Hammering Away

 We contributed some animation for a new music video for Lucy Kaplansky's song "This Morning I am Born Again" from her new album "Reunion".  The video was hypnotically directed by Rick Litvin. Not that he directed it through hypnosis because I don't know how you can actually do that, but that the result is vividly hypnotic.  I mean not in the sense that you are going to fall asleep and cluck like a chicken or stop smoking or anything like that but that.. well...you get the idea.  Just watch and enjoy.

Happy New Year!

Here's wishing one and all a great year in 2013 filled with health and happiness, peace and prosperity (aka a little wealth). We haven't been posting as much as we should be but that's about to change. Why you may ask? Well...It's one of our resolutions to stop by with some news and post something (anything) more often! I mean really? How hard is that going to be compared to our past record? See you soon. R & D

Happy About My Depression

Last year, theater multi hyphenate and wonderful human being Elizabeth Swados called on WM Animation to help with a special project.  Ms. Swados, who had a Broadway and international hit show Runaways, is also a writer and wrote an illustrated humorous book depicting her experiences suffering with depression.  Having a lot of success with the book, Ms. Swados decided to try and turn it into an animated short film and came to us for help.  We were asked to create a one minute sizzle (as they say in the biz) to generate interest and show how Liz's crude yet whimsicaldrawing style could be modified while keeping the flavor of the original pen and ink drawings.
    Keeping a very loose drawing style using Flash and using minimal color we animated a one minute piece that introduces the main character and the premise of the film with wonderful narration by Sigourney Weaver.  Happily, the film has found most of its needed funding and we are now in the midst of the writing the screenplay in conjunction with Ms. Swados.  Executive Producing the film is Roz Lichter and Producer is Joshua Hetzler.  Music for the sizzle composed and performed by David Nelson.

W/M Animation crafts a game for Kraft

In an effort to bring more exposure to their snack Ritz Crackerfuls, Kraft foods launched a facebook game created by W/M Animation and produced through Acme Filmworks.  The game is a first-person scenario where the user plays as the main character who is experiencing hunger at work and gets to make decisions and follow different paths for the character to take resulting in an array of various endings.  The game and entire Ritz campaign was conceived by Euro RSCG Worldwide and took a lot of figuring out to keep track of the scenario segments and ensure the continuity is maintained so that the different paths transition smoothly.
We wanted to try and bring some familiarity and reality to the spot so while the characters were created in and animated in flash, the backgrounds were done with a more photo-realistic feel and the office environment was built in After Effects to give the characters a "3D" environment to walk through to enhance the illusion of the user AS the character. 
The game hopes to connect with adults 25 - 54 who may often find themselves at their desk waiting for their lunch breaks and hoping to have a snack they can munch on till then.  While deciding what to eat, why not try out the game on facebook?
facebook.com/RitzCrackerfuls 
      Here is a recent NY Times article about the project.
Kraft Tries Again With a Ritz Snack, Aiming Younger
Thanks to our crew and all the people at Euro RSCG for seeking us out to work on this project.
Special thanks to Pernille D'Avolio who did a great job of producing this for Acme. 

     For W/M Animation:

Produced and Directed by:  Robert Marianetti, David Wachtenheim
Characters Designed by:  David Wachtenheim
Animation by:  Sean Lattrell, Dan Madia, Steve Mead, Frank Summers, Mike Wetterhahn, David Wachtenheim
After Effects:  Dale Clowdis
Backgrounds: Kevin Lacroix, Robert Marianetti

     For Acme Filmworks:

Produced by: Pernille D'Avolio
Animatic Editing by:  George Khair

     For Euro RSCG Worldwide:

Producer:  Miriam Herzfeld
Executive Creative Directors:  Israel Garber, Steve Kashtan
Writer: Will Thomsen
Art Director: Andrew Di Peri, Patrick Jones

