What’s a better birthday game than pin the tail on the donkey? Playing soccer with a cupcake, of course! Our newest birthday eCard, Cake Goal, was created with puppets and stop motion animation. We spoke with Elizabeth McMahill about her process in making this intricate card.

How long did this card take to animate?
Counting everything, it took almost two weeks to get this card animated – only two days of that was actual animation though!  Lots of time also went into sourcing the photos for the characters, making the puppets, setting up a camera and down-shooter to animate on, and finalizing the video in After Effects once all the pieces were made and animated.

Where did you come up with the style you chose?
The style for this card was very much influenced by the works of Terry Gilliam, who did the cut-out animations for Monty Python.  (If you’ve never seen them you should look them up!  They’re brilliantly funny!)  Like him, I used mostly older style photographs, cut them up, and combined them to make the puppets.

Who are the people in the crowd? Anyone famous or just some stock photos?
I don’t think any of those people are famous.  One of Abraham Lincoln’s sons almost made it in, but he was a little to serious in his photos to make it into this card, he had his arms crossed and everything.  The people aren’t stock photos though.  They come from various archives from all around the world that have been digitized and released on Flickr as public domain.  A lot of the photos of people I used came from library archives in Australia and Norway and were mostly taken in the early 1900s.

Are you a soccer fan?
The only time I actually watch soccer is when I go to a local Mexican restaurant for tortas.  They always have soccer playing on the televisions, except on Friday nights when they do karaoke!

Do you play soccer? If so what position?
The last time I played soccer was probably in grade school…  I remember always really wanting to play goalie.  I don’t know if I could do it now though unless I was still playing with 8 year olds.  Having things kicked that hard in my general direction would be pretty scary.  I’d probably just duck and run away, so they’d have to find a new goalie.

Check out Elizabeth’s blog here and help make someone’s birthday a win, with Cake Goal, today!