Kyle of Coast Media Collective recently came across our Video of the Week this week entitled Pigeon Pilfer, and managed to snag an e-mail interview with the creator Michael Stevenson. This is the first interview we have done with Michael but we are pretty sure it won’t be the last. As you can see he has done some great work already, and we at Coast Media Collective are looking forward to seeing more projects from him as time goes on. He has some great talent and we will definitely be keeping our eyes on him.

Coast: Who are you and where are you from?

Michael: I’m Michael Stevenson, a 24 year old animator originally from Redding, CA, now settled a bit farther south in San Francisco.
Coast: What was your first project? And how has your work evolved since?

Michael: I made my very first animated film when I was nine years old. I borrowed my parents’ camcorder and set up shop in our basement. Using a bit of modeling clay I created a wonderful story about three worms, and the only copy of the film was erased in a freak VCR accident immediately after I finished shooting. Luckily I wasn’t deterred and kept animating.

I suppose my work hasn’t fundamentally changed much – I’m still pushing clay around in front of a camera and telling silly stories, I just hope that I have a better eye for it now!

Coast: What was your inspiration for the film?

Michael: When I was a kid I went to San Francisco on a school field trip. We hit Pier 39 for lunch and I was mobbed by the local wildlife. A flock of pigeons flew in and sat patiently, staring, waiting for me to either feed them or abandon my food. Not being from the city I was a bit surprised by the tameness of the animals. The experience stuck with me, and many years later when I returned to San Francisco for school I decided to use it as source material.

Coast: How many images does it consist of?

Michael: There are roughly 800 frames in the film, which isn’t bad for stop motion. I shot at 12 frames per second with a Canon DSLR, then played with the timing a bit in postproduction. I tried to accomplish everything in-camera as though I was shooting on film, but rather than waste time shooting duplicate frames I simply made timing notations and fixed it in After Effects. Very fast motion pretty much has to happen at a full 24 frame a second in order for it to read correctly, and there’s a lot of staring so I extended single frames to become much longer holds.

Coast: Was it done yourself? Did you have help?

Michael: It was a solo project – I did all of the design, sculpting, and animation myself – but I enlisted the help of friends and family for a couple big tasks. There were about 60 pounds of clay that needed to be melted down and mixed to form the two dozen colors used in the film. I gathered everyone together and we attacked the mass of clay with crock pots, heat guns, and mixing sticks. It was pretty fun, a nice break from the usual isolated work.

Coast: What is your ambition for when you are finished with school at San Francisco State University?

Michael: I actually graduated a couple years ago. I got a job with a small animation studio right out of school, but it ended up pushing me in a very technical direction. I have a background in programming, so I was creating workflow automation scripts, building a Maya render pipeline, and so on.

I’ve recently gone freelance, so I’m getting back into the creative side of animation. Paid stop motion work is a rarity these days, but my pie-in-the-sky ambition is to help rekindle an interest in the medium and perhaps generate some viable long-term projects.

Coast: Do you have any other projects on the go?

Michael: I’m knee-deep in production on a small independent videogame that employs hand-crafted models and stop-motion art assets. I wish I could say more, but it’s still very early in development.

Coast: Thanks for the interview Michael, we hope to talk to you again soon!

You can check out the web site for Pigeon Pilfer here.