BANANA BREAD BUNNY

A playful, stop-motion take on recipe videos with a small, frantic bunny. – Follow along for banana bread recipe.

I’ve been obsessed with bunnies ever since I can remember. With parents who’ve experienced starvation, food waste was a big no-no growing up – so any time a collection of bananas would brown, me or my sister would make banana bread. I’ve made banana bread so many times that it is the only baking recipe I can remember off the top of my head. This bunny is me in my best form. Combine all this with my longing for a claymation project, and you get this heavily procrastinated labor of love.

– Behind the Scenes –

Believe it or not, that’s not a real FUll cup of flour, nor is that a full bunny.

The bunny needed to hold up a cup of flour, fully intact, without it pouring out of the measuring cup. It had to also be light enough that his little clay arm could support it. I cut out a paper circle, so that most of the cup would be full of air, mixed a paste of water, glue, and flour, and let it dry into what looks like a full (1/2) cup of flour! His weird little body also needed to counter the weight of the cup. Since it was hidden in the bag anyway, I just attached him to more clay.

Janky RigS

Most rigs for add-ons were wire with some blue painters tape. Berries would'n’t stick to the tape, and many berries were smashed in the process. Finally, clay ball + wire = magic!

I didn’t want to invest a whole lot into expensive new equipment (stop motion rigs) since I was winging a lot of this learning process and wasn’t sure if this was going to be a one time thing. It forced me to be creative with ways to prop things up. (But now I want some stop motion rigs!)

Bunnies Reincarnated

A few people asked how many bunnies did I have to destroy for this flour scene. I made several bunnies and different parts to replace for the whole film. Sometimes through reworking the clay, I could reuse it. Other times, unsalvageable clay was used to help prop up/support items like the masher, whisk and mixing bowls.

In order to not move too many objects,

I didn’t wipe or wash out the banana remnants for this continuing scene, so things got a little gross on set.

Also pictured here is other janky fixes to hold up the banana masher (clay under masher to help support weight. clay and rope on table to get proper angle.) and clay in bowl to prop up masher for the close up mash scene

MAGIC!

The bunny walks into the mitt and becomes a crumpled up paper ball. Walks back out a clay bunny. (Several post-it pads were used to help prop up the mitt.)

it’s not what it looks like, I SWEAR!

Animation allows the unrealistic to seem realistic. There’s no way his nubby little arms would be in shot without the rest of his body at that scale, but somehow in edit, it feels believable.