Suppertime: Then and Now
Working at an animation studio, Matt Sutter and I found ourselves with pockets of downtime. We were freelancing and that never meant steady employment, only working project to project (granted that was still months at a time). To keep ourselves productive we dabbled in putting together a pitch package for an Adult Swim style series based on an early short Sutter had made. It was a goofy inside joke, and frankly not terribly good. But it was dear to us and we expanded on the idea and did a lot of the ground work. The closest we ever got to animating anything was the title montage, but before we ever got to sink our teeth into it, both of us found steady work and the ambition died. Every once and a while I would brush the dust off and chip away at finishing it. Recently, Matt helped out with the final push and, well, a couple of years later… here we are. The title sequence is done.
I thought it would be interesting to give a little bit of insight into how the process works. First things start out with a moving storyboard called an “animatic”. It’s mainly a crude animation using stick figures and scribbled background art. Then that file is the framework that you work within and expand upon to make the finished animation.
Here’s both the animatic and animation laid out for you to compare. Often times the animatic has more spirit and energy because it’s made more spontaneously. I think that was definitely true here.
