Good News and Great Plug

I'm entering my last week in Malaysia! After a bit of time in Europe, I'll be back in NYC August 13th. So soon there'll (maybe) be more stuff here, and certainly less on my Malaysian blog, which you should totally check out if you haven't already.

The good news.

My TMBG video "I Can Add" (aka only thing this blog has covered in months) got into the Ottawa Animation Festival, which (FYI Mom and Dad) is the biggest (and I think only) international animation festival in North America.

To me, the cool thing about this is that Ottawa is now the second convention/festival that I went to and then decided I'd like to get something in it, and actually succeeded. Before my senior year at RISD, I went to the Small Press Expo (an indy comic convention), and afterwards figured I should make a graphic novel and try to get it published, which I did with Salmon Doubts (a book so successful that it's ranked 1.3 millionth in sales and was so hard to keep in stock that Amazon quit trying). Two years ago I went to Ottawa, and now I've got an animation in it, so I can only assume I Can Add will reach Salmon Doubts levels of popularity. The crushing details of reality aside, I am still batting a thousand, so if anyone has tickets to the Academy Awards let me know.

The great plug.

My friends Max and Ru also did a music video for TMBG with David Cowles. It is absolutely outstanding, and you have to watch it right now.



Did you watch it yet? I'll wait.

Okay, so at some point during the video you probably said to yourself, "I wonder how they did that." Well wonder no longer, Max and Ru put together a "Making Of" blog post. Check it out.

I am a winner!

This past Sunday, ASIFA East had it's 39th annual Animation Festival. I couldn't make it because I was on the other side of the planet, but the TMBG music video "I Can Add" I directed with David Cowles won an award, which I'm pretty sure means I won an award, which means I probably missed my chance to make an acceptance speech, which when you think about it, is everyone's loss (but mostly mine).

According to man-about-town Sean McBride the award was for "Excellence in Education," which is only fitting because I teach good.

And, lest I forget, let me once more promise a beer to everyone who helped out with the animation.

Joe Apel
Pedro Delgado
Nelson Diaz
Jeff Fletcher
Aya Fukuda
Casey Leonard
Jonathan Renoni
Thomas Sebasian Smolenski
Joe Stucky
Joe Quinones

And if you still haven't seen the music video, what are you waiting for? Check it.

They Might Be Giants

Last year I was lucky enough to work with illustrator David Cowles on a They Might Be Giants music video for a TMBG children's CD/DVD called Here Come The 123s. We worked out the concepts and storyboards together, David designed the characters, and I was lead animator.

Each week on their video podcast, TMBG releases a new music video from the album, and last Friday my video was up.

The song is called, I Can Add, and someone was nice enough to post the video podcast on YouTube. Check it out. And stay tuned for the second music video, Seven Days of the Week, which my friend Sean McBride did with David Cowles.



I did the video entirely in Flash, and I'm proud of how it came out, and how little it looks like standard Flash animation.

Click here to see a high quality quicktime of the video.

And as a special bonus, here is the storyboard/animatic for the video. Because I was going to need some help getting all the animation done in time, I tried to do a decent amount of the rough animation in the boards so that anyone I could trick into helping me would know what I was going for.



And finally, here's the list of everyone who was nice enough to help me out with the animation. I still owe them big time.

Joe Apel
Pedro Delgado
Nelson Diaz
Jeff Fletcher
Aya Fukuda
Casey Leonard
Jonathan Renoni
Thomas Sebasian Smolenski
Joe Stucky
Joe Quinones

Superbowl

Hello all.

In January I worked on a commercial that aired during the Superbowl. Check it out.



Simon Ampel directed it and did all the key animation. I just helped out doing clean up and inbetweens on Tom Brady's run, but regardless it still sounds cool to say I worked on a Superbowl spot.

In Defense of Moving Crap Around in Flash

So I guess there's been a big debate about the merits of Flash over at Cartoon Brew.

This was the inflamatory line "Forget honing your skills and mastering the craft of animation like those classic artists, just cheat your way into thinking you’re an animator by moving some crap around in Flash."

I will admit that I personally prefer hand drawn animation, but drawing and animation are not the same thing. Consider stop motion, or 3-D animation. Apparently some of the best Pixar animators can't do tradition animational. That doesn't make them bad animators, it just means they are not great draftsmen (or women). If you wanted to play devils advocate, you could argue that stop motion, 3-D, or any cut-out style of animation is more pure than hand drawn animation. Animation is movement, not drawing, so if the medium eliminates draftmanship from the equation, you can't hide behind nice drawings. Your work lives or dies by how well it moves.

And finally, in defense of moving crap around in Flash, check out this Yo Gabba Gabba music video directed by Justin Fines (who I don't know) and animated by Andy Kennedy (who is a good friend). You can do some awesome stuff in Flash by just moving crap around.



I'm hardly impartial, but I think this is the one of the best piece of animation I've seen done for Yo Gabba Gabba. The only other short that has impressed me as much is Nick Cross's "Kites Are Fun" piece.

Of course, what I like about Kites Are Fun, are the drawings and design more than the actual animation (which is still really good, and MUCH better than what his budget should have allowed, I'm sure), whereas what I like about Andy's piece is the animation more than the design. So the dichotomy continues!

After Effects

I've used Flash for over three years, and by now I pretty much know what there is to know when it comes to using the program for animation. However, for my new job I have to use Flash and After Effects. I'd used After Effects a few times before, but I had no idea how amazingly deep the program is. It feels good to be a beginner at something again, I really enjoy learning new things, and there is a TON to learn with After Effects.

For my down time at work, I've been going through some excelent free on-line After Effects tutorials, put together by Andrew Kramer. I highly suggest checking out his website, VideoCopilot.net

Here's a little logo animation I did in After Effects using some tricks I picked up from the on-line tutorials. Click on the image to see the quicktime.


What is Faux-Kour, you ask? Why, it's the next inovation in Parkour, aka freestyle running. Here's a quick teaser. There will be much more to come.

They Might Be Giants

Ealier this year I was lucky enough to work with illustrator David Cowles on a They Might Be Giants music video for a TMBG children's CD/DVD called Here Come The 123s. We worked out the concepts and storyboards together, David designed the characters, and I was lead animator.
I can't show you anything from the video, but you can order the album from Amazon.



I should also mention that I got a lot of friends to help me with the animation. I owe all them all, big time.

Joe Apel
Pedro Delgado
Nelson Diaz
Jeff Fletcher
Aya Fukuda
Casey Leonard
Jonathan Renoni
Thomas Sebasian Smolenski
Joe Stucky
Joe Quinones

A bit of animation

Wow. I did a bit of animation I can actually show. How weird.

My friend Sean McBride does a weekly animated short for Salon that explores the interesting dynamic in the friendship between Sean and his friend Tony. Last week I helped out by animating the Sean character for the latest installment. It's not the most impressive thing I've ever done, but it was fun. Check it out.



Sean's on a roll. He also just got mentioned on Cold Hard Flash, and before that was on the front page on YouTube for his Student Academy Award winning Junior year animation project. He made this in one semester, how crazy is that?

Flash Tricks

I just started a blog that will explain some Flash tips and tricks I've figured out over the years.

The first two tutorials show how to make looping, panning, multiplaning backgrounds.

http://flashtrick.blogspot.com