Better Days

December 9, 2020 11:00 PM

Joaquin Baldwin (@joabaldwin) [who is a "Disney Feature Animation layout artist and supervisor: Zootopia, Moana, Ralph, Frozen, BH6, etc."] has posted his music video for the Radical Days song Better Days.

"Timelapse animation music video, with my beard growing through Covid lockdown. Using my face as a stop-motion puppet (a technique called pixilation), I took 2,117 individual photos, every night, over 101 days, and synchronized the actions to the song "Better Days" by @Radical Face"

Fans of Mike Jittlov (The Wizard Of Speed And Time) may recognize the word pixilation for this sort of animation.

posted by hippybear (11 comments total)

Holy cow that was mesmerizing.

2117 videos a night for a 2 minute video! Did he record the whole video every night at 15fps and then just go and use a slider to modulate the beard growth??
posted by aubilenon at 12:59 AM on December 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

The song is by Radical Face [which is ... eponysterical]
posted by chavenet at 7:09 AM on December 10, 2020

That was amazing. I'm most impressed by the planning that must have been involved in making his beard appear to grow backwards.
posted by surlyben at 11:07 AM on December 10, 2020

I'm guessing editing more than planning. He says in the description he shot the same number of frames every night. My guess is he recording himself doing the same motions every night over and over as the beard grew. then he could scrub the beard forward and backwards in time in the editing process.
posted by subtle_squid at 11:51 AM on December 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

I cannot tell you how much I needed the song and the video this week. It's beautiful.
posted by bilabial at 12:52 PM on December 10, 2020

My guess is he recording himself doing the same motions every night over and over as the beard grew.

And lipsynched the song.
posted by tspae at 1:41 PM on December 10, 2020

I cannot begin to imagine the patience this effort took. Thanks for this!
posted by Busithoth at 3:02 PM on December 10, 2020

Loved this.
posted by andreinla at 5:33 PM on December 10, 2020

The song is by Radical Face

I'm going to blame this typo on autocorrect although it is more likely because my fingers hate me.
posted by hippybear at 10:20 PM on December 10, 2020

My question is, do you set up 101 nights of 2117 images in parallel video streams in an editor and then write a script to move frame to frame up and down the ladder of image streams to pull together the master video? I can't imagine doing that one frame at a time for all 2117 images of the song.
posted by hippybear at 10:22 PM on December 10, 2020

Jittlov was doing it live in-camera. He was really hard-core old-school.
posted by hippybear at 10:23 PM on December 10, 2020 [1 favorite]