Creativity is something we value highly here at Skydio. Enabling solo-shooters/editors to create works of art that would be impossible with traditional cameras is what gets us going. Today we're extremely excited to Introduce the Skydio community to Ian Padgham. Ian is an artist known for his animated work on social media. Today we are showcasing Ian's latest work: Mow-rio Kart, filmed 100% on Skydio. Below we will be asking some questions to get to know the man behind the video a little better.
Brief Bio, tell us who you are and what you are most proud of accomplishing.
My name is Ian Padgham and I’m an artist and filmmaker from California currently living in Bordeaux, France. I am known mainly for my short animated works on social media often involving stop motion and special effects.
Do you have experience flying manual drones? If so, How has Skydio been different? Any stories you’d like to share?
I used to have a Parrot Drone but I unfortunately flew it into a tree a few too many times. Luckily, with my Skydio I have yet to crash it despite my best efforts ;p
How did you get involved with Skydio?
One of my former coworkers is at Skydio and we started discussing ways that we could experiment with stop-motion animation and drone filming. I have done a couple of clips and the experience so far has been really fun!
What is your favorite activity to pair with your Skydio?
As a middle-aged dude with a seasoned dad-bod I’m not exactly crushing the ski slopes or tearing up mountains on my bike. But I also really wanted to try the tracking features on my Skydio and so I decided to play to my strengths and start testing lawn mower shots. It has been a blast!
What is your favorite video that you've shot with your Skydio, what do you love about it?
For sure my Mow-rio Kart video. It has been a labor of love and a fun experience putting all the pieces together. But I’ve also had a lot of fun just making clips with my kids on nature walks - it’s a great and surprisingly easy way to capture a unique perspective of special family moments.
What is your favorite Skydio Skill, Tip or Trick to help other users get great content? (Many of our customers are filmmaking novices, so general tips are awesome here as well)
More of an observation than a tip: I was pleasantly surprised at how well the spatial tracking worked on the footage when making the Mow-rio Kart video. I was expecting to have to manually track frames in order to insert 3D objects but the quality of the image and smoothness of the camera movement meant that I was able to interpret all of my film without much difficulty! So if you’re thinking of doing any sort of post-production tracking, worry not!
Where do you prefer to share your Skydio content and type of content do you enjoy posting?
The usual suspects (insta, youtube, twitter, TikTok, etc)
Anything else you would like to share?
I love the constantly improved features which work as good starting points for new film techniques and shooting ideas.
Please check out Ian's work and give him some love from the ever-faithful Skydio community.
