I normally work in live action film. I can’t draw very well (but my stick figures are fabulous), but I’ve always wanted to try animating something. When I got After Effects I found out that you could animate images in it. Around the time I got the programme, a friend of mine named John O’Keefe approached me about making a music video for his solo cello work. Once I heard his song, I knew that I wanted to animate something to it. But with no real skills, how in the world could I accomplish something so difficult?

Shadow puppets.

I then contacted my friend Austin McKinley, who is a great graphic designer, and asked him to create four characters for me that I could animate in AE.

Cut to months later. Stella Buio is finished and I am about to embark on some even crazier journeys and I still hadn’t quite come up with just the right kind of story for this video. I knew what I wanted to tell, but the story itself was eluding me. Finally, one night it hit me and within a couple of days, I had made my first animated anything…the video that’s embedded above.

I hold no illusions, it’s not at all perfect. But for not being an animator, I’m incredibly happy with how it turned out. My favourite part is just after the Man stabs the Woman and they spin and slowly fall into the position in which we are introduced to them. My second favourite part is when Top Hat pushes the Man away from the Woman and he falls.

And to everyone I’ve stared at for the past few months trying to understand a little better how the human body moves: now you get it. :D