Kickstarter Hopes to Restore & Re-Release 1979 Tom Waits Animated Video

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tom waits

Tom Waits is rightfully credited with a lot of things. He is a phenomenal songwriter, a very talented player of numerous instruments, a great actor, and owns a voice that was once described as sounding like it was “soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car.” And I’m pretty sure that’s a compliment.

One feat of his that has fallen through the cracks, to some extent, is his participation in an important achievement in animation. Sure, he wasn’t the animator in this particular event, but it’s still worth mentioning that he participated in one of the earliest forms of rotoscoping.

For those unaware, rotoscoping is not some fancy type of medical procedure (though it totally sounds like that, right?) but instead a type of animation made most famous in films like Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, as well as those creepy Charles Schwab commercials. It involves drawing (formerly by hand, now by computer) over filmed footage frame-by-frame to create the animation.

Waits’ 1979 short, “Tom Waits for No One,” saw director John Lamb using a rotoscope to illustrate a story set to the musician’s performance of “The One That Got Away” from a live performance at Hollywood’s La Brea Stage. The impressive result helped launch the careers of artists that later worked for Disney and The Simpsons, to name a few.

Thirty-five years later, Lamb plans to launch a Kickstarter to restore & re-release the piece. The goal is to complete the fundraising and actual project by March of next year for an unveiling at Hollywood’s Catchlight Studios – which replaced the original Le Brea Stage.

The plan involves “transferring the original live action footage of Tom Waits and the video pencil test to a contemporary format to be projected throughout the gallery; restoration and framing of original animation cels for display; and restoration of the Lyon Lamb Video Rotoscope used in the film’s production.” A scrapbook and other art pieces will also be created or compiled to accompany the project.

The Kickstarter begins September 19th.

http://youtu.be/jCNDZY4vXPs

[via The Four Oh Five]

About Gonzo Green

@Gonzo_Green is a chronic sufferer of Pre-life Crisis Syndrome. He drinks frequently, and wears hats sometimes, with these events occasionally occurring concurrently. Gonzo also likes watching baseball, and putting ketchup on foods that ketchup has no business being on. He enjoys rock’n’roll from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, when rock was rock, and meaningless repetitive phrases were frowned upon. But it is what it is.