I teamed up with Leia and Francisco. We are interested in making a music video and eventually have it augmenting with a real life diorama. We borrowed the illustration of Sister Ray by The Velvet Underground from illustrator Gabriel Alcala (Francisco's connection), planned on animating the still image with a 3 mins edited version of the song. Our goal for the AR stage is to make the diorama using the framing of the illustration, in black and white. The animation will give characters movements based on the lyrics, and fill in colors based on the illustrator's style.
The illustration SISTER RAY by Gabriel Alcala:
The lyrics we're going to use (song edited by Francisco):
DOC & SALLY & MISS RAYON — Doc and Sally inside They're cooking for the down five Who's staring at Miss Rayon Who's busy licking up her pig pen LOU — I'm searching for my mainline I said I couldn't hit it sideways I said I couldn't hit it sideways Oh, just like Sister Ray said Whip it on ROSIE — Rosie and Miss Rayon They're busy waiting for her booster Who just got back from Carolina She said she didn't like the weather SAILOR — They're busy waiting for her sailor Who's big and dressed in pink and leather He's just here from Alabama He wants to know a way to earn a dollar LOU — I'm searching for my mainer I said I couldn't hit it sideways I couldn't hit it sideways Oh, just like Sister Ray said Play it on CECIL — Cecil's got his new piece He cocks and shoots it between three and four He aims it at the sailor Shoots him down dead on the floor Oh, you shouldn't do that Don't you know you'll stain the carpet? Now don't you know you'll stain the carpet And by the way, have you got a dollar? TIME TIME — Oh, no, man, I haven't got the time-time Too busy sucking on a ding-dong She's busy sucking on my ding-dong Oh, she does just like Sister Ray said CODA — I'm searching for my mainline I said I c-c-c-ouldn't hit it sideways I c-c-c-c-c-c-couldn't hit it sideways Oh do it, do it, oh just, just, just do it, bless Sister Ray sir, go on! Oh
The storyboard sketched by Leia:
*With the current song edition we might not have the police scene.
Preparing assets (my job this week):
Thanks to the original pdf file from the artist, I was able to open it directly with Adobe Illustrator and have every single stroke already separated in layers.
I grouped them by the character(s), and saved each group (turned off the rest) as a PSD file.
Opened PSD in Photoshop, located, named every single layer, and grouped them based on what we might need for animation. The absolute easy part here was that I have very clean graphic selections. The more challenging part was to locate a tiny black stroke on canvas. Because every single stroke was a path in Ai, there were way too many details than we need. My next step is to group the layers with their parent/child relationships, and to talk with my team about our animating style to decide which parts of the characters should be separated.
