Now that summer activities have slowed down, I can get back to writing about the making of Rabbitat.  This post will show the letters that I made for the film’s title animation. See  the completed film  here.  I was originally just going to spell out the word Rabbitat in found objects. Then the filmmaker (Daniel Cojanu) and I decide to try our hand at some spot action animation.

I formed the letters with driftwood, adding embroidered felt vegetation to complete the shapes. One “B” features a roving, rounded vine made of felt covered wire. The thorns are thread wrapped wire.

And a “T” is crossed with thread wrapped wire branches laden with felt leaves and bead berries.

I found just the right beach stone for the other “B” and used a green mushroom, which is a florist product, for the rounded top of the “R”. For the filming we used a solid black felt background.

We started with the word Rabbitat spelled out and then moved each piece about a 1/4 inch for each shot.

Every piece had its own path to follow, so the 2 of us had to keep track of several objects at once. Instead of trying to construct the letters from a pile of objects, we deconstructed the word and then reversed the order of  the hundreds of photographs, so it looks like we built it in the film.

When we were ready to shoot, I bought some vegetables to include; a carrot, a parsnip and a peapod.  It took us many hours to move and photograph the letters for what would become a 15 second title sequence. After working side by side for most of a day, moving little objects a tiny distance at a time, Daniel and I weren’t frustrated at all. We said to each other,”That was fun!”.

The next post in this series will be about my animated stitched signature from the Rabbitat title. For other posts in the Rabbitat series click here.