“Two Against One” by Chris Milk & Anthony Schepperd

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It’s a virtual guarantee that every time Philly-based Anthony Francisco Schepperd creates a piece of animation, it’s going to be more incredible than the time before. I don’t know how he keeps topping himself, but the guy is a one-man animation monster. He delivers again with stunning drawn animation on “Two Against One,” a music video he co-directed with Chris Milk for Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi. He animated the entire thing in TVPaint with some After Effects thrown in, but let’s face it, software doesn’t make a damn difference in his case. It’s all skill, baby.

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  • http://seanvec.com sean

    so awesome. guy is unbelievable.

  • http://www.jjsedelmaier.com J.J. Sedelmaier

    Amid -

    Ditto. . .
    (Does anyone even know what that means anymore ?)

    • The Gee

      “Ditto. . .
      (Does anyone even know what that means anymore ?)”

      Prolly not. (wink punctuation)
      —–
      The video has some amazing animation in it. I love that he uses color sparingly. The transitions are fantastic. The animation works great as a music video.

      I should watch other things he’s done to see what he does with longer scenes and different pacing.

  • SR

    Totally entrancing!!! I would love to see a WIP reel of this.

  • http://www.rauchbrothers.com Timothy Rauch

    That’s some mind-bending animation! Has anyone been able to track down any interviews with Schepperd?

    • http://www.elliotelliotelliot.com Elliot Cowan

      He spoke at Uarts early last year.
      He attended the school for a short time.

  • http://www.gagneint.com Michel Gagne

    Absolutely stunning. My mind was blown!

    • Dan Kyder

      When it blows even Gagne’s glorious mind… whoa

  • http://www.daganm.blogspot.com Dagan

    Wow!
    Time now to research more into his work, so good!
    (not even 9:30 AM and I already learned something today!)
    :)

  • http://www.janetperlman.com Janet Perlman

    Wow, that is gorgeous. Some of the distortions remind me of Koji Yamamura’s A Country Doctor. And there’s this circular swirling motion that keeps repeating – a motion motif.

    • Anthony F. Schepperd

      Oh man I’m so excited you noticed! Motion! It is important in film of course, and all still image based art has suggested motion, but animators get full control in a way that is unique to their art form. As it is important to draw from our experiences and environment for story and tone, it is equally important to pull motion from our experiences. To see how a shadow moves over your hand and then apply that motion to how a character picks up an axe. Or to feel a motion associated with an emotion. I felt the character in this story has this revelation emotion that happens over and over. To me, this can be articulated with circular motions repeating. Spinning, basically. (Of course why that is, has so much to do with our personal development. Actually feeling a revelation and watching people have them, in real life and film. How many times have we seen the camera spin around a character to reveal what they were looking at….or what is behind them?!) So I listened for moments in the music where I felt sweeping spins would help accentuate the natural rises and falls of the music and then incorporated it as a motif. Whew… thats a mouthful, but its nice to talk about!

      Thanks for the post Amid, and everyones encouraging comments.

  • http://www.cartoonmonkey.com Chad Essley

    By this thread over in the TVP forums, I believe that Mr Francisco has had major amounts of help on these videos, and isn’t animating them all himself: Great fluid work though, and you can really see the hard work of all those extra hired colorists and inbetweeners.

    http://forum.tvpaint.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4940

  • http://patsmith.com patrick smith

    Anthony is the real deal.. it’s rare that such talent exists within it’s own terms, most get snatched up by a big studios or something. I’m beyond proud to have had him as an intern years ago (I should have been HIS assistant really).. He’s unstoppable.

  • Anthony F. Schepperd

    Every frame you just watched I drew, same goes for my other work.

    I actually ended up hiring two colorists from the forum for a video associated with the Rome project that had to be scrapped. A small portion of the animation I did was actually able to be salvaged and used for this video (thank goodness) but I had to start the color work from scratch.

  • http://www.cartoonmonkey.com Chad Essley

    Really! I stand corrected. Beautiful work, and very excellent use of TVP.