Weird Al Polka

Weird Al Yankovic is most famous for his parodies of popular hits but he also has recorded a number of polka medleys which are snippets of songs that he reinterprets as polkas complete with accordian, tuba, clarinet and a slide whistle or two. Mostly the videos for his medleys are clips from the original artists music videos that are strung together and occasionally sped up to allow for the sometimes peppier beat of the polka.
For his latest medley, which features songs from Lady Gaga, Kay Perry, Pink and many more, he decided to have the video done in animation and enlisted the aid of Acme http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifFilmworks to put it all together as a sort of anijam type of film where various artists will do each segment.
We were requested by Yankovic to participate and had a lot of fun in producing six of the segments for the video which will be featured on his Comedy Central special "Weird Al" Yankovic: The Alpocalypse Tour which prremiers Saturday, Oct 1 at 9/8c.
The remainder or the segments were produced by the following talented filmmakers:
Dan Meth, Philip Eddolls, John Dilworth, Janet Perlman, Anna Bergmann, Chris Hinton, Greg Holfeld and Sharon Colman Graham.
It's an eclectic piece of animation but quite fun to watch.

W/M turns the Gay Duo LIVE on Saturday Night

It was quite a surprise as the long dormant TV FUNHOUSE segment on Saturday Night Live returned with a special cartoon produced by W/M Animation on last Saturday Night's episode hosted by Ed Helms. The seeds of the cartoon began with an Ambiguously Gay Duo feature film script that creator Robert Smigel wrote five years ago with Stephen Colbert. Recently it was suggested by comedy director Jason Woliner that it might be interesting to do the Gay Duo as a live action short for SNL. Smigel liked the idea, Woliner was tapped to direct the live action and long time collaborators David Wachtenheim and Robert Marianetti of W/M were asked to handle the animation.

Utilizing all the old cartoons, W/M produced a storyboard incorporating as much reuse of standard shots from the original cartoons that they could but the whole thing had to be reanimated for a 16:9 wide screen format instead of the original 4:3 anyway. Unlike all the previous shorts, this one was going to be produced in Flash instead of traditional paper and pencil but in the way W/M has been using Flash. "We animate in Flash like it's on paper. We don't use tweening or squashing and stretching elements which is what gives flash a digital look. We just substitute a tablet for paper." explains Wachtenheim. The stellar animation crew, comprised of Dan Madia, Stephen Jackett, Don McGrath and Tom Witte blazed through the animation in six days and After Effects artist Dale Clowdis burned the midnight oil to composite the cartoon. Original Gay Duo production company JJ Sedelmaier Productions graciously provided the original BGs for W/Ms use which, ironically, were originally painted by Wachtenheim when he was employed there, and Kevin Lacroix provided additional BG painting. W/M also contributed to the writing, consulted on the costumes and worked back and forth with the live action director and the editors to make sure the transitions from animation to live action worked.
Could this mean more cartoons for SNL and a return of TV Funhouse? "It would be nice but I kind of doubt it," adds Marianetti, "It was great for us to revisit SNL after the show stopped producing the cartoons three years ago. We've done more cartoons for them than any other studio. This one being exactly number 50 produced by our studio W/M Animation. I'm not sure why, maybe because The Ambiguously Gay Duo was the very first cartoon on TV Funhouse, but it feels like we've come full circle with this one. Plus, even if we never do another cartoon for SNL, at least we went out with a bang."

All in all, it was a huge surprise for the audience to see Jon Ham and Jimmy Fallon in the starring roles with Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert, long time voices of Ace and Gary as the live action villains. SNL host Ed Helms and cast member Fred Armisen rounded out the villainous crew. As soon as the cartoon aired, the internet has been all abuzz regarding the return of TV Funhouse and the ever popular Ambiguously Gay Duo.



Written By:
Robert Smigel, Stephen Colbert, Akiva Schaffer, Jason Woliner, David Wachtenheim, Brian Reich

ANIMATION CREDITS

Directed by
David Wachtenheim

Produced by
Robert Marianetti

Voices
Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Bill Chott, Robert Smigel

Animation
Dan Madia, Steve Jackett, Tom Witte, Don McGrath, David Wachtenheim

Compositor
Dale Clowdis

Backgrounds
Kevin Lacroix, Robert Marianetti

Original Backgrounds, Animation and Design
J.J. Sedelmaier Productions

Background Art Assistants for JJSP
Corrie Lebens, Zero Lastimosa

Producer Emeritus
Samantha Scharff

Audio Post
Mike Fisher

Music
Steven M. Gold

LIVE ACTION CREDITS

Director
Jason Woliner

Producer
Dina Moles

Cast
Jon Hamm, Jimmy Fallon, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Ed Helms, Fred Armisen

