Motion Comix of the Gods

Motion Comix of the Gods: Part the Fourth

posted on June 15th, 2009 in interviews

In this four part series, Richard Caldwell risks life and limb to unveil a behind the scenes look into the actual making of a motion comic. Cardboard Gods, a troika of creative Brits, stands as stoic vanguard for this relatively new presentation of sequential art. From start to finish, Phil Stark, Ben Sheppard and Mat Startup guide us through their trials, tribulations and bar tabs conquered so that they can share their industrious vision of commoners going all superhero. While the big boys are now throwing their hats into the ring hoping to make a buck, Cardboard Gods comes from the savage heart.

This is how it’s done…

[warning: explicit language]

Part The Fourth: FX Witchery

Now let’s go technical. What is the setup, the gear and programs at your disposal?

Mat- Well, we shoot on a Canon piece of crap family photo style camera with the occasional scene shot on some shit hot Nikon thing I borrow from work. As you can tell I don’t know much about cameras so onto the editing.
I work on an Intel iMac and yes, I am one of those fanatical Mac users who thinks anyone who owns a PC is a mentalist. I’ve got a ludicrous number of programs for audio/visual manipulation and 3D creation at my disposal but I rarely use more than a few. The pics are cutout and comicized in Photoshop (it’s all I’ll even need for 2D work), then shipped over to Motion 3 for animating. I make each shot as an independent movie then assemble them into a sequence to add the transitions, sound FX and music.

Was their a bit of trial and error in finding the right software, or did the gags and album covers and whatnot provide enough training ground?

Mat- I definitely learned the basics from goofing around in my downtime at work but this was taking it up a notch. I’ve been using Photoshop for years so I had a lot of methods for “unrealing” a photo, but it took awhile to figure out the right combination of layers and filters to get the final look. As for the 3D side of it, when we started I’d had Motion for about 3 months so I was getting well to grips with it. The rest I just teach myself as I go along, which is why it takes such a fucking long time!

What is a rough run down of the procedures- is it cropping/re-sizing/colour separations city? Has there ever been much cause for re-shoots?

Mat- We have the character shots (mostly taken in Benny’s kitchen) and the background plates, and each is treated differently. Characters are cut out and filtered in a very dull series of “duplicate layer, set blend mode, add filter etc”. Their size is what it is at this point, resizing for scale and depth are done in Motion. We don’t have to re-shoot much, well not now- a year ago it was a different story, but we learn from our idiotic mistakes, don’t we? Most photo problems can be fudged anyhow.

And what of the typographical work? There are a few sites that offer a wealth of free fonts and the like, so what words are Gods-worthy?

Mat- Masked Marvel is by far the best comic book font I can find for basic speech and thoughts. Badaboom is great for emphasized speech like shouting “Being a cunt?!”. But the tricky one was REDMAN’s voice. For him I found Gypsy Voice, creepy and distorted but still readable.

Tell us about the audio, is there any previous background in digital audio editing? Do you mould scenes around the sounds, or versa vice?

Mat- Well I work primarily in video, the only real audio work being cutting things to music or some voiceover work, so I’ve had to learn a lot about sound FX. Because there’s no audible dialogue the background music and sound effects are paramount. Camera moves need a sound, frame transitions need a sound, a punch, a cigarette lighter, blood, they all need sounds and without them a shot lacks atmosphere.
As for the music, like I said earlier each shot is independent so it’s not until a bunch of shots are put together that I can cut them to the beat. For some scenes I may already have a piece of music in mind and for others I’ll spend days trawling through stock cd’s for the perfect theme.

As the visuals seem to be primarily etched out by Startup and his fleet of drunken winged simians, do you remaining members of the troika weigh in much over the actual editing process?

Ben- Yes.
To expand- it’s just very much a group effort from top to bottom. Startup obviously knows his onions on a grand scale so the technical approach concerning the setup and basic look, flow and cutting from one thing to another is always pretty perfect straight away. Stark and I pipe up with more specific notes and directions as they present themselves.
For example, and speaking personally, when I write I always see things in my head very clearly right from the get go, and if I feel the interpretation in the edit is off the mark, or could be tweaked, we’ll discuss it.
Otherwise Stark and I can lend a fresh perspective- tiny little things, but which make the difference in the long run- a slower fade up here, an earlier sound cue there, all that massively boring stuff that’s the most important thing in the world at the time, but which you never ever think of again once it’s sorted. As it should be.

And lastly, when DO you know the work is really finished? Is everything thoroughly mapped out from the get-go, or is it more like traditional painting- you just go at her til she feels right?

Mat- I work very much one shot at a time and almost always chronologically. I’ll have ideas for shots a little in advance like “Hey if I pull the camera out like that I can zoom straight out through my own head”, and wacky thinks like putting some random snuff porn clip into each background tv screen. But yeah, I just hack away at each shot til I think it works then put a whole bunch of shots together and realize that the camera is moving too fast on one shot ot I’ve spelled “origins” with only one “I” or some such shit. Once I think I’m done I do a screening of a finished scene with the guys. Any issues found then can usually be fixed in their presence and that scene is in the can (or desktop folder, to be exact).

So there you have it, patient readers, Cardboard Gods ripping back the curtains to share with you the tricks of their trade (or the trade of their tricks?). They are among the first to fully push the definitions of motion comics back into the realm of reinterpretation, and mark my words, the best is yet to come. These are new talents, exciting new creative minds for the comic book medium of the next generation of tech, and they are hep enough to only be in it for the kicks.
And what’s more, Mat Startup, Ben Sheppard and Phil Stark have chosen to hit us with an exclusive video that will debut right here and now! Take it like a shot of whiskey and grin a bit knowing the next issue of Cardboard Gods is only right around the corner.