Loading ...The Atom Original Series, Stickman Exodus has come home with a 2009 Webby and People’s Voice Award for Online Film & Video: Animation! Behold the genius of simplicity:
So we wonder, who’s responsible for creating this clever, ultra-violent, “literal” sketch show? “Waverly Films is a group of filmmakers who live in Brooklyn.” That’s how they refer to their prolific collective on their site. Waverly filmmaker/cartoonist, Christopher Ford is main man behind Stickman. We had a chance to ask him some questions:
AF: You’re part of a collective of talented filmmakers, Waverly Films. How did you all team up?
CF: We were friends at NYU. We always liked getting help from each other on our projects, so after graduation we decided to form a company and continue working together. Now we live in a harmonious collective where all individual thought is repressed, it’s great.
AF: The work is always humorous and well-crafted, from the music videos to the shorts. Can you please describe Waverly’s sensibility?
CF: At NYU we started meeting outside of class to go over each other’s work more critically. So while each of us has different interests and styles, I think all of our work tends to be very thought-out – lots of re-writing, storyboarding, editing and re-editing. Well, except for some of our “clip of the week” series which can be the exact opposite – I guess we do that to blow off steam.
AF: How did you come up with the idea for Stickman Exodus?
CF: I came up with Stickman Exodus when I was pitching webshow ideas to a Mr. Aaron Rothman who was at Comedy Central at the time. He’d seen my Channel 101 show “Puppet Rapist” and brought Waverly in for a meeting. I had been drawing stickman doodles and comic strips in class instead of taking notes. The show is just me imagining the drawings trying to escape from my notebook because of the tortured situations I’d put them in.
AF: In terms of mapping out the Stickman series; its design, characters, dialog… how do you work? Do you use scripts and storyboards?
CF: I spent a long while writing the scripts first. Then basically we had about a week to do each episode because Augenblick Studios was about to start animating “Super Jail” – which by the way is amazingly awesome. I drew detailed animatics (which are timed-out storyboard drawings with dialog and some sound effects) which the HIGHLY SKILLED GENIUSES at Augenblick brought to life. It was a real Walt Disney kind of time.
AF: How did you execute the series? Were there any creative or technical hurdles? Was it a challenge to incorporate live-action with animation?
CF: Ha, well the FIRST time we shot the classroom stuff, we lost most of the footage due to a bad harddrive. So that was a horrible disaster. Although, when we went back to reshoot it we did a much better job. So maybe that was for the best. That and I guess the really fast production schedule would be the other challenge.
AF: What’s in the future for Stickman?
CF: After all the time I’ve spent drawing stickmen, I’ve basically lost the ability to draw anything else. So you’ll definitely be seeing more stickmen from me.
Thanks, Chris!
Waverly also crank out quality shorts, music videos for cool bands, commercials, you name it. They also nail the horror/comedy genre — proof being their series, The Scariest Show on the Internet (also an Atom Original). Here’s a nice gory bit to sink your machete into:
And here are a couple more samples of Waverly Films’ unique talents for your enjoyment, courtesy of our friends over at CollegeHumor:
