TV BABY

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TV BABY

TV BABY is a passion project of mine.

born from childhood memories of late nights watching tv past my bedtime and being creeped out by strange things that would only air after midnight, TV BABY is a project in which i aimed to capture that sensation.

that feeling of confusion and fear, but also intrigue and curiosity that prevents you from taking your eyes off the screen.

throughout my life, i've seeked out that feeling in movies, tv, cartoons, music, books, everywhere i could. i knew that eventually i'd have to try and emulate that sensation myself and when i had the idea for this animation i knew instinctively that this would be an outlet for that expression.

what i wanted out of TV BABY the most was the atmosphere and the mystery and i feel very proud to have accomplished what i aimed for.

my main inspirations were the animated short films created by Jack Stauber, who taps masterfully into the aether of mystery and uncanny;

and of course, everything [adult swim] did in the 90's was a BIG influence, not only for TV BABY, but for everything i make and everything i am. when i reference watching weird tv past my bedtime, what i'm really talking about is [adult swim] airing after Cartoon Network, which is also always on my mind.

the first draft of TV BABY:

the production of TV BABY was quite simple. i knew exactly the vibe i was looking for from the get-go.

after making the original drawing, i was quick to bring it to blender's 2D animation workspace and start chipping away at the animation with the grease pencil tool.

first i did the keyframes and then the inbetweens. blender's 2D workspace makes it very easy to time out the animations, so while this part was a lot of repetitive work, it was easy to refine once i had all of the drawings down.

after coloring every drawing, i brought the animated loop into adobe after effects, where i added all of the other components. this was the most fun part for me, because it's where i really got to produce it into the atmosphere i was looking for.

first i messed around with the visual effects until i got the rough, blurry VHS look i had imagined. after that, i looked for some advertisement music that fit the visuals, along with an ambient echo track to add to the discomfort.

then, i picked all the other sounds, one at a time, and tweaked them and timed them until it became clear there was a story unfolding in the background of this video.

i'm very proud of how all of the elements communicate with each other in a way that creates an audiovisual story with enough information to give the illusion of understanding what is happening, but enough mystery to leave you wondering:

"what the hell's really going on here?!"