The Ed Sullivan Show Presents

The Ed Sullivan Show Presents:

Since the beginning of the school year (August, 2015), I have been working on a project modeling the Beatles' most recognizable instruments from their first string of performances on The Ed Sullivan Show. This includes Paul McCartney's Hofner Bass, John Lennon's Rickenbacker, and, of course, the iconic 4 piece Ludwig Oyster drum set of Ringo Starr. 

The project originated because I wanted to make some changes to the drum model I sculpted last year (left) and make it more realistic. Some notes I received were that I needed to have more faces on each cylinder to smooth it out a little bit, make everything more proportional to each other and so on. When I learned I no longer had the .mb file I did all of my work on, I had to start from scratch, so I started exactly where I started last year: the kick drum. 

The kick drum is the basis for everything else and made it possible to accurately size everything in the project. Once I had the size of the bass drum, I modeled the cylinders for the 3 other drums in the set before moving on to more intricate details such as the clasps holding them in place, the stands, etc. Once the basic drums were sculpted completely, I began drawing up the stands for each of the drums and cymbals. The main concern with the first project was that the stands for the cymbals were only realistic at the base, and the shortcuts I took everywhere were noticeable. Keeping this in mind, I very carefully made sure every small detail was perfect before animating the next. After the drums, stands, and cymbals were done, I got to focus on the drum pedals.

Initially, these weren't supposed to be a big deal because they weren't originally supposed to be seen because the drums would be in front of them in a museum style. Of any single piece of the drums that I sculpted, or any of the instruments for that matter, this part took me the longest as I spent about 3 weeks alone sculpting it to perfection. Thankfully, it was not all for none as I ended up changing the design and they presented after all.

Once the drums were done, I was able to move on to the guitars. I started with the most recognizable of the bunch, Paul McCartney's Hofner bass. I began by laying down a reference image and tracing the body of the guitar with the Create Polygon tool. After this, I manipulated the points one final time before extruding the body to give it volume. For the neck, I originally used a rectangular prism, but it didn't take long to realize how non-effective it was at looking clean, so I replaced it with a cylinder and cut the cylinder in half across the length of it, and it looked perfect. I would do the same for all of the frets and moving the bottom vertices out to give it a little bit of shape. Once all three pieces of the bass were finished (head, neck, body), I sculpted the strings. The strings were just cylinders that I manipulated to bend and twist how I needed them to twist to look accurate. 

There was not a whole lot different that I did to the Rickenbacker, other than instead of making it a left-handed instrument (as I did with the Hofner), I made it a traditional right-handed instrument, added two more strings, and that was about it aside from smaller details about the actual body itself. The process remained the same regardless.

Once I finished the three instruments, I realized I did not have enough time to add the fourth instrument of the Beatles, George's Gretsch guitar, so I took the cut and sought to rebuild the stage from their second appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, and then I worked with appropriate lighting to give it the same effect as the night they performed live for America.

But what good is a tour of the Beatles' instruments without a little bit of Beatles music? With this in mind, I edited the very famous, "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Beatles!" quote from Ed Sullivan himself with a remastered version of their first song they played that night, I Want to Hold Your Hand and trimmed it down to just over a minute by replacing the second chorus with the final chorus and cutting it short.

After this, I added a few cameras with a few theatric angles and strung it all together in After Effects once they were all rendered out appropriately. To the right is the final result that I entered into eMagine, the local media festival in the Kansas City metropolitan area my high school hosts.