Assistant Director
Neil Daly

Director of Photography
Aaron Phillips

Production Manager
Justus Mclarty

CGI
Graham Holly

Special Effects Makeup
Louie Zarkarian

Costume Designer
Brian Hemesath

Set Decorator
Teri Bella

Post Production Producer
Rhys Thomas

Editor
Adam Epstein

Stunt Coordinator
Brian Smyi
Alex Daniels

Plugging Directing Animation

It's PLUG TIIIMMMMEEEE!!!!
Yes, it's that portion of the show when we plug the latest hot ticket item to buy for the holidays. Today, we are happy to recommend our friend Dave Levy's latest book entitled "Directing Animation". Very appropriately titled because it is about directing animation. What's that you say? What's to direct? There are no actors in animation. Au contraire mon frere! An animator is an actor with a pencil (or Wacom stylus) and there is a team of designers and artists who need a leader with the artistic vision to head up the production.
The book is CHOCK FULL of insight and information from a wide range of directors of commercials, web, TV and film that shed light and offer advice on what it takes to direct in animation.
Dave's style of writing is informative and witty and will have you laughing while hearing great anecdotes about production woes and triumphs. You can't get this information anywhere else. Learn directly from real life situations from some of the top directors in the industry today. What's really great is that Dave Levy is a director himself so not only does he offer his own animation war stories but you get the real meat of information because he knows what he is talking about and knows what to ask of his interviewees. Learn from their mistakes and their revelations of secrets behind the drawing table. You can't learn this in in a classroom kids!
It's a great book for anyone interested in the process of animation or if you know someone in animation and just want to learn a little bit more of what they do.
Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that it includes some awesome insights from David Wachtenheim and Robert Marianetti. Yes, we are in the book. Ok, there I said it. I'm biased. But it really is a great read.

More Big Baby

We recently wrapped animating five more episodes of the popular Big Baby series of shorts for Cartoon Network. Don't know when or where they will be airing but this time and don't know how much we can say about it. CN is a little guarded about letting too much information out before its time and of course new Big Baby shorts have been on the forefront of everyone's thoughts for a long time. I can't tell you how many times someone has stopped me on the street saying, "Hey man, when are you doing more Big Babys" or "When are you doing a Big Baby feature, that s#*t is awesome?" or "hey can I have a dollar!" Yes, the streets of New York are brimming with Big Baby fans. And for those of you who think I am talking about the character Big Baby from the last Pixar film Toy Story 3 well, I'm not. Obviously, the folks at Pixar are huge fans of ours and decided to pay tribute to our work. Thank you John Lasseter. We like your work too.

Thanks to all of our crew who worked on the new shorts.
Directors/Writers - David Wachtenheim, Robert Marianetti
Animators - Steve Mead, Mike Wetterhahn, Daniel Bodinof, Jessica Milazzo, David Wachtenheim
Character Designs and Layouts - Sean Latrell
Backgrounds Layouts - Jason Macdonald, Gideon Kendall, Robert Marianetti
Background Painter - Kevin Lacroix
After Effects Artistes - Dale Clowdis, Bryce Jarrett
(apologies if anyone was left out)

Thanks also to the folks at CN:
Creator/ writer - Dave Striepe
Producer - Steve Patrick
Executive Producer - Evan Adler
Sound - Michael Kohler

For those of you who have never seen or heard of Big Baby, here is one of the original seven shorts found on cartoonnetwrok.com
Big Baby: Airplane

Will Elder's Fatty Chicken

Our friend Gary Vandenbergh is creating a documentary on famed MAD magazine artist Will Elder entitled "Chicken Fat" after all the millions of little visual gags Elder would cram into each comic panel. Will was one of the original contributors to MAD magazine and was a huge inspiration and innovator of the magazines outrageous humor. Gary has put together an impressive list of interviews of people who worked with Will or were influenced by him including:
William M. Gaines, Al Jaffee, Harvey Kurtzman, Art Spiegelman, Arnold Roth, Drew Friedman, Andy Kindler and many, many more.
Gary was even gracious enough to ask me and Robert to be a part of this wonderful tribute to an amazing artist. Take a look at this promo to see some of the wonderful people paying respects to Will. I don't know how the last guy on the promo got on there but whatever. Sheesh.
Looking forward to the final film Gary.

