Music video director Doug Cook hired my art collective Humble Wonder to design, create, and perform a unique shadow puppetry show for Calgary heavy metal band Exit Strategy. Under his direction we created 50+ puppets, backgrounds, textures, and lighting effects. I call this an animated video, as everything was made by us, and we stole a lot of classic animation techniques to achieve our shots.
One challenge we undertook with this project was to keep all of images, animated sequences, and layers strictly analog - meaning, the entire video was created by hand by the three of us. We used an overhead projector, painted transparencies, multiple layers of backgrounds painted onto huge acrylic sheets, and puppets drawn, cut, jointed, and performed by hand. Everything was captured in camera, no digital effects here!
I designed and performed most of the character puppets and half of the effects. Lee handled backgrounds and the other half of the effects (including getting the rain curtain working), Josh ruined his hands cutting out the mountains of puppets I made up in Photoshop, but it was truly a collaborative effort, with everyone doing a bit of everything. Dave Kovac came on to help us rig up our puppet stage and provide valuable technical assistance, in addition to being a fourth puppeteer. Most shots needed all hands on deck.
