Behold the power of sound and image. With people of a certain generation, you can stand in a room, and shout, “One, two, three, four, five…” and likely have them finish your countdown with the song from this animation. It has its own Wikipedia entry. It has music from The Pointer Sisters. It’s been covered by … a lot of people. The segment was the work of San Francisco director Jeff Hale, a psychedelic journey through a wonderland of numbers in the style of pop art-style album covers. (See the full sequence re-edited, since Children’s Television Workshop – now Sesame Workshop – didn’t include it.)
What you may not have seen was the 2010 remake, produced by the Italian animation studio Florence Animation, with music by Beirut’s Perrin Cloutier. It’s a pitch-perfect homage, and demonstrates how, in place of traditional animation techniques, we now have access both to low-fidelity techniques (stop motion, aided by computers and vastly cheaper photography equipment) and new digital motion graphics. Sure, the groovy 70s Sesame Street is gone, but we have all the tools to keep the spirit alive.
Read up on a whole history of this animation – and, perhaps, find other Muppet inspiration for your motion work. Hope you’re having a fine weekend, indeed.