Channel Frederator Blog

Andy Lyon’s Bare is a great short that shows us a bear who literally shaves himself silly.

Bare Naked!!!

Andy also sat down with us and “bared” his animation making soul to us.
Thanks Andy!

1) Where did you get the inspiration for Bare?
Let’s just say daily full-body shaves take a good 45 minutes. That gives me lots of time everyday to think of story ideas.

2) Who are some of your influences?
Stylistically, I’m influenced by the simple designs and bold color schemes of 1950-60’s US animation studio UPA, and the Czech studio Zagreb of the same era.
Both of these places seemed to limit everything from layout, story, character form, and animation to a create distilled representation of reality. With Bare, I tried to take some of these principles to heart, and tell a quirky, fun little story.

3) That was a hardcore Moustache for Mr.Bear. Have you ever had such a hardcore Moustache as that? What is your favorite type of Stache?
Yes, I guess it was. I mean, a bear can’t very well have a pencil-thin Clark Gable number - its gotta be bushy. I’ve actually never had such a moustache… I’ve tried, and I’ve failed. It’s embarassing… like being impotent… which I’m not… ladies…
I’d have to say that the ultimate moustache has to be the bushy ’stache/soul patch combo ala Zappa.

4) The look of Bare was beautiful. Was that watercolor? Can you describe your process in creating Bare, from start to finish?
Yeah, the majority of the process was analog. I animated the thing with pencil on paper, and then painted the backgrounds and animation with watercolor (on seperate sheets than the outlines). It took me a while to scan in all those pages, but once that was finished I was able to composite the pencil outline and the watercolor filling in After Effects. Ending in a digital environment also allowed me to art direct the color of the paintings and add some simple 2D camera moves.

5) What are you working on currently?
My thesis film. Its gonna be amazing, I think.

Well, please let us know when it’s ready for viewing! We’d love to showcase it on channel Fred!
Rock.
-Jeaux Janovsky