Here is the full version of the Simon Cowell opening as seen at the beginning of the Rage Against the Machine concert at Finsbury Park.

24 hours to RAGE

The call came on Wednesday afternoon from Gwynn Adik at ACME Filmworks. The band Rage Against the Machine had started an online campaign to garner the #1 single on the charts over the Christmas holiday in the UK. For the past four years, the #1 slot went to the current winner of Simon Cowell's UK show talent show, "X-Factor". With the help of the Facebook page Rage Against X-Factor , the band was successful in knocking off X-Factor winner Joe McElderry's cover of Miley Cyrus' single "The Climb" and gain the number one position much to the dismay of Mr. Cowell.
As thanks to all their fans, RATM was scheduled to play a free victory show at London’s Finsbury Park on June 6th and it was to begin with an animated Simon Cowell introducing the band.

Harvey Lewis of DC3 Global who was producing this segment for RATM was thrilled when he heard we would take the gig and he couldn't have been nicer or more understanding about the constraining schedule. Harvey told us he loved our work on SNL and had the utmost confidence in our abilities. He was sure whatever we gave him would be great and was completely understanding of the limitations. So nice to work with a guy like that.

We would have until Friday to get them the cartoon and if there were any notes, to implement them and upload to London for Saturday morning. Two days? A minute and a half of animation? Inside we were panicking but we said yes, of course. After all, our record to date was a two and a half minute cartoon for SNL in four days (see below for "Are You Hot?" video). One character (Simon Cowell) addressing the audience shouldn't be TOO bad.

The idea for us was to get the look and mannerisms right. If you capture the essence of the character you're halfway there. Luckily (or sadly), I have watched my share of American Idol and was fairly an aficionado of Simon Cowell and his various attitudes. A few well placed key head poses, arm mannerisms, eye rolls and the piece started taking shape but that was only the first 30 seconds. At 5:30 am Friday morning, my strength was waning and I decided it would be best to take a nap and get working later that morning rather than try to work straight through. After a roughly uncomfortable two and a half hour sleep on the couch I restarted at eight am panicked with the dread that I may not get done on time. Somehow, by noon, all the pieces were falling in place, Robert had created a great BG of Simon's "vault" loaded with bags of money and bars of gold.

At 1:30, we sent a test to Harvey who would show it to the band and we had to wait for notes. More panic. It was half done, the end was all rough. There was no lipsync. Would they understand what they were looking at? What if they didn't like it? What if there were tons of notes and corrections? How would we finish on time? Finally, the word came back. NO CORRECTIONS. As a matter of fact the band called it "brilliant" and the guys "totally crushed" on it. (I think that's good!) So off to finish the piece and by 6:00 pm miraculously it was done. Lipsync and all. We had a few glitches with the output to quicktime, but with the aid of editor George Khair, the track was slid and fell perfectly in place and it was uploaded off to London.

Success!



As seen in the YouTube clip above, shot by a fan, the cartoon got a great reaction from the crowd and apparently the band blew the crowd away. Glad we could be a part of it. We will post the original spot another time.

Here's the aforementioned SNL cartoon that held our personal record of four days.

Well trained Dragons

When the first trailer for Dreamworks' latest film "How to Train Your Dragon", hit the screens, I was less than impressed. The dialogue seemed silly, ("thanks for nothing, you useless reptile"), the design of the dragon was less than stellar and seeing Jay Baruchel, the voice of the main character in two other trailers ("She's Out of My League" and "Sorcerer's Apprentice" (G-d help us)) was overkill for me. However, as newer trailers came out with more scenes I started getting more interested and I was looking forward to actually seeing it. Well, yesterday I went to see it with two of my kids and it completely lived up to my expectations and more. I am no movie critic. Just an animator and director with a forum so I will just give my overall impressions without the in-depth film analysis.

