My meditation videos are now a trilogy. Presenting my brand new short "A Whale". It's an undersea guided meditation for guppies of all ages.
The team from the first two shorts is back, with Jess Lakin's gentle voice leading the journey. Jess actually sat in the Easy Pose yoga position while recording. After a few slow, deep breaths, she began extemporizing on the journey of a whale traveling through the sea. There was no script. I gave no direction. She just went with the flow, pun intended.
My job was then to provide visuals to the audio. I designed it for simplicity, knowing I would be animating it completely on my own, and not wanting to spent ten years doing so. It was all done in Adobe Animate. I don't build rigs, just approach it like old school limited animation. The biggest challenge for me was in design and color, which I don't get involved with too much in my studio work. This was largely improvised as well.
Composer Ian Rees squeezed me in between feature films he was scoring. As with Jess, I let him surprise me. The only rule we've had with these shorts was that sound effects must be done musically. No foley. He used instruments ranging from a cello to a Brazilian cuica drum. He created a musical undersea world that completely elevated my visuals. The results left me grinning ear to ear.
In nearly 42 years in animation, it's still a thrill when all the elements come together and a film becomes a thing of its own. Like a cartoon Dr Frankenstein - it's alive! IT'S ALIVE!!!
Enjoy and please share. Namaste! NAMASTE!!!
-Steve
