Why this Toronto man ran so a giant stickman could dance
CTV
Colleagues would ask Duncan McCabe if he was training for a marathon, but, really, the 32-year-old accountant was committing multiple hours of his week, for 10 months, to stylistically run on the same few streets in Toronto's west end with absolutely no race in mind. It was all for the sake of creating a seconds-long animation of a dancing stickman for Strava.
Colleagues would ask Duncan McCabe if he was training for a marathon, but, really, the 32-year-old accountant was committing multiple hours of his week, for 10 months, to stylistically run on the same few streets in Toronto's west end with absolutely no race in mind.
It was all for the sake of creating a seconds-long animation of a dancing stickman for Strava.
It is a phone app where athletes can track their running activity. Strava has been home to stylistic running art pieces before – the company has even highlighted some of its favourite Strava artworks – but McCabe wanted to go the extra mile and turn his routes into a 30-second cartoon to the tune of Sofi Tukker's "Purple Hat". After all, he already produced and edited videos for his YouTube channel as a hobby – why not try his hand at making a simple animation?
"I knew the video market wasn't tapped, so I thought, 'Let's just try merging my two worlds: running with a video,'" McCabe told CTV News Toronto in an interview on Tuesday.
About 120 runs later, McCabe's boogying, hat-twirling stick figure came to life – with his arms wiggling throughout Bloorcourt and Harbord villages, his legs dancing over Trinity Bellwoods Park.
The accountant said he used Toronto's grid-like street system to his advantage, using street names to mark where the stick figure's imaginary spine is, for example.
"If he walks, meaning he pretends to move his legs, I literally move which street represents his spine every single day, and he remains stable in the centre of the frame, but the map underneath him moves," McCabe said.