Firstly, the character designs were great. I was so happy to see that Dreamworks' strayed from the "realistic" human characters in the Shrek films. The stylized Viking designs, with their massive broad chests and arms, and great big beards were a great departure. And that was just the women (rim shot). The voices were fantastic. It was so nice to hear a Scottish brogue for once in a Dreamworks film that made sense. I never understood why Shrek was from the Highlands but Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson applied their natural brogues to great use in this film. Even the kids voices were stellar, even though the aforementioned Jay Baruchel was aligned with other slightly overexposed young actors, Jonah Hill, Cristopher Mintz-Plasse and Kristen Wiig long with America Ferrara and T.J. Miller. But it didn't matter because the casting was great and enhanced rather than distracted from the characters. I even learned to love the design of toothless, the main dragon character. While he may not look like a conventional dragon as we've all come to think of them, there is reason for that in his character of a mysterious dragon that no one has ever seen before. There are many different species of dragons in this world and they all have there unique looks and fit nicely together in this world.



The acting (yes, I said acting) was great and I don't mean just the voices. The animation of some of the characters was amazing. I can't recall any other animated film I have seen where there were moments that I thought the character of Stoick, the head Viking, was a man in a big Viking costume. Some of the gestures, body language and overall movements and so much life and realism in them it was hard to take your eyes off him every time he was on screen. Truly superb animation. Don't mean to take away from any of the other characters. All were great but Stoick was impressive. I wish I could recall who the animator was.

It even had a good story. Of course, like most "kids" films the plots can be over predictable at times, but this was able to be predictable yet surprising, emotional without being overtly sentimental, and terrific action that made great use of the latest craze of 3D. I have to also give huge kudos to the story team for adding a surprising element in the end (I will not give it away) that other studios may have backed away from and left out but gave the film a real gravitas that you don't see in many "childrens" films. Thank you Dreamworks for being brave. And gratefully, they didn't have to resort to pop culture references for cheap jokes and lame gags.

Lastly, I want to talk briefly about the 3D. What a pain in the ass. I don't know if all the theaters are like this, but the glasses we had were tinted darker on the left eye and they wouldn't fit comfortably on our faces. And while the center of the screen may have been clear, around the edges and peripherally everything was blurry. Man this 3D thing really makes me mad. The whole opening sequence of a dragon attack on the village at night was impossible to see. Having said all that, the production design was beautiful. The rolling green hills, the sprawling sea of viking vessels, were majestic. And the flying sequences really showed off the 3D nicely if you were able to view it.

Overall, I thought it was one of the best if not THE best Dreamworks film to date (although I did like Kung Fu Panda as well) and I hope they continue to take chances and push themselves with every new film that comes out. Next up Shrek Forever After. Well, hopefully after that.

2010 Oscars

While over 35 million people spent their Sunday nights watching the 2010 Oscar telecast, I and 3 million of my closest friends had to choose between Dateline and the Amazing Race because Cablevision pulled ABC from the air OR ABC didn't allow Cablevision to broadcast their otherwise free channel. Cablevision even offered to allow its subscribers to watch Movies on Demand for free but when we went to try and do that, but of course, it didn't work. Thanks Cablevision.

Regardless of who is right in this argument, I was pissed and wanted to watch the Oscars. So instead I watched Undercover Boss as I trawled (or is it trolled) the internet on my laptop looking for an online telecast of the show and not just the red carpet entrances, but to no avail. Then at around 10:30 I realized one of my facebook friends mentioned that miraculously the telecast had come back on. Did the superpowers behind the ABC/Cablevision have mercy and call a cease fire for a brief moment to bring peace to the world and allow the viewers to come together in harmony to watch the Oscars? I didn't care what the reason, the Oscars were on and I was going to finally watch it. So I watched the cinematography award given out , the horror film montage, the memorial montage, sat through one dance number and decided the magic was gone and went to bed. Sorry, too little too late. The enthusiasm was gone.
Not that I am an Oscar junkie or hold Oscar parties to rate the star's wardrobes, or even have a pool to bet on the winners. I do none of that. As a matter of fact, I can't stand the self congratulatory, god worshipping that goes on in Hollywood and its Romanesque triumphal parade which is the Oscars. That's not to say I don't dream one day of winning one of those gold statuettes for myself so I can look out at all my peers and say, HA! For ONCE, I am better than you! No. I enjoy watching the Oscars for other reasons.

