If you haven’t seen “Die Hardly Working” yet, you’re missing out. It is one of the biggest FX projects we’ve ever done for College Humor, and we’re really proud of it.
The whole aim of this sketch was to feel like a live action Looney Tunes cartoon, with the action getting sillier and crazier as time goes on. A lot of continuity was purposefully thrown out the door for the sake of fun. So yeah, we know it doesn’t always match. Suck it up.
Originally, we were called on by College Humor to do the FX for just under 30 shots. But the deeper we got into it, Todd Strauss-Schulson (the director) and I decided that we should just go all out on this one. So those 30 FX shots turned into over 70. Luckily for me, my wife was out of town for the month so I was able to work non-stop to be able to get it done on time.
For the FX people out there, objects like the knives, tooth, spaceship, missile and rocket launcher were modelled and animated in Maya, and then composited into the shots using After Effects. The explosions were done entirely in After Effects using many layers of explosion/debris footage and hand made debris elements. All the lens flares were created with the amazing After Effects plugin “Optical Flares” (which just happened to be released a week before we completed the FX).
If you’re not familiar with “Hardly Working” on College Humor, I recommend you go check it out. It’s a comedy series that depicts the everyday happenings at the College Humor office featuring the actual CH staff. Not to give them free advertising or anything, but I personally love it and they’re a great bunch to work with. I’d also like to give a shout out to a few people that joined the Gloo Team to help make this thing possible…
Anna Tonrungroj – Visual FX Assistant
Yuvraj Magar – Modeling
Chris Clogg – Photoshop Mattes
Finally, if you want to see a little bit more, we made “Making Die Hardly Working” just for you. In it I talk with director Todd Strauss-Schulson about the craziness we went through to make this video possible. Hope you enjoy it!
