Jim Henson in 30 Seconds

The imaginative genius Jim Henson, a longtime creative influence of mine, would have been 85 years old this fall. I struggled at first to come up with an idea for a more "proper" tribute to Jim on his 85th birthday year than that Kermit the Frog lemon meme I animated in July. Then, less than two weeks ago, I settled on experimenting (like what Jim himself often does) by animating a pop-up cutout-style timeline chronicling some of Jim's most noteworthy projects during his lifetime, including (in order of appearance) "Sam and Friends", the Wilkins Coffee commercials, "Sesame Street", "The Muppet Show", "The Dark Crystal", "Fraggle Rock", "Muppet Babies", "Labyrinth", and "The Jim Henson Hour" (the theme song of which was the main music track used here).

To summarize how I made it, I drew the character layers in CLIP STUDIO PAINT, and created compositions in After Effects, emphasizing 3D motions as the characters move along the timeline. The scrolling ground is a panoramic B&W collage of different images of Jim and the Muppets, while the background with dancing little squares was ripped from his Oscar-nominated experimental short "Time Piece" (to those who got the reference without reading this description, kudos to you). Lastly, I threw in rainbow stock footage by orangeHD for the closing with Jim (in his Muppet form) and Kermit with their banjos as a nod to the iconic "Rainbow Connection" song from "The Muppet Movie" (essentially the Jim Henson Company's equivalent to "When You Wish Upon a Star").

Oh yeah, and the countdown at the beginning comes from those famous "Sesame Street" counting segments Jim produced during season one, with the baker falling down at the end of each one.

Happy belated birthday, Jim! Thanks for the imagination and laughter you've provided us.

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