1) To see who wins Best Animated Feature, because animation am my business. I learned this morning the winner was UP. Shocker! Who'd have guessed it that a small little studio like Pixar would run away with this years award. Why did the other films even bother showing up? Actually the fact the "The Secret of Kells" was nominated was a great inspiration for smaller studios who are still holding on to the notion that traditional animation is alive and well. Disney's "Princess and the Frog" helped too. I Actually have not seen "Secret of the Kells" yet, but the images and scenes from Ireland's Cartoon Saloon's production are beautiful and confirm why I got into this industry in the first place.

2) To see who wins Best Animated Short so I can wallow in self pity that I haven't created an Oscar worthy short. Yet!
As for the short film winner, Logorama, I happened to have watched it the week before and was really impressed by the overall concept and idea. It was extremely clever and imaginative and I guess had a statement to make about the over saturation in our lives of corporations and mass marketing but the world created of logos almost was a gimmick instead of a story point. Nonetheless, it was amazing to watch and try to spot each of the thousands of logos and corporate iconic characters in the film. Really enjoyable to watch. Congratulations to the winners, the French artistic conglomerate of H5. What will Nick Park do without another Wallace and Gromit Oscar?

3) To see the montages. I love to watch the film montages so I can rattle off, "seen it", "wanna see it", "never heard of that one", as each clip rolls by. I also like to see the montage of the people who died the previous year so I can say, "he/she died THIS year?", or "I didn't know they died" or "I didn't even know they were still alive".
After the broadcast finally came on I DID see the memorial montage, and is it just me or was Farrah Fawcett left off from the montage? What was that all about? Is it because she was mainly a TV star and not a film star? Has the world forgotten "Saturn 3" already? It's bad enough that her death got eclipsed by Michael Jackson's but to totally get left off the montage? It's like the day Princess Diana died,another death got totally overshadowed. A little known woman known as Mother Theresa.
And now, I found out that there was a montage remembering John Hughes's iconic teenage comedies of the 80s. The man whose films defined my generation was honored and I missed it. I must go and watch the tribute and pay my respects to the man that gave us Lloyd Dobler and Long Duk Dong.

4) Mostly, this year I wanted to see Steve Martin, my all-time favorite comedian, and Alec Baldwin, who has become one of today's greatest comedic actors and backbone of the great 30 Rock, host this years awards. Although, their lackluster film It's Complicated only got a few good hearty laughs from me, I was excited and willing to give these two power houses another chance. Missed it. Will have to catch it on YouTube.

5) Seeing James Cameron lose. Not that I don't like James Cameron or his films. Terminator and Aliens 2 were iconic Sci-Fi films of my youth. But two things really tainted my overall view of this man. Firstly, his "I am King of the World" speech after winning for Titanic was the most obnoxious and saddest thing I ever saw. You know this guy was not popular in High School and he was sadly giving the finger to all the spitballs he's had flung at him over the years. But really dude, it's an award for a movie. I didn't hear President Obama scream "I am King of the World" when winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Secondly, while interning one Summer at DreamQuest Images special effects studio in Simi Valley CA, I had the pleasure of working briefly with Mr. Cameron on the effects for his film "The Abyss". Okay, working WITH is a little strong. At the time we were creating video storyboards which involved puppeting cardboard ships on sticks to illustrate the shots that the effects artists would later create with real models (not those virtual CG models the kids are doing these days). The first day, I was dutifully (and quite competently) puppetting one of the ships doing exactly what Mr. Cameron instructed in every shot. On the second day his own effects guys, assistants and lackeys and hanger on-ers, started taking over the puppeting and I was relegated to the task of slating the shots. Not a glamorous position but an important one and I was happy just to be on the set. But when King Cameron started yelling at me because I wasn't getting the slate out of the shot fast enough I realized that the free internship I had didn't list being yelled at by a megalomaniacal, narcissist as one of its selling points. I decided to spend the next few days with the amazingly talented matte painters Bob Scifo and Ken Allen that I spent the rest of the Summer with.

