In The Works...

While the new book is at the printers, I've been putting together press materials and promotional items. If time allows, I'd like to put some full color pieces for posters and the like, though, the book is black & white. Also, figuring out how to include a soundtrack by either including a disc of music, or, listing a link to an MP3 mix...

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.

Album Art

One thing that digital music did was shrink the size of LP artwork. There's nothing like the feeling of seeing your art displayed 12"'s in diameter. CD's mostly made up for that in the form of the booklet, though, it still didn't have to same payoff.

A lot of folks ask about the future of music promotion/artwork now that album art exists mostly as a 2" X 1" rectangle at the bottom of your iTunes. There's some interesting ideas out there on where this is going. One of which was just written up in Wired. Check it out.

MadVillain- All Caps (2003) Part 2

From the start, I had in mind what I'd wanted this animation look like, I just needed to figure out the best methods/software, to make it happen. I did have a handful of references of motion graphics composition I'd seen seen that had similar look to what I had in mind. The animation was another story.

I scoured 1960's Marvel Comics, particularly the work of Jack Kirby for inspiration. So much so, that I ended up borrowing some of his actual poses:



By now, the song had changed to "All Caps"(which was a much better song as well as considerably shorter), and Wolf was OK to keeping the same budget. He was pretty hands off with the whole project, trusting that I knew what the hell I was doing(!). I just kept giving him updates saying, "well, it's gonna be weird", to which he'd reply "Weird is good!".

The real trick with this was to try and make it look like heavily inked panels, move, and retain the weathered old comic look. This involved drawing and inking each frame of animation. To top it off, I wanted also use 3D camera moves. I had my work cut out, as, I had 2 months to get this done. I feverishly started the artwork, finishing up the toughest shots first. I hand inked everything, converted the shots to EPS, colored it in Illustrator, and composited it in Flash and After Effects as seen here:

As time went on, I wanted to do a lot more animating that I'd planned. A ton of ideas had come along the way, as well as having 'comic-ads' that would come to life. This involved shooting real actors against green screen, and compositing. Before I knew it, this project was taking a lot longer, and costing way more than I'd set out (continued).

Walk Cycle

A new project had me throwing together a walk-cycle for a character design. A rather quick 3 second shot ended up being a little more complex than I'd imagined. He had to resolve in the pose that's cleaned up at the end here:

MadVillain- All Caps (2003) Part 1

In summer of 2003, I'd rediscovered the GrantRay/Lawrence series of Marvel Comics cartoons. I distinctly remember these as a kid that my brother and I would laugh and make fun of these embarassingly simple animations. Marvel was trying to get into the animation business, and using the actual 60's comic art, moving the images, and adding poorly recorded audio, with limited animation.

I had the idea to recreate something like this for a music video, as mostly an inside joke. Out of the blue, I emailed Peanut Butter Wolf , head of Stones Throw Records, and asked if I could direct a video for him at some point. A week or so later, he wrote back saying 'sure, what do you got?' I told him the idea, and he suggested we animate a video for the upcoming MF Doom project they were recording. I got the single 'Money Folder' from him, showed PBW and Madlib some of the cartoons I was referencing. After about a month or so of non-starts, I quit my job, and got started on the initial artwork (continued).

Official Nominee!

Food Dude got nominated for a Webby! Be a stand-up citizen and go vote!

Google Image Search

A new set of titles has us raiding Google Image Search, and trying the damndest to mask and distort these, making them as custom as possible. A photo someone took of their Pad-thai in Roanoke gets on the web somehow. You grab that photo, change the levels, add some new shading and maybe a little 'unsharpen-mask' and viola, you have your new custom image.

I think what I'm doing with these isnt too much different with what folks are doing sampling music. The trick is to not be too obvious, and do your best to create something 'new' from the original.

Though trouble can arise when you find yourself in Shepherd Fairey's situation.

Classic!

Night Train 98!

An marker piece done about 12 years ago at the "NHS School of Art & Design". Mostly involving characters from a comic I was writing at the time. One of my first attempts at a 'night' scene'.

The Asthetic Of Surprise

Here's a great video of Ira Glass at the GEL Conference talking about the art of storytelling, and some of his angle on what makes a story great. (lifted from Kelsey Mann!).

Ira Glass at Gel 2007 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.