Party Talk

Party Talk is the second of my two projects which explore ceramic and animation (the first is 10 Cups, which can be found here.) While 10 Cups was a look into animating directly in the form by engraving, in this iteration I looked at mixing animating through physical form as well as the pieces interacting with 2D animation.

I began with sketches of various interactions and animation sequences, spliced the audio how I wanted it, and physically throwing the pieces. Once those were done I was able to create an animatic with sketches of the forms. With that as a guide I shot the work. After revising the animatic with the real photos I used Adobe Animate to sketch the sequences and then brought them into Photoshop to produce the final animations. 

The exception to this method is the worm, which appears at 00:28. Going off of the frame count for that segment, I sketched the sequence in photoshop and created the cups following that. The sequence, to match with the music and words, called for 13 cups. As the worm speaks it pushes out of the cup's form, so I created that push in the pieces using my sketch and a rough gif-making app as guides.

I chose this song, Party Talk by Kai Takahashi, for its fun, lighthearted, and a little bit non-sequitur sound. My focus for this project was the technique, so both the audio itself and its concept set the perfect tone – a busy and bubbling space with disjointed but together scenes.

Spring 2018.