Thank you Fred Astaire and Jane Powell, for helping make my animated dreams comes true!
In the spring of 2020, stuck at home and with no more tours to take me away, I began the process of rotoscoping: drawing over film footage frame by frame. We had just finished recording Dizzy & Fay’s first album Songbook, and with all this time at home I decided that I would try my best to make a music video for one of the tracks.
Drawing has always been a source of ‘calm’ for me, almost like meditation. When I was back in art school at OCAD I absolutely loved figure drawing class, especially gesture drawings: using quick simple lines to express the overall shape and movement of the model. There’s something about the imperfection of that kind of work that I really love. It allows me to turn off my brain and just DRAW WHAT I FEEL.
That’s probably why I’ve always loved drawing cartoons and comics. The challenge of expressing an emotion or gesture with only a few little lines is really satifying.
(I even did some Dala comics years ago that we sold with our merch. you can see a snippet HERE)
Using clips from the film ‘A Royal Wedding’ featuring Fred Astaire & Jane Powell, as well as performance videos of Dizzy & Fay, I carefully edited the footage to the music and then proceeded to draw over each frame one at a time.
One and a half years and 2200 frames later, my first ever animated video has finally arrived!
I am so incredibly proud of my work on this video and I can’t wait to share it with the world!!!!
