Monday, October 20, 2008

Flappers and Lipstick


This animation, created for the documentary The Powder & The Glory, was a humorous take on how make-up suddenly became a public "ritual" and "performance" in the 1920s. It's definitely one of my favorites of the bunch. I did all the storyboarding and design to go along with the narration. I again called on Dustin Wade to help me animate some of the more difficult spots, including the flapper dance sequence. He figured out the mechanics of the movements in rough gestures, and I translated them into cartoony drawings.

You can view the animation below. Note, if you're looking at this in an RSS feed reader (like Google Reader), you're gonna have to hop on over my site, because it's a Flash embed.



I like to do a fair amount of redraw when I animate in Flash (as opposed to tweening). I reuse art assets when I can, but these shorts didn't require that as much. I was also trying to battle against the slickness of Flash to make them look authentic to the period.

Related posts: History, animated.
Helena Rubinstein
A Robbery! (animated)

2 comments:

David DeGrand said...

Man these animated clips are great! Thanks for posting them, it was a real pleasure seeing your awesome art in motion!

Bob Flynn said...

Thanks David! They were an absolute blast to animate. Probably one of the most fun jobs I've had at FableVision. I'll be posting one more this weekend (the one I think it the best, too!). So check back for more. (You do anyway :) )