Happy Holidays, Everyone!

... here's something to think about if a Charlie Brown Christmas is in your holiday lineup.

See you all in '10!

Updates! Finally.

Hello four people who read this (... and hello to YOU who happened across the blog by some random act of Google),

First and foremost I must apologize for my online absence as of late, I can't necessarily say that things have been consistently neck-breaking busy these last few months but sometimes I neglect to check in. Just ask my stepmother -- she's still waiting for me to call her to wish her a Happy Thanksgiving. Sorry Candy!
So what do I have to show for not posting anything since September? The long answer is I need to compile & scan a few things and wait for a few other things to go online so I can repost them here.

The short answer is not a lot, BUT allow me to share with you what I do have.

I'll start with Locksley since that seems to be all I talk about in my blog, so why stop now? First off, I not only got to design my first-ever album art for them, but it's bigger than short in Japan right now. Check it!

Rocksrey™

... and yes, the video I shot for them will be done eventually -- look out for it in the Winter/Spring of 2010! Until then, here's a screenshot to keep you occupied...

... still a work in progress!

Speaking of forays into the magical world of music videos, I recently did a bit of work* on the latest Kid CuDi video for his single, "Pursuit of Happiness." Enjoy!



I've also posted a high-resolution version of the animated segment I did for The Features video earlier this year... it's a bit more in sync with the audio and you can make out a lot more with that quality! I bet you didn't even know there was a parrot in the video... check it out by clicking on the image below!


I've got more to post but it can wait til later this week... and yes, my stepmom did try calling me again while posting this online.

Darling It's True (Locksley Official Music Video)

... the first single off of Locksley's upcoming album, Be In Love.

directed by Chris Stocksmith

Further Adventures in Animation

Today's lesson: Advanced Motion Tracking

I Done Made Things Move: "Lions" Music Video by The Features

Directed by my friend Joshua Winkler, working on this video turned me onto this band -- they're quite excellent and I encourage everyone out there to buy their album, "Some Kind of Salvation." I was in charge of the portion involving the hand-drawn cut-0ut animation which starts at around 2:40.

Excellent work Josh!

One of My Favorite Animators: Georges Schwizgebel

Georges Schwizgebel is a french-speaking Swiss animation director who successfully marries both the paint-on-glass technique with music & rhythm. I first saw his piece "La Course à l'abîme" in the first year of the Animation Show and it still is one of my favorite animated shorts of all time. His use of camera work and animation cycling is masterful. Recently his 2006 short "Jeu" was posted on Motionographer... check it out below!






... and with the beauty of animation out of the way, here's an awful picture of Sam Bair, Locksley's* drummer, for all you fans out there.


* They're going on tour this fall! Catch 'em.

Locksley's "Love You Too" Video Shoot

... and now the real fun begins.

Purple Brain Music Video aka How I Ended Up on the Internet After Blacking Out

One night at Lifelong Friendship Society we had a few friends over and more than a few beers between the lot of us. After shooting a few things on green screen I woke up at home the next morning with my shoes still on. Go figure.

Brian Close shot and directed this video which you can read more about here.

Purple Brain from Georgia on Vimeo.

The State of Locksley Music Videos These Days

First off, let me say that I've watched the brand new music video for Locksley's upcoming single "Darling It's True" and it's highly, highly enjoyable. With permission of the band I was able to download a screenshot and be the first to show you all a little sneak peak!

EDIT: AT THE REQUEST OF THE BAND I WAS ASKED TO CENSOR OUT ANY PORTIONS OF THE FRAME THAT MAY GIVE TOO MUCH AWAY.

How amazing does Kai look in that shot?!

In other Locksley music video related news (or LMVRN for short) the diorama is in its final stages of completion & the band was fitted for their animal costumes last week. Exciting! Check out the screen shots of the diorama below.



Also it's worth noting that if you're looking for some good music to jam to this summer, go out and buy (by which I mean click over to the iTunes store) and pick up the album Some Kind of Salvation by The Features. I just finished up doing a bit of animation for one of their songs (see previous entry) and I'm a sold man on their music. Great job!

Coming Soon: New Animation Work

Here's a peak.


... stay tuned!

Holy Crap It's June Already

Hello hello!
I apologize to those of you that I haven't talked to nearly as much as I should have in the past couple of weeks but I haven't had too much time away from other engagements. I've been at the LFS office everyday for the past four weeks & my roommate tells me that the only way she knows that I'm alive is the jug of apple juice in our refrigerator progressively gets emptier and emptier as the week passes.
Since I'm more of a visual guy I'll post a few images rather than explaining anything.















More to come.

Photos by Mark Phillips, Rob Cohen, Sam Bair, Brian Close & Gina Vortman

The Vendor Client Relationship

I don't think it's ever been more eloquently represented.

More Works in the Works

What up folks! With Memorial Day officially behind us, it's time to post a few updates of the latest Brooklynz Goings Ons™. Outside of work I've been keeping pretty reasonably busy on the upcoming Locksley music video and assisting my new friend Josh Winkler on his video for The Features. I'm pretty excited to be working on both.
Below are some photos from the Locksley production, without giving too much away at the moment I can say that it does involve a lot of physical construction, something that I've always wanted to do a bit more of. Drills and powertools feel a lot more manlier than mice and Wacom® tablets.

Sam Bair and Charlie Sato

Mark Phillips

Sam Bair takes 5 minutes and 20 fl. oz.

As for The Features, I haven't begun the animation process as of yet but I do have a bit of concept art that I'll be relying on for the final product... here's a sneak peak!


More updates to come soon!

xoxox

New Feature: Animators on Set

Yup. Awkward.

Photo by Joshua Winkler on the set of the music video "Lions" by The Features.

Brooklynati's Finest: Tanya Morgan

Last year I caught wind of the group Tanya Morgan while listening to 88-Keys' mixtape, Adam's Case Files. Since I had just moved to Brooklyn earlier in the year I wasn't familiar with their local popularity but I enjoyed their sound. Shortly after completing the music video for 88-Keys some months later, Von Pea (one of the three gents who make up the group... no, there is no woman named "Tanya Morgan") hit me up on Youtube to get things rolling on the possibility of collaborating on a music video of our own. Unfortunately due to scheduling I wasn't able to work with them but I hope that soon enough we can be more than just Myspace friends!
If you're looking for some solid new hip-hop music, their latest album Brooklynati dropped today on Amazon and iTunes.

Get it! Got it? Good.

Also check out an article about the guys on okayplayer and listen to their new album for FREE on Myspace.com

Watch Vintage Cartoons for FREE!

As much as the title to this blogpost may sound like spam for nerds, it is in fact very real and very accessible (granted you have iTunes on your computer). Click here for the link to the podcast.
It's a great asset for those out there like myself who appreciate the history of animation. Check out over eighty cartoons from the good ol' days and bask in all of the glorious racism and questionable depictions of sexuality! Oh Betty Boop, you sooo led those scoundrels on with your grapefruit-sized eyeballs and crotch-hugging aprons.

Thanks to Matt Andrews for giving me the heads up!

Google Chrome Spot

Sometimes at LFS you get