lot of notes, scripts, jokes and I tag them. I built a database of visual styles, another one for project formats. Every few months I pilfer the best bits from all the notes and compile it into a running list.

I’m really big on these kind of ‘living resources’ that change and evolve and have a personal, almost sentimental quality. I can pull value from them that’s seemingly bigger than the sum of their parts.