MadVillain- All Caps (2003) Part 3

About 4 weeks or so into the production, I soon realized this was easily a 3 month job (I'd originally budgeted for 2 months). In creating the hand inked animated frames (hand inking was the only way I could pull off the hand drawn integrity). getting the heavily inked frames to register became a nightmare. I knew I didnt want to rely to on motion graphics software to make this work, I merely wanted it to be the finishing touch.

On top of this I'd wanted some 3D camera moves and employed a primitive 3D program to create the shots. I then traced the 3D movies by hand, and compositied the moving 2D elements into them. While time consuming, it seemed to work well and look natural enough.

Finally, after compositing was finished, I had something to show the folks at ST (nothing had been shown yet). Chris was pretty excited, remarking that he thought I'd outdone myself. I on the other hand kept thinking of all of the things I could have added. I'd always wanted a shot that actually took you 'through' a panel, into the artwork, and out to another part of the book. Nevertheless, I felt like it was ready to show, and started sending links out to everyone.

In my mind, I'd just delivered another music video, and was somewhat happy with the results. As I was bracing myself for what I expected to be nasty critique from the 'motion graphic/animation' politburo, a small stream of praise started to circulate. Ain't It Cool News had even asked for a link, and that seemed to open the floodgates.

In the end, the video opened up a lot of doors, with some folks asking for almost the exact same video. Ultimately, a small cottage industry based on the video seemed to spawn some unusual items including an action figure. Most thrilling off all had to be the HP/Serena Williams Outdoor Ad Campaign of 2007.

Since then, a lots happened to all parties involved in the project, especially Stones Throw. MF Doom went on to enjoy increasingly mainstream success, (though reports that a Doom Imposter in early 2006 didn't help him). A follow up MadVillain LP failed to materialize to the dismay of many fans, with the folks at ST anxiously waiting new material from Doom to no avail. A MadVillain Remix LP was released in 2008 to wet the appetite of fans, in which we had a hand in designing. It was a fantastic and memorable project, and one that I felt I was lucky to be a part of.