"Coffee Art"

The making of...

Working only with ground coffee on a light-table, we animated this commercial a frame at a time (at 8 frames per second). Some shots needed to be completely re-drawn between frames, which would sometimes take upwards of an hour and a half. My scenes were the bean shedding its skin, the boat and dolphins, the fire transition, the splash, and the coffee pot.

Of all of the coffee manipulation tools that were available to us, the most versatile ended up being a simple feather.