My Syrian Friend

Several years ago, Rabbi Noach Weinberg z"l told a story in a class which happened to be recorded. A few months ago we decided to take that story and turn it into a cartoon narrated by his recording. Without the budget to do a classic cartoon, I devised this style of animation, a kind of compromise between storybook drawings and 3D animation. I described the process in more detail in previous blog post from when I first started the process.

The film has finally been released online this week in honor of the one year memorial of Rabbi Noach Weinberg's passing.



But, it's never that simple. Aish HaTorah has also installed a high tech interactive tribute wall to Rabbi Weinberg with a 9x16 display and a separate touch operated keypad for exploring movies, audio, and written teachings from the rabbi. So, they also wanted a 9x16 version of the movie (not 16x9 which is the ration of the above video and most videos today).

Here is what the tribute wall looks like. That's the touch screen monitor on the right by the pillar and on the left is the tribute wall with a 9x16 video image displayed inside it.


So, after animating the movie the regular way, I went back in and animated it in 9x16. I tried a lot of different ways of doing it, but ultimately I just cocked my head to the left and edited it on a regular, 16x9 time line. (I can still feel the ache.) I've posted it below in 9x16 so that no one sues me for ruining their necks by watching this.