Last week I was so excited to share about the journey I took to create a Charles Dana Gibson inspired illustration of Luisa Madrigal from Disney’s Encanto. This week I’m excited to share the actual process!
Time Lapse Art And The 3 Ways I Use To Create It
One of the more popular things I post besides Muppet fan art are time lapse illustrations of my work. Time lapse art do two things for me: provide additional content and show my process (the latter being arguably more important). That being said, there are three different ways that I create said time lapse videos, so this week I thought I’d share my actual process as well as some examples.
The first is the most basic. All things start with a sketch, and while I tend to work exclusively digitally, I still lean towards the traditional when it comes to sketching. The following Cookie Monster drawing is an overhead shot of me drawing the blue monster with traditional mediums like colored pencils and a Bimoji ink brush pen. I love watching other artists in real time create art like this (Kim Jung Gi is, in my opinion, the master at this). The problem with this is set up. I’ve talked to so many artists about how they manage to float a camera over their work space without it being too intrusive. Yes, I know there are devices available to purchase but they’re either too cheap and unreliable or way over priced. As you can see, I’ve rigged up several different things to try and make do but I like to draw close to my pad and that can create problems as well.
The second setup is easier and sticks to using only my computer. I’ve actually been asked how to do this a few times and it’s very easy. If you use a Mac, just open QuickTime and you can do a screen recording! This is a great way to capture everything you do in real time and when it comes to programs like Adobe Illustrator, it can really show off how to use the various tools and brushes.
Now the problem with the first two types of recording time lapse art is it records in real time. You can use the time–lapse camera feature if you have an iPhone, but you’ll probably still need to play around with timing, so both of those videos require a bit more editing when it comes to putting out your final product. Procreate is a very popular digital painting program for the iPad and it automatically records your process for you. The big leg up here is it only records when your stylus (Apple Pencil) is actively drawing. In other words, if you stop and take a phone call or take a break, unlike set ups for my previous videos, the recording stops. There have been more than a few times I have had to either cut out giant chunks of down time or stop and restart my other time lapse recordings, but Procreate only records when you’re actually actively working. The double edged sword is that Procreate records everything at full constant size, so there’s no inclination I’m zoomed way in or out. Is it a pro or a con? Who knows.
I edit everything in Adobe Premiere for a few reasons. Number one, I know how to use Premiere and as an old man I fear editing using Instagram. Two, I like to try and keep time lapse videos to one minute nowadays so Instagram and Twitter don’t have a fit. I also like to use royalty free music so there’s no copyright infringements.
Promotions for The Making of The Great Muppet Mural
The Great Muppet Mural is a project that sometimes feels like it’s never going to end, but I’m extremely okay with that. Let me back up a bit. Starting in January of 2021, I embarked on a truly epic journey with some very talented people whom I consider dear friends. Jamie Carroll, Kenny Durkin, Stuart Reeves, Joe Hennes, and I began planning out a huge collaborative art project for the Jim Henson/Muppet fan site ToughPigs.com. 75 artists, industry professionals, graphic designers, and frog enthusiasts put together The Great Muppet Mural for Tough Pigs 20th anniversary—a truly marvelous piece of work for a milestone anniversary.
Halfway through that, we decided to document our work in a more extensive way, and so I began production on The Making of The Great Muppet Mural because we’re all maniacal egomaniacs. In a lot of ways, it was like continuing on just as we had been, video chatting regularly, only now with the purpose of laying out our experience with the project in an interview format. Around this time, we started including Lucas Ross in on the conversation as he would be our host and narrator. I spent months and months and months going through all those video chats and it was like I was still just hanging out with my friends and having a blast.
Once we entered the endgame, we were all back in touch again, setting up how and when we wanted to premiere and show the documentary. It was a lot of work but still so fun. Everybody was supportive and excited. It wasn’t until a week or two before our big premier that I realized we needed to start promoting this thing! And so, I began creating all sorts of images and videos to get the rest of the world just as hyped as we all were.