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The Making of "Mutant Aliens" by Bill Plympton

Page 3.

© Bill Plympton 2001

With all of the characters designed, in the winter of 1999/2000 I began with Scene 1 and started animating through the entire storyboard. As I copied each shot from the storyboard, I would often add a few shots, to either help explain or add humor to the scene. Sometimes, I would go off on wild tangents as I was animating - one example is when Darby is getting ready to have sex with Josie, he looks in his pants, and his dick becomes a bunch of sexual metaphors. It was fun to draw and really added a lot of humor and character to Darby.

For "Strange Person", I actually cast actors and videotaped them acting out the scenes, and I used this video as a reference to help me keep the characters consistent, and also to help with movement and shadows. However, with "Aliens", I believed I could draw the entire film without video reference, and although I think characters do vary their look from scene to scene, I find that look very interesting. When Bob Clampett animated Daffy Duck, he was such a malleable character that his proportions would change from shot to shot - and it didn't bother me. In fact, I found it more engaging. As long as there are some basic characteristics, like hair (ex. Dr. Frubar), suit colors or body shapes, it's not that important that the characters look exactly alike from shot to shot. The lack of video reference also sped up the animation process. I was able to complete the rest of the animation between January and August 2000, despite several extended trips to film festivals during that time, doing some advance publicity for the film. I would usually get up at 6:30, start drawing and go until 9 or 10 pm on a good day, though sometimes I would be tired and stop at 6 pm, and see a film or join friends for dinner. But if I could draw without any interruptions (phone calls, color questions from the painters, etc.) I could do between 100 and 200 pencil drawings a day, and these are finished-animation drawings. Since I normally shoot on 4's and use cycles, this could represent about 45 to 60 seconds of animation per day. If I could keep up this pace every day, theoretically I could animate a feature film in about two months. As the animation progressed, every week the drawings would be shot on my video pencil test machine. After checking the video tests, I would make the appropriate corrections (usually about 50% of the shots had to be adjusted or corrected), then I could go in and finish the drawing, adding texture, shadows, and detail, and then flip the drawing over and indicate for my cel painters where the shadows are.

"As I copied each shot from the storyboard, I would often add a few shots, to either help explain or add humor to the scene."

On the editing front, starting in January 2000, my editor, Anthony Arcidi, and I built a "Leica reel" - starting with the book drawings, we made a rough video cut of the film, with some friends and I recording the voices of each character. This version timed out at just under 60 minutes, much too short for a feature theatrical release. I freaked and decided to add more jokes, and a few more shots to establish the characters. As the pencil tests were completed, those were cut in on the Avid and any kind of music that we felt was appropriate was slotted in temporarily onto the Leica reel.

We used the Cirque du Soleil song "Allegra" for the beginning - it really built up the emotions before the blast-off. Also, the "Friends of Dino Martinez" was a musical style that I wanted to use. Then, Hank Bones and Maureen McElheron had some previous music that we dropped in. I wanted a more adult feel to the music for this film, as opposed to the novelty songs of "Strange Person". Therefore, I was looking for a more spiritual, religious, primitive style of music. There would be only one musical number, "Can't Drag Race With Jesus", and the rest would be wordless and strictly background music.

I love the idea of matching Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" album with the classic film "The Wizard of Oz". As I watched, it seemed like a whole new art form, and I decided I wanted to do something similar with "Aliens". So, although the released film will not be wall-to-wall music, I do want to release a CD of purely background music, and also place it on one of the DVD tracks, so people can watch the entire film with music and no words, which to me is the perfect way to watch a film.

When each drawn and shadowed scene was completed, I handed it to my assistants, who photocopied it onto clear acetate cels using our temperamental, lonely Canon copier. The cels were then pegged and painted to conform with the color model sheets hanging on the wall.

Since it's all hand-colored, I don't have the luxury of changing the colors after painting - therefore the palette must be kept simple and limited. I did try to put some monochromatic blues in the space agency control room, which was somewhat successful. I believe that using a monochromatic palette was essential for this film. All of my tones had to be muted and very close together in hue. It's much easier on the eyes, and consequentially when a very important action scene occurs, like gun fire or blood spurting, then I add the bright colors. One of the problems with "The Road to El Dorado" was the garish reds and greens used. After 10 minutes of watching that film, I had a headache and literally had to force myself to watch the screen because of the clashing bright colors. Another fun part of the animation process is the backgrounds. In "Strange Person" I experimented with the use of photos for backgrounds - some worked and some didn't. I feel that for "Mutant Aliens", however, that I resolved some of the problems. From the layouts, I sketched the needed backgrounds and met with Paul Zdanowicz to build the models for them. There are a number of reasons why I like painted photos as backgrounds - for example, once a set is built, it's possible to take numerous photos of the same set-up and get 10 to 15 different angles for each scene. Also, there's a certain reality to a photographed background that makes the animation more believable. Liga Balodis would come in with her fish-eye lens camera (to give it a cartoonish look) and shoot two shots for each layout. We used a single, strong light source because I love crisp, clear shadows - they add so much to the drama and clarity of each scene, like a De Chirico painting. The film was then processed and printed on 8 x 10 matte black and white photo paper. I then proceeded to lay down the first layer of oil paint on the photo. Since the black and white image shows through the paint, I can get fairly sloppy with the paint. I would generally do 30 to 40 photos a day, let those dry and add a second, more detailed layer of paint a week later. Varying the color slightly with each layer would bring out a little depth and texture, increasing with each coat. I believe in all there are about 1,000 backgrounds, some that I used a number of times and some that were just painted colors on cardstock.

For the cloud backgrounds, I took many photos of clouds from planes or airports, or whenever I saw an interesting cloud formation, and I recreated the same coloring process as the other backgrounds, then I had two or three color xeroxes made of each one. When matching the backgrounds with the appropriate colored scenes, there were two ideas I kept in mind - the backgrounds must not draw attention away from the action, and they must add to the emotional feeling of each scene.

In a number of scenes, I used silhouettes - I found that this made those sequences much more interesting and engaging, and also was ten times faster to draw and paint.

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