Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/990677
SET IN MOTION "When I pitched this short I actually didn't tell them that I wanted to do it with stop motion," admits Segurson, who convinced the team at Nickelodeon to move forward with the technique after it was accepted in the shorts program. "Nickelodeon was impressed with Cosmo as a filmmaker, and we were intrigued by the idea of a short that used little dialogue and instead used music to tell a story," says Chris Viscardi, Senior Vice President, Animation at Nickelodeon. "It was not so much the technology per se, but rather Cosmo's passion for using this approach to tell his story. Since we are a creator driven studio, we love looking for opportunities to have creators tell their stories in unique ways." For Segurson that vision was rooted in stop motion but he emphasizes that it wasn't simply a fanciful idea, it plays an integral role in the story. In the middle, a surrealist 2D battle takes place between the snooty Mr. Whiskers and the Prince. "It was going to go beyond physical space," he says, so it was important to establish a difference between the "real world" and the fantasy world of the battle. "I decided to use stop motion sets for the palace—the reality that the King lives in—and then create this [abstracted 2D] fantasy world that the Prince lives in when he's playing music," he says. With Nickelodeon's approval, Segurson, who had just wrapped up co-directing Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling (a reboot of the original '90s series), got to work on creating a three-dimensional world for his characters. However, this short wasn't Segurson's first foray into stop motion. His love for the technique started as 6-year-old when he saw the Rankin/Bass produced Mad Monster Party. By the time he was in high school, he was using a friend's video camera to create his first stop motion film. "You couldn't take stills," he says, "so we were moving [marshmallow] Peeps around the camera and then edited out our hands." As a professional artist he was hired by a San Francisco foodie to create stop motion vignettes for a website— real strawberries jamming on musical instruments, cheese being chased by graters. Throughout, he experimented on his own learning the craft through trial and error. Then in 2014 he worked for Screen Novelties (a non-union studio) on Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas. "I ended up storyboarding that entire project on site so I was able to board out a gag and stage a scene then walk in the other room and see it being filmed—see how my staging was interpreted by a stop motion animator on a real set with real lights," he says. He was also introduced to Dragonframe, which he calls invaluable to anyone interested in the technique. All of these experiences provided Segurson with the foundation to move forward with the project, and Nickelodeon was supportive of the endeavor. Indeed, Viscardi says the studio would like to explore the use of stop motion more but emphasizes, "it needs to be driven by the vision of the creator." GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS After sitting down at his organ and working out compositions and musical themes for each character that evoked the Golden Era of jazz, Segurson started sketching characters and thinking about how they were going to move within the physical spaces. He storyboarded the entire project, devoting much of his time and plenty of revisions to the musical battle, then created the animatic. With a tight budget, he didn't want to build superfluous sets. It was only then that Segurson could literally roll up his sleeves and get to work. He started calling on a group of close collaborators. He reached out to saxophonist James King, co-founder of the band, Fitz and the Tantrums. The two met at CalArts: "He and I used to go into the music rooms and make each other laugh with different [cartoon] themes so I knew he was the perfect collaborator." Together, they composed and recorded a temporary click track to serve as a guide for the action. Next, Segurson called on Mark Chamness to build the sets. It took two weeks and plenty of cardboard and PVC to create the six key locations—the exterior of the palace, the stairs leading to the Great Hall, the Great Hall, the Music Room, the King's quarters and the interior of the limousine. They got creative with materials. "I hit up local thrift stores and found junk jewelry beads for door knobs, a couple of gaudy old lady shawls for curtain materials, Christmas ornaments for castle spires, and a domed 7-11 Slurpee lid for chandelier parts," he says. The team spent the next month painting and texturing the sets. They also had to track down miniature props. Segurson found a line of French Provincial dollhouse furniture that could be transformed into a different treatment to match the rooms, but still there were props that he couldn't find, such as the Victrola phonograph. F E AT U R E "When I pitched this short I actually didn't tell them that I wanted to do it with stop motion..." 28 KEYFRAME