Channel Frederator Blog

Episode 70

It’s always pleasing to see an animated music video where the visuals and the band pretty much blow your mind. This video is just that. Plus, it has singing puppets. And we like singing puppets.

MELISSA:How did Copernicus Animation form? How many are currently employed there?

BRADLEY: The four owners of Copernicus Studios joined back in 2003 working out of an apartment at the beginning working on local commercials and show pitches. After moving to a harbour front room the studio slowly began to expand and hired me on to do some animation on a show pitch for a Canadian TV station. My personal background with the owners dates further back than that, however. Three of the owners were good friends of mine at a previous studio. When that studio shut down we seemingly went our own separate ways unknowingly that we would meet again in the near future. When they were working out of an apartment starting the company, I was working out of my bedroom working on my first music video. I often referred back to them for some advice on some of the work I was doing and then eventually figured it would be best to come back to Halifax to work with them using both our commercials and the music video as our stamp. From that point forward we never looked back and kept working harder and harder to get to the stage that we are at now. There are over 20 people working here now with us and speaking on behalf of the owners, I know that we are truly proud of them as close friends. We all hope that we help strengthen the animation community here as best we can.

MELISSA: How do you know “The Jimmy Swift Band”?

BRADLEY: I met Aaron (Collier) (keyboard artist) a few years ago while driving down to last year’s East Coast Music Awards. We all took a ride down with our mutual friends from a group called, Universal Soul which was the first band that I had done a music video for. We talked for a while about doing a film together because he is really heavy into the music production scene and I’ve been trying to put a film together for years. I always loved the music that The Jimmy Swift Band produces and they liked the videos that I was producing here, so it was a match that was meant to be. We are both quite fond of the organic feel and rhythm that each of our artwork portrays and so we came to the conclusion that we should mold both the visual and the musical arts together. The product came from something truly honest and I think that’s why it turned out solid emotionally more than anything.

MELISSA: What was your creative process in working with the band?

BRADLEY: Music videos these days can often be driven by modern ties and the marvel that is our ever changing mechanical environment. However, that being said, the band itself doesn’t really come from that type of environment to me. If you see their live show you’d understand that the music comes from something much deeper and so that being said, it was easy to work with them because I believe that we come from the same mind set. I presented them with an idea that roughly outlines my perspective of The Great Depression and thus, the loss of organic art to a large degree. They liked the idea and it was up to me to follow through. The Jimmy Swift Band was very supportive of the idea and often came by the studio to monitor the ideas and share their own ideas about what we should do.

MELISSA: Where did you come up with the idea for the puppets?

The idea for the puppets was honestly one of the last ideas that I came up with in the story. I was originally just planning on having poor people living in a shanty town right next to the suddenly overpowering skyscrapers. I started to feel that it was a little too real in a way and to be honest it lacked meaning in some regard. I thought that it would be best to make things much more simple and organic. This is where the titanic battle of the organic world vs. the mechanically driven world idea came about. It seemed to fit in nicely with the painted backgrounds and really worked against the grain of seemingly computer generated artwork. We do work in flash here, but for the most part I still consider myself very much a classical animator, so this particular video meant a lot to me in that regard. I believe myself to be one of those wooden characters and for those who do know me, I am actually in the video as one of them in the background…just having a little fun.

MELISSA: How long did it take you to make this?

BRADLEY: The video did take quite some time to do. I honestly lost track of that, but I’d say it was something like 5 months. I spent majority of the time coming up with character and background designs plus making all the artistic choices on how everything will be painted. The storyboards took quite a while as well to do because I wanted to make sure the video flowed nicely. It’s too easy to get caught up in doing a music video and slowing the pace down to tell a serious story when really the music is upbeat and you should be keeping pace with it. Once I was past the design stage, my good friend Bianca Siercke helped incredibly with the cleanup of the characters and helped me in animation as well. One of my best friends, Murray Bain, took on the responsibility of building the robots I designed in aftereffects and had his hand in post production along with Copernicus CEO, Juan Cruz Baldassarre. Joe Achorn, Mike Fiander, Dharmali Patel, Andrew Holland and Wesley Bryant rounded out what was a great animation team for the short period of time they were assigned to work on the video. Ian Westoby, Justin Niewland, Faith Hicks and David Sourwine all worked on backgrounds and I believe did a superb job. I got my hands in on everything and made sure that what I was handing out was keyed as best I could or painted as best I could so that there was enough reference for everyone. Part of being a good director, I think, is being able to take on the lion’s share of the responsibility and so preparing all that likely took the longest of all.

MELISSA: What do you find helps when you’re stuck creatively.

