An opportunity came up here at Stoopid Buddy and I decided to take it. Previously I was working in 2D animation at Cartoon Network. One was a Robot Chicken/DC Comics art show that emphasized a special we had coming up, Villains in Paradise, so that art show incorporated both DC Comics characters and Robot Chicken characters. We’ve also been doing some art shows we’ve done three art shows in the past with iam8bit.
We do a lot of student outreach with some of the local schools. Stop-motion is a small industry so everyone is connected to the larger community.
We’re pretty active with the TV Academy, we have a few members here at the studio. How do you do to stay connected to the artist community? We’re also excited to experiment more with the playlist features – it seems like it’s an easy way to get more info in front of the directors. That’s the only customization we have at the moment, but we want to get some things more automated for our VFX department as well. In terms of customization, for animating in Dragonframe, when we go to conform it prompts a script, and the script funnels information into Shotgun. When a new version of a composited shot gets uploaded they can watch them and give notes in Shotgun which is really nice. The VFX department really likes the media player.
What are your favorite features of Shotgun? Then it goes to post, where we typically have to do stuff like rig removal and cleanup, and we add the occasional effect or explosion. Once animatics are done we build the sets and the puppets, and then everything goes to the stage and the animators bring it to life.
The animators use that as a tool to figure out how to do each shot and how the characters will move. For a typical project we start with the script, then we voice record here at the studio and simultaneously storyboard, then we go into animatic which puts the boards and the voices together. We primarily use Dragonframe which is a stop-motion software, and we also use After Effects, Storyboard Pro, and Zbrush. What content creation tools do you use in-house? Each episode has around 45 sets and 100 puppets, so we definitely have a lot of assets to track! We use Shotgun on other projects as well, and we’re just now gearing up for the eighth season of Robot Chicken, so in preparation we’ve been in touch with Shotgun to help us build it out even more.
One sketch might only be five seconds long but it still has to have a full set. Robot Chicken is crazy – there are hundreds of sets and hundreds of puppets that we have to track. We really want to use it across the board. At that point it was primarily used in VFX, but we’ve started rolling it out across pre-production and animation as well to keep track of puppets and sets. We first started actually using Shotgun about two years ago, going into production for the seventh season of Robot Chicken. So that’s the overview of how we’re using it.Ībout three years ago we started looking at options for managing our data, and Shotgun seemed to be the right fit for us. Shotgun is also used on our stages – the camera crew logs what equipment they use for certain shots so that they can refer back, and the stop-motion animators put in notes for the VFX department in case anything needs to be fixed or enhanced in post. Shotgun is primarily used by our VFX department, and coordinators in our character fabrication department and set department also use Shotgun to track assets.
Stoopid Buddy Stoodios is in Burbank, and about 150 people work at the studio. Is your team working in multiple locations? If so, where are they based? How many people in your studio are using Shotgun, and how?
We have other stop-motion projects going on as well, plus some 2D animation and live action projects here and there.
Robot Chicken is the big project that we do here, and it’s the longest-running stop-motion show on television. Stoopid Buddy Stoodios is California’s largest studio specializing in stop-motion animation. Tell us about your company and the type of projects you work on.