Piggies At The Trough
This project took me back to the days when GIFs were the pinnacle of digital animation, and nearly 25 years later, they still hold that same charm. Using DALL·E and ChatGPT, I created the initial animated frames, then shortlisted and fine-tuned them in Photoshop, carving up the images made by ChatGPT. I brought it all together with old-school frame-by-frame GIF animation techniques I honed in the '90s. The final edit was done in Premiere, and every loop is a testament to those classic methods. Colin Weinmaster wrote and performed the song, adding the perfect touch to these hours of painstaking animation work. I'm super proud of the result, and though Runway was still in its infancy and couldn't match my vision at the time, I’m glad I put in the elbow grease to bring these animations to life. Below are the hand-crafted looping GIFs created in Photoshop.
Music Composed, Performed & Produced by: Colin Weinmaster
Art Direction & Animation: John Halliday
Sound Design: Robert Smart
Background Vocals: Joan Bye & The Porkettes
Clarinet & Bass Saxophone: Mike Allen
I wanted to show the brutal power struggle between the feds and the poor—a ragged farmer fighting tooth and nail for a dollar against the corporate, greedy pig. It’s the little guy versus the fat cat, battling for survival in a system rigged against him. Greed versus grit, plain and simple.
Here’s Lady Justice, a puppet on strings, manipulated in criminal ways. On one side, a greedy pig holds her broken sword; on the other, he plots his next move. It’s all trapped in a never-ending loop of greed and dirty politics.
This loop shows a massive Elephant, invisible to the glossy-eyed money kingpins in an Oval Office dripping with guilt and dystopian politics.
Deceased voters rise from their graves to take on modern political witches, fighting for the underclass worn down by years of corrupt politics.
This scene nailed the vision: inside the bank vault, actual pigs gorge on troughs of money while the bank managers look on with parental affection.