Country Squire
Country Squire music video
Tasks:
Writer / Story
Character Design
Storyboards / Animatic
Additional Artwork
Director
By the fall of 2019, I had been working with Tyler Childers on various art projects for his album, Country Squire. My wife and I had traveled to Colorado to catch his performance at Red Rocks. I’d heard RCA was looking to do an animated video, but Tyler was uninterested. This puzzled me. It felt like a slam dunk. I couldn’t imagine what had been pitched, that he would not be into even the notion of it. On the plane ride home, the whole video came to me, so I wrote up a pitch and put my hat in the ring. Months went by, and I assumed it was dead in the water, when suddenly, I got a call from Tyler’s manager with the news that they were going to go for it. I’d never directed anything in my life, and had little in my portfolio what would have convinced any reasonable person to allow me the reins of such a project, especially the title track of an album by a Grammy-nominee. Now, all I had to do was learn how to make a music video! Luckily, RCA connected me with the amazing guys at Bomper Studio, and the rest is history.
COUNTRY SQUIRE
Director’s Statement
by Colonel Tony Moore
This video is a tale of, well, let’s say, investment. Tyler and Senora May Childers, two young newlyweds embarking on their new life together, so enamored by the potential they see that they tirelessly pour themselves into the hard work of repairing the problems they encounter and building their dream, hand in hand. Also, they’ve sunk a whole bunch of money into a real shitbox of a trailer that they need to fix up. That’s what folks in tweed jackets with elbow patches refer to as “symbolism.”
Tyler and I haven’t known each other for a long time, but a great deal of our bond stems from our similarities. We had similar upbringings in rural Kentucky. We both perilously pursued arts careers known for their high rates of catastrophic failure. And we both married strong, smart women. Finding the heart of this piece was easy, because it’s a vignette from a life not dissimilar to my own. Additionally, having become friends with Tyler and Senora beforehand, it was easy to see what all their love songs were about, and know that every ounce of sentiment in them is genuine.
As a young artist, I was weaned on a steady diet of MAD Magazine, comic books, and classic cartoons. Will Elder taught me to cram a gag into every millimeter of paper, and Jack Davis informed my rendering style and techniques. This video contains plenty of nods to those formative influences, doubly so for Davis. Despite being CGI, I wanted this project to bear the most charming trappings of Rankin Bass’ old stop-motion holiday specials, my favorite of which was always the lesser known, but impeccably produced, Mad Monster Party, which Jack Davis designed. It was rendered with a reduced frame rate to make the motion snappy like the old specials. I leaned hard on the animators to give everything an overtly palpable texture. I wanted to convince the viewers that it was entirely likely that somewhere, I had a warehouse filled with sprawling Appalachian dioramas and little posable models of my friends.
I feel the more perpetually serious a person tries to present themselves, the more likely it is that they are a joke. In a world of hollow, macho posturing and terminally joyless faux-intellectualism, it’s a rare and beautiful thing to find someone who can abide a little silliness. As a creator, I’m lucky to have found in Tyler someone who not only allowed it, but embraced and encouraged it. Through the gags, I hope the sincerity of their love for each other and my admiration for both of them rings through loud and clear.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Storyboards & Designs
Here is the Animatic that I created using my Storyboards for the video. I drew out in the most important basic elements of camera angles and character expressions/actions, much like the process of illustrating a comic book. Then I sequenced those sketches in time over the music to block in the desired pacing for each shot. Timing is everything, especially when it comes to making sure the gags land properly. I handed this mockup over to the geniuses at Bomper to use as the blueprint for an actual professional music video.
Here are some of my Stylesheets for the character designs, which the brilliant sculptors and animators at Bomper brought to life:
Here are some more designs for other props and elements, juxtaposed with their realized counterparts from Bomper: