A young lad receives a telephone call which stirs up an unexpected challenge to his ego. He briefly indulges in self–absorbed mental meandering in the evening air. Sadly, in the process he fails to notice a series of highly improbable, if not miraculous, opportunities before him.

Although the concept & message of Bad Night is based purely on whiny psychological humor, it was created using innovative techniques in performance animation (motion capture animation).

Taking cues from the look & movement of Balinese shadow puppets, Emre and Lev made the characters by filming co-workers and friends in various poses and expressions. This video was then scanned and imported into Photoshop where the actors were cut and pasted into virtual “puppets”. The lifeless puppets were animated using ALIVE motion capture software. Various movements were controlled by joysticks.

Lev and Emre Yilmaz are a two brother team who have been making trouble since they were kids given a Super 8 camera by their unsuspecting mom. Emre Yilmaz is a puppeteer/animator working at Protozoa, a San Francisco based animation studio. His work areas include puppeteering, character design, character setup, applying motion capture to non-human character, and internet animation. Lev Yilmaz came to Protozoa in February 1998, when a quick collaboration with brother Emre won Best Performance Animation at the World Animation Celebration that month.