Imagination into Motion – Home On The Range

At Honeypot Creative, we are always working on video and animation projects that interest us and we always love to bring all these ideas to life. However, few projects have given us the pleasure of working with someone whose creativity and storytelling are as genuine, funny, and warm as Mark James. We recently had the privilege of bringing to life one of the hilarious and self-illustrated stories created by Mark, “Home On The Range.”

Our first step was break down the illustrations. Mark, and his son Shaun, brought in a book created by Mark which was filled with stories of his life growing up in Byker, Newcastle as a young boy, taking the reader back in time over half a century. Just as each story was funny, it was also incredibly well drawn by Mark himself.

Our animator, Angus, worked with Mark and Shaun to bring a version of these illustrations onto the computer and made sure to keep them true to the original source material.

Once Mark himself was immortalised as a digital character, we moved on to creating the backgrounds and the rest of the world that is pivotal to the story. A favourite of our team was seeing Byker being morphed into the Wild West.

Once these assets are all created, it was time to bring movement to them all. This stage is time intensive and can get incredibly complicated. For the sake of reading time, we’re happy to just say that the way we do this is ‘magic’. Of course, we kept Mark and Shaun involved through the entire journey, answering any questions and explaining everything they were unsure of.

Equally important to the animation and movement, we also made sure to focus on the audio. The three biggest parts for this animation were – music, sound effects and the voice over. Karis, our head of post production, worked with Angus to add this layer to the final product. We wanted the music to be a blend of upbeat and lighthearted, with a hint of old Western for an extra layer of fun.

Sound effects are always fun to add and this was no exception. with everything from gunfire and footsteps to horse neighing and car horns. Some are obvious and some are more subtle but even if you don’t notice them, they’re all bringing the viewer further into the Wild West world in the mind of Mark James.

The voice over was an easy choice for us - Gary Hogg, a born-and-bred Geordie. Mark James said, “sounds more like me than I do” after hearing the narration. With a voice that fit the character perfectly, it also gave us the chance to tap into his musical talents and allow us to add in a Geordie rendition of the song ‘Home On The Range’ also performed by Gary. Don’t worry if you don’t know the words, we’ve added them in too so you can sing along!

Each part of this animation was expertly crafted, fitting together seamlessly. We kept Mark and Shaun involved for any refinements, but this project was a bullseye from the start.

The result of the collaboration was an animation that was not only engaging but also hilarious as we look back on a small snippet of Mark James’ life.

At Honeypot Creative, so many companies and people have a story to tell so drop us a note for a friendly chat if you have a message to bring to life too. Or, if you have a personal story, then we highly suggest visiting www.yourvideostory.co.uk and bringing your personal story to life. Join others that are immortalising their life and legacy there, including the very Mark James mentioned in this page!