You never know where inspiration will come from. At least twice it literally arrived in my mailbox. A few years back I had to do a show open video for a mentalist. He'd bend keys and spoons and such. Just as I was thinking "How am I going to bend a key? Clamp it in a vise and heat it with a torch?" the mail arrived with a flyer promoting a car dealer. It encouraged me to come on down and see if this key was the lucky key to start and win a new car. Not surprisingly those give-away keys are made rather flimsily. It was the perfect prop to bend a bit and shoot stop action until I had my effect.

This past week I was animating maps of the middle east. And of course it's easiest to find digital maps and work from those but in that day's mail arrives a folded up printed world map. Suddenly the physicality had me considering wrinkles, rips and tears that I hadn't before. What's more, a day earlier I had just read Kyle Cooper saying how analogue materials inspire him more than digital assets.