What is the film about?

The official music video for ‘The Owl’s Song’ by Town of Cats based on Edward Lear’s ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’.

It’s about life, love and joy in all directions.

A little background information...

I find the poem, ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ has a beautiful balance between the sentimental and nonsensical sides of things that’s all wrapped up in some joyful energy. When Joe, lead singer and lyricist of Town of Cats, played me ‘The Owl’s Song’, it struck the same chord with me. I thought he celebrated the poem so wonderfully both lyrically and musically with the band, I wanted to see if I could do the same visually.

How was the film made?

The technical approach to the film was to animate on paper then colour and composite in Photoshop and After Effects, the more complex camera movements are hand drawn and the simpler ones digital. I used pen for the most part (Rotring Isograph 0.5 if anyone wants to know, I always do), wax based pencil for the looser parts (Prismacolor Premiere PC 935, why not?) and a combination of oil pastel and charcoal for some of the water effects (whatever I had knocking about).

The process involved in animating the film was the standard storyboard and time everything out beforehand, but for the end segment there was this sax solo that really felt like I’d kill the energy if I planned ahead. So that bit was left blank on the storyboard and spontaneously animated, letting the music and my hand lead the visuals from one place to the next. I really like the fluidity of it and it took me back to that place when I first started fiddling with animation, placing random objects in front of a camera and very slowly improvising a random series of events.