The Construction of the Boat Scene

We started out with the boat scene. This was in early September of 2011. Patricia began by building the lovable boat characters, Khepri and Minty. Each had to be built more than once. There was a lot of trial and error here. We were working accross a lot of medium...from clay to cotton, to cloth, to found objects. Making all of this work in the world of stop motion animation proved to be a challenge. 

The scene was quite difficult (according to Edgar) because the boat with Khepri and Minty Bear had a number of moving parts. The adjustment of each part had to be coordinated with the adjustment of every other part on the boat. :-0  

Egg in a boat.

Bird & Bell

New friends?

Minty Bear!!!

Rain storm's a comin'

An alien ate Khepri!

Everything was built by hand by Patricia... :-0

A self-portrait of Patricia

Yum

Two oil tankers had to be built: one for the distant shot at the beginning, and one for the close up at the end.

There's our happy guy!

The Making of "A Race to the Center of the Sun" - The Origin of the Idea

Last April (2011), over a week long break from work, I startedworking on the song, "A Race to the Center of the Sun". Well...that'snot exactly right.

Most of the musicfrom Foraelia has come in rather chaotic fashion. Usually, I look up from thekeyboard or guitar and wonder, "what the heck (헐) just happened?"

That is...until Irealized how Khepri works.

The song wasreally created in two pieces. (That's usually how my process goes). The firstmajor moment was the aforementioned "night of chaos". The 2nd nightusually helps to carve the blob of feeling into some sort of coherent song.

The speed andenergy of the song made me feel like I was racing. It's that simple. And that'swhen the lyrics: "a race to the center of the sun" came. From there,the idea to depict the origin story of the Chinese zodiac emerged. And on andon...

I talked withPatricia (Patricia Krebs, the production designer) about the idea of doing ananimation. She mentioned that she and Edgar (Edgar Alvarez, the animator) hadbeen wanting to work together for some time.

We pitched theidea to Edgar. He furrowed his brow, bit his lip, and agreed to work with us.

So, the team wasborn...

- Khepri

Capturing - Capturando

Edgar H. Alvarez

(animator - animador)