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‘In Your Arms’ Stop Motion Jelly Beans & Pixilation: Making Of
December 30, 2011
So … as part of my information & news gathering for this SMW journal/blog, I subscribe to various news alerts services. A month or two ago I’ve been getting plethora of alerts about a ‘jelly bean’ animated music video. Because there were so many alerts, I assumed the music video was maybe intentionally viraled to force our attention, therefore all this time, I did not even click-on & read the news alerts about this music video. It has been kind of slow out there with Stop Motion specific news, and so, I went back and finally looked at the music video.
Actually, very interesting, unique & fresh. I can see now that this music video, likely went naturally viral on the internet. You do not see that much fresh & original pixilated stop motion (animation of real people). Last one I remember that caught my attention, was the Her Morning Elegance music video. There are a cornucopia of amatuer & some pro made stop motion pixelations out there and some can get kind of repetitive and/or formulaic. I have to admit though, I do not watch much stop motion pixilation and I’m sure, some quality works are out there that I am not aware of. For me, with a pixilated based animation you have to be REALLY CREATIVE & ORIGINAL to pull it off. I think this one succeeds …. the foundation of course, using creatively good music, song, & artist, further enhanced by the also creative music video presentation ….
So basically, everything in the above music video was all hand made tactile real & photographed IN THE CAMERA and beforehand in planning & designing stage, Digital Tools used to pre-visualize, then post production tweaking, enhancing, editing. The coolest aspects of Stop Motion or any REAL CREATED SPECIAL EFFECTS (see previous ‘The Thing’ news), is the behind the scenes can be just as entertaining as the finished animated product. The making of grabs the general audiences attention as it taps into our core internal genetic makeup of the need to relate to the real tactile world. Babies & little kids are first drawn to and desire furry stuffed animals, dolls, real toys, etc. …. NOT iPods.
I know that ‘Skills’ are obviously involved with CGI but IMO, it is pretty DULL watching CGI Making Of’s. Basically, with CGI Behind the Scenes, you are looking at someone in front of a computer screen and mouse-clicking & keyboarding away … dry, monotonous, unexciting, etc. …. yawn. Sorry, I am not dismissing those who work in the CGI animation & effects biz, but merely doing personal observation here 
. I am not the only one who has this view (plenty others agree too but not as vocal about it). Anyway, take a look at the Making Of ‘In Your Arms’ … tactilely, real world, hand-made gratifying 
….
LINKS: Her Morning Elegance – Pixilation
Topics: Behind the Scenes, Commercials-Ads-TV-Net, Stop Motion | 7 Comments »
Didn’t they know we can do that with computers now? There’s an iBean app on the iPhone that could make that whole video in like 2 minutes so, why bother doing it that way?
OK I’m Sorry, I’m Sorry I’m Sorry, I just couldn’t stop myself from typing the sarcasm. As I was watching the behind the scenes (and loving it) I was hearing the voices of ‘the opposition’ in my head saying – “They could just copy each frame of the animatic using a ‘jelly bean brush’ in Photoshop or AE. They could just, they could just, they could just…”
So in the end let me be clear, I’m SO glad they did it FOR REAL! Real Heart, Real Soul and Real Jelly Beans.
You wanna bet there will soon be a TV commercial made by these same people to advertise Jelly Bellys?
Yeah, and when’s the last time a CGI artiste got to eat his work after it was done? Yum yum!
Wow. Like already stated, those types of videos can be created by other means nowadays but the devotion and tactile approach alone makes this one unique. It’s art and art is made artists. They should be the ones who choose how they do it, not some technician or studio executive. Why? More diversity.
U_Ani, that’s true but, there’s also the added entertainment value to the audience. At this point, there are very few productions that don’t have some sort of behind the scenes videos that go along with the actual production and fans watch an awful lot of it. The behind the scenes video from this and other productions can do great things for the state of the art.
