Jan 18, 2015

Greg McLeod on "365" and why he has been animating a second a day for a year.

365: 365: One Year, One Film, One Day, One Second, a new short film by The Brothers McLeod, is an unusual concept. Cartoon Brew spoke with Greg about the creative process behind the film and his business model of producing short films at his own expense and selling them online. The film was released in January 2015. The film was subsequently released online for free on January 12, 2015.

Cartoon Brew: Was the idea for this film a sudden flash of inspiration at the end of 2012 or something you had been thinking about for some time?

Cartoon Brew: The film is credited with "The Rules." Greg McLeod: Every day had to be a second, so I had to post a still image of the day on Facebook with a description of the image. And every month, I posted for the month. My brother Myles made sure that I didn't re-create the animation or reuse the animation afterwards. That was really all there was to it.

Cartoon Brew: Most artists make sketchbooks every day. But they are forced to generate ideas that they think are worth animating. Even on an uneventful, boring day, you have to look for inspiration. I found that very challenging. It was like an animation gym where I could work out every day. I can say that I'm pretty fit now.

Cartoon Brew: I took advantage of the fluid format approach unique to Internet distribution by releasing this piece initially in monthly 30-minute installments and later as a full 7-minute short. 15]

Greg McLeod ("McLeod"): To see this piece was interesting to watch grow online and seemed to be well received. We are always interested in non-traditional forms of storytelling. Most of our commercial work has a strong narrative component, and while we love such projects, we enjoy breaking that convention in our personal work. Whether people are prepared to actually buy the films is an interesting question. I think people expect that because so much is available for free online now. But if people get used to buying short films of a high standard, it will only benefit the filmmakers, who may be able to earn a modest income working on their own projects. So far, the number of downloads has been sluggish. Making the film free would usually get thousands of views. We have 40 buyers so far. This is very important.

Cartoon Brew: Have you thought about changing your art style more significantly? For example, using stop motion or CGI from time to time. We thought that if we didn't change the style, the viewer would have a lot of trouble seeing it. Also, we needed a remote setup so we could animate from wherever we were, which made the project more practical.

Greg McLeod: I started a piece called "Consequences" with sound designer Tom Angel. I would animate for 10 seconds and give it to him, he would add sound to my drawing, add another 10 seconds, and I would animate it all over again. I don't know yet where it will end up or what the piece will look like, but I'm having a lot of fun with it. Once the animation is complete, print out simple black and white frames and have a big coloring party with paint, pencils, felt-tips, beer, snacks, and lots of friends. Then I would photograph them all and edit them together with a soundtrack.

[This interview was originally published in Cartoon Brew on February 19, 2014.]