I only joined Twitter because of this Area 52 project. Man, going on Twitter is like stepping into Saturn from Beetlejuice! Except it seems like 99% of it is about Donald Trump instead of Sandworms. Same goes for Facebook. And television news. Newspapers. Everybody. All focused fervently on the man. I thought only death and taxes were inevitable. Hearing or seeing something about Donald Trump HAS TO BE added to that list.
From the great political activist and theorist, Thomas Paine: "The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." That assumes that you already know who you're in conflict with. I, personally, do not support Trump. But there are many people that do. At very least there are 62,984,825 Trump supporters. That's not counting people who can't or don't vote. That may or may not be counting the rest of the Republican Party. Without those 62,984,825 people, Trump would be nothing. A blip.
Trump is an icon for a much, MUCH, larger destructive force. And I get it, you want to take down the snake you cut off it's head. But I'm not totally convinced that's true in this case. I think there's been a large, hibernating contingent of Americans who were told that their seat at the top of the totem poll was taken from them. And they didn't get this idea just from Donald Trump. They've been pounded by Republican talk radio that if things stay the way they are, they're never going to move ahead in the line. That they'll stand there forever. The folks ahead in line will remain there. And people behind them will be able to cut the line.
Fear is a very powerful primal emotion. And yes, the man publicized all of these fears but the hounds were released well before. Like, before he was born. Maybe I'm alone in thinking this, but if you look back at American history, all the way back to Plymouth Rock, the politics and power structure in this country haven't changed all that much. Same bird, different eggs.
In "For The Birds", what I'm trying to say is that while you're so fervently focused on the man himself, the crowd is setting fires behind you. He, in and of himself, is a diversion. And while you're tweeting about his latest tweet, there is real evil happening behind your back. There's a very dangerous organization at work and it's time for an about face...in more ways than one.
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There isn't all that much to report in the way this was done. Compared to the rest of my films this was handled pretty traditionally. Still not as traditional as traditional animation. How many more times can I say traditional?
I made various body parts for these birds and put them all together later on in After Effects. For those that don't know, I drew all of these parts multiple times so that I can give some kind of motion to the birds while they were sitting in one place. You basically loop a few drawings of the same thing so it gives it a kind of jittery movement.
I did the same thing with the background art of the "leaves". I drew those on index cards:
This time I used actual art pens instead of a ball point. The production of these films don't always have to be ghetto. And really, my only cost on this were the pens. These Microns pens are good because they don't bleed and they don't clog. They are more firm and mechanical than I usually like to draw with but they did the trick nicely on this film:
Here are some rough pencil drawings I did before designing the final birds:
Here are some storyboards I made for this. These didn't act so much as a guide for story as they did for shots. I guess it was more a pre-visualization than a storyboard:
Lastly, I recorded all of the birds voice over myself in my closet with the Voice Memos app for iPhone. I wish I had a better microphone. Sometimes "P"s can pop when you're recording. I don't have a proper booth either but all the clothing and blankets make for good sound absorption. Not so bad for guerrilla audio recording!
Thanks for reading :)