The Cleaning

A couple winters back my buddy Keenan and I spent our nights in Los Gatos animating a giant glob of earwax for "The Cleaning," a stop-mo short by our mutual friend, Neil Baker. It's up on youtube now, so enjoy the fruits of our achy, clay-covered fingers. It's great to see how the two of them are putting what we learned to create something infinitely more polished in their new short, Small Sacrifices.

Welcome to the Third World

The Dandy Warhols just released the music video for "Welcome to the Third World" (as previously featured on Cartoon Brew). Glad it's back up for people to enjoy. It was a blast to work on the shots that I did, and funny to see all my fellow animator's styles mashed up together in what turned out to be a pretty psychedelic ode to Fritz the Cat.


The Dandy Warhols, "Welcome to the Third World" director's cut from Webster Colcord on Vimeo.

12-01-2010

More masks from the De Young, more scribbles of Dani napping.

the many beards of kepler

I love Johannes Kepler. I find his frustrated search for God in the perfection of geometry very moving. Also, that beard was METAL. Then we've got Kepler's main man, Tycho Brahe, on the bottom right, there.

jester

Just finished some flash animation for Rick Herns Productions, an event planner in Menlo Park. They've got a new site in the oven, and the basic idea is to have an animated version of their logo, a jester, appear on a services page, juggling icons representing the different areas of RHP's expertise. On the left is the original logo, on the right you can see how I broke him apart for articulation.

a teamaker

Yup.

Garage Animation

More late night animation with my buddy Keenan.



Don't miss this bitchin' 80's remix, either!

coraline

Coraline was set free into the world last weekend, and I have to admit, it was something of an event for me. I've had a real interest in stop-motion for the last year or so, and this last month especially has been an adventure of puppet projects. Being able to see something so lovingly made and masterfully executed as Coraline is both encouraging and wildly inspirational for me. There is something truly magical about bringing tangible objects to life like this; it so articulately represents what I love about animation and why I'd want to pursue something so difficult. Coraline made me remember what it's like to be a kid filled with wonderment, and that's a pretty amazing feeling to be able to give someone.

Weiden + Kennedy have a blog displaying all of the promotional materials they created for the film, and it's a special kind of awesome. They did an amazing job of extending the movie's atmosphere into the real world. Be sure to check out the official site they put together if you haven't already. I remember a time when people would pay good money to explore stuff like this. What really stood out to me were all of the 2-minute documentaries in the theater room. They play up the esoteric nature of each artists' skill in such a charming way, one can see how that personality is channeled into the characters of the film.

third world prep

Sketch notes from my shots on the music vid for "Welcome to the Third World." Animating that hippo's rear end was the most fun I've had putting a pencil to paper in weeks.

light at the end of the tunnel

Keenan and I just put in what will probably be our last day of work on Neil's stop-motion short, "The Cleaning." It was a night of nasty sound effects and hilarious pixelation. Check out a few stills:




This here's an early motion test using real beeswax to animate the creature. This of course was before we realized animating with beeswax was ineffectual and masochistic.