The Cardinal & Colbert: Animation

Last Friday's "The Cardinal & Colbert" event at Fordham University was a rousing success. I had the opportunity to contribute my own small bit of joy to the evening with the illustration posted previously, and the animated sequence posted above.

Now that the animation has started making its way around the web, I thought I would share a bit about the process of creating this labor of labor.

The animation began with a very formal story process:

Once the story was worked out, I created some rough storyboards to denote when and where specific actions would occur.

Following the storyboards, I began painting backgrounds and animations in Photoshop.

Then I imported the 2-D Photoshop planes into the 3-D virtual space of Blender, and began building "sets." The Colbert Report studio and St. Patrick's Cathedral were especially fun to reconstruct.

After animating some camera movements and splicing everything together in iMovie, the video was good to go!

This project has been a true joy to work on, and I couldn't be more thankful for the opportunity to work on such an exciting endeavor for such a unique event. The night of the event even brought a few of its own surprises...one of which is summed up in the illustration below.

I hope you have as much fun watching the video as I had making it! 

The Cardinal and Colbert

Tomorrow, Fordham University will play host to what promises to be a very entertaining---and enlightening---discussion on the relationship between humor and faith. Joining two giant personalities of the Catholic and media spheres, the event brings Stephen Colbert and Timothy Cardinal Dolan together for a night of "Humor, Joy, and the Spiritual Life." Moderating the discussion is one of Catholicism's foremost joy-and-humor scholars, Fr. James Martin, S.J.---who literally wrote the book on the subject.

I have done my darnedest to contribute to the incredible excitement that has already built up around the much-anticipated event. I created the illustration shown to the left, trying to capture the overflowing, joy-filled spirits of the three participants.

Since its creation, the illustration has ended up in some pretty exciting places. Fr. Martin has been generous enough to tweet it out and post it for his many devoted followers to see and share; the Religion News Service discussed it in a blog post by David Gibson; and it even made its way to fan art of the week over at the Colbert News Hub! And then there are these guys, who arrived yesterday...

Needless to say, it's been great to see the artwork getting such a warm reception from around the country. While the event itself sadly will not be broadcast to the public, I hope that these three characters can at least give a sense of the spirit that will surely fill tomorrow's auditorium.

And be sure to check back this weekend to see a special animation project that I've been working on for the event itself!