As noted by LIO in the article, it’s FAR more interesting to watch a ‘making-of’ when you are watching artists doing something interesting, individual talent oriented and just plain interesting. By contrast, watching someone move a mouse and point to a graphic on a screen has all the audience appeal of being thrust back into your high school math class all over again.
Let’s just put it this way… if the end product of this production had in fact been a computer creation and yet looked exactly as it does now, it would not have become a viral video and would have not generated the ‘buzz’ that it has.
Today’s visual entertainment is largely a product of industry, not the product of individual artists. Hollywood CGI is ‘industrial animation’ and better described by the word ‘product’ than the word ‘art’. Audiences eventually do catch on to these realities.
When a baseball player is discovered to have used steroids to get the home-run hits that broke records, fans revolt… computer animation is the art world’s version of steroids. Computers are a highly addictive performance enhancing drug, best when used in moderation.
Whoaa dude! Ol Ron tapping into the Isomer ‘Mojo of Wisdom’ … cogent with the very salient metaphors/analogies … steroids, industrial animation & your other insightful observations.
This is one advantage of us being ‘old farts’
… life experience of hard knocks and some of us can SEE through all the Bull Crap out there. Although some of the younger crowd hopefully got that mojo wisdom going on such as U_Ani.
Disappointing though, the employment gigs seem to be more in CGI, however, I believe that is now perhaps a mega-fiercely competitive jobs market. Then you got ‘outsourcing’ CGI to cheap labor, making it even more ‘dog eat dog’.
It’s what you value in life maybe … a drone job which pays the rent (many of us do) vs something stimulating creative that one can do non-stop 24/7! Many do this as passion/hobby and the $$$ is not even important … hence the plethoric cornucopia of struggling artists. Again, we value & prioritize other things in ‘life’ that hopefully helps us enjoy our time on this planet earth.
“Today’s visual entertainment is largely a product of industry, not the product of individual artists. Hollywood CGI is ‘industrial animation’ and better described by the word ‘product’ than the word ‘art’.”
Thus why movies as a format have sadly been spoiled as an expressive form. A film-maker will really have to struggle to think outside the box. As long as that out-of-the-box thinking is maintained it actually isn’t as much of a struggle. It’s why I personally chose not to depend on modern computer simulation altogether. It just doesn’t reward me the way I once expected it to. Doesn’t matter what you create with it, the distinctive flavor will always be there. It’s just one fancy format, nothing more and nothing less.
You could consider me somewhat “half-old” as I happened to grow up just at the transition point between traditional animation and modern computer gadgetry. While the internet has introduced me to lots of fanciness I haven’t really forgotten some traditional art that has also had an impact on my imagination. And I hope to follow it as an independent hobbyist at least.
In my view what Hollywood perfectly ignores is the importance of variety because they don’t have the guts to stop playing with their one Lamborghini. CGI is nothing more than one format among formats just to repeat. Depend on it too much and everything ends up tasting the same no matter how much you sprinkle sugar and shit on top. CGI does not work as a live action element in a live action movie because it’s not “live” in nature. Feels out of place. A cartoon is a better option of use though once again we are speaking about a format among formats. It doesn’t “replace” anything, the only reason the industry pampers everyone with it is because it’s a fancier way to do the exact same fricking thing. It’s just…………dumb to put to everything. It’s like carrying too many eggs in a too small basket. You are bound to get a mess no matter what you do. More variety! Like in this video. Simple.
I’m just wondering if there needs to be a trend started where the film creators find a way to let the audience know HOW something was made in the original work? Like how I just automatically assumed that the bugs and rats in the ORKIN ads were CGI… the audience at this point needs to be told in advance which technique they are seeing because CGI makes endless efforts to look just like other types of work.
If I had seen this video with the jelly beans without LIO having pointed out that it was all done ‘in camera’, I most likely would have just assumed that it was mostly created in post production by a team of mouse clickers. I think it’s time to put something like ‘A Stop Motion Animation Presentation’ in the opening credits.