So, thanks a lot ABC and Cablevision for messing up my Sunday night, and now my Monday morning, seeing as though I have to catch up on replays of the events on the web. All, I can say is don't you dare screw with my Tuesday Night of LOST or I may have to break out the old rabbit ears on your butts.

Stroker & Hoop

In case you missed it when it first aired, Adult Swim has full episodes of "Stroker and Hoop", along with episode guides, character profiles, and other fun downloads. Created by Jeff Olsen and Chris Kelly, the 13 episode series follows two inept private detectives and their talking car as they solve some of LA's most ridiculous crimes.

View Full Episodes Here

Psychotic Animation

Ok. So, we've proven to be pretty bad at this blogging thing. Haven't put up a post in months. Probably not the way you are supposed to do it. We probably should blog more if we want more people to read these. Anyway, hope to rectify this and blog a little more often. Boy, I hate writing the word blog and the more I write it the more the word blog seems pretty silly.

I just wanted to write today about one of the jobs we did a few months ago that has now been seen at the Tribeca Film Festival. A few months ago I got a call from Dan O'Conner with whom I worked with on Courage the Cowardly Dog. (Yes, I worked for two seasons doing storyboards and animation on Courage. ) Dan was working on a project that he wasn't able to complete and asked if we would take it over. It was not a lot of money but he had already boarded out the project and it was for a feature so we agreed to take it. The project turned out to be an opening for a horror/comedy film written and directed by Dan Fogler. In case you don't know who Dan Fogler is, you will. But to fill you in, Mr Fogler originated the role of Mr. Barfee in the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee for which he also won the Tony Award. He starred in the movies Balls of Fury and Fanboys and will be playing a young Alfred Hitchcock in the upcoming film Number 13.

The film Mr. Fogler was making was called Hysterical Psycho which is a low budget, horror film that pays homage to many other well known horror films and shot with the influence of many different directorial styles which could very well gain midnight movie cult status. I haven't actually seen the finished film so I couldn't give a review but it recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and reviews abound on the web. Here's one.

We supplied the opening of the film which is an animated segment depicting the narrator of the film, The Man in the Moon, voiced by Dan Fogler as an Alfred Hitchcock merged with John Houseman character. The animated introduction basically sets up what is said to be a series of films called the "Moon Lake Series". It relates the origins of the existence of Lunar radiation at the Moon Lake Crater resort where the action in the film takes place. We wanted the animation to have an old Warner Brother's feel to it but still be contemporary. The Man in the Moon character was animated in flash but in a traditional manner while the Earth and Moon segments were animated in After Effects. We are very pleased with the way it came out and soon we will probably post the whole piece (if we can get permission).


We also did a segment in the middle which was a 30 second Moon Cheese commercial that breaks up the action of the film. This was more of a Bray/Fleischer style of animation. This 30 second segment was animated and put together beautifully by the great Doug Compton who also did the music for the piece. Doug did a tremendous job and was a great sport to add the music. We had a good time working on this intro and hope to share it with everyone soon.

Thanks to everyone who worked on the Hysterical Psycho Moon Segments:
Background Design - Gideon Kendall
Background Layout - Robert Marianetti
Background Color and Painting - Kevin Lacroix
After Effects Animation and Composite - Dale Clowdis
CG Assiting - Mike Wetterhahn
Moon Man Intro Animation - David Wachtenheim
Moon Cheese Commercial Animation - Doug Compton

Schoolhouse Rock "Windy"

OK. Haven't added a post in a while and I will say it is because we have been busy working away. That's partially true. The other reason is we just find it hard to get used to this new idea of having to blog about our work. Does anyone even read this stuff?
Anyway, as mentioned previously, we completed a Schoolhouse Rock cartoon for wind energy and it is supposed to be out on DVD March 31st as part of Schoolhouse Rock EARTH.
Here is the storyboard that we did for the cartoon. We did all the designs except for the Wind and the Windmill which were designed by Phil Kimmelman and Phil gave us a lot of freedom with the board. We tried to be as faithful as we could to the original cartoons and had a lot of fun with the process.