BRADLEY: I don’t think that I have a certain thing that I do to get out of a rut, necessarily. I do find though that sometimes I get stuck creatively when I’m thinking too much about the technicals of how to do a certain drawing. I have to find a way to get back to my freedom of drawing and sometimes to do so I have to remove myself completely from drawing and really get out there and see true art itself. The great thing about living next to the ocean here in Halifax is that the sky is so vast. Taking a walk through the night with little to no light pollution is truly a blessing and opens my eyes and mind to some beautiful expression of thought. I guess nature heals all. Nature makes me think of all walks of life, history of the earth and the endless path that is the universe. I remove myself from myself and I find that there is so much to love and endear myself to that it makes it so much easier to find peace in my thought. Life isn’t about drawing or what happens in that exact moment around you – it’s about your place in time and the freedom of nature as a whole. I hope that my artwork expresses that properly because that’s truly where it comes from.

MELISSA: Who are some of the artists who have influenced you?

BRADLEY: In speaking of artists in general that have influenced me, I’d say to look no further than some of my elementary school classmates. My best friend back in Pickering is Jasper Gahunia and he is a world class DJ with an artist known as K-Os. He has a large part to do with my admiration for music. Art influence always finds a way of stemming from family. Of course I owe a lot to my parents and sister for that, but truly he is family to me to and helped me through a lot of things in my life and helped me to see things with a great appreciation. If it wasn’t for my good friend, Richard Duhaney in elementary school, I don’t know where my passion for the fine arts would be. As far as artists that I’ve studied on the side, I don’t think there is a bigger influence than Norman Rockwell. In particular on this project, I referred to my memories as a child of his artwork and it carried a gigantic influence in my approach to designing the characters in the video. At the end you may even notice that there is a painting of the puppet master painted as best I could to the likeness of a Saturday Evening Post cover.

MELISSA: Was this created in Flash? Did you use any other techniques?

BRADLEY: Most of the inbetweening was done in flash. However, everything was keyed on paper and designed on paper to start. I usually draw a lot of the concepts on paper, scan them and give them some rough treatment in photoshop. Storyboards were all done by hand as they should be and mostly everything in design was handled by hand. When it came to painting the backgrounds I had drawn most of them on paper, but painted them in Art Rage, Photoshop and various other painting programs I could get my hands on. We did make up some textures that we laid out in aftereffects to enhance the stage like environment. Flash was used in an efficient manner without sacrificing the organic feel that posing on paper gives. We used it to inbeween and colour the characters, but that’s about all it was used for in this case. Effects were all animated by hand as well and the heaviest part of computer usage was really the compositing aspect and the building and animation of the robots. Overall, I wanted to keep the video very natural so I did as much as possible as I could with a pitt oil pencil.

MELISSA: What was the most challenging part of the video to animate?

BRADLEY: You know, overall I really enjoyed animating on the video. Even the most difficult scenes did not seem all that difficult because I personally enjoy the challenge that they present. Of course it’s easy to pick out the scenes that offer the most difficulty, but as long as you’re enjoying it, then in the end it doesn’t seem so challenging after all. One of the parts that I did really appreciate was all the animation of the Execubots and the planes. I know that Murray Bain showed his best work on building them and animating them with a touch of humor as they nod their bodies to the music. He gave them a lot of character and that’s one of the sections of animation that I would say he really pulled through on and without that, the video wouldn’t have been nearly as good as it turned out to be. I’m very proud of him for that. Juan Cruz Baldassarre and I took on the task of what was likely the hardest classically animated scene because we had to put that one through a heavy load of compositing. It’s the montage scene with the smokestacks. That scene was actually the first scene that I had conceptualized, and ended up being the one that we worked on last. It took a lot of effort, but I’m really proud of how that one turned out and I know that Juan definitely showed his strengths on that sequence.

MELISSA: What other projects are in the works for Copernicus?

BRADLEY: We are proud to say that we have been working on several projects since the video and have many other projects planned for the next few years. I can tell you that the current slate that the shows will be on, are with Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel and Cartoon Network. The company is enjoying what work has come our way and we are all feeling incredibly blessed to have these types of opportunities come our way. It is truly incredibly difficult to make it in this industry and we are all very grateful for any recognition and opportunities that we have been and will be given.

MELISSA: What about “The Jimmy Swift Band”?

BRADLEY: The Jimmy Swift Band has been touring around North America for the past few months now. I know that they’ve been packing shows and mostly everyone needs to bring their bionic dancing legs for the night when they go to their show. They are loads of fun at a live show and everyone should check them out if they have a chance. Truth is, I wasn’t so much of a rock fan before. They really turned my ear to the ground to feel the stomp of the people that dance to their music. They are truly blessed and work incredibly hard. I think that’s why we get along together well. We have respect deeply for one another.

EXCELLENT job on this video Brad. I’m sure you guys are very proud. And thanks for this fabulous interview!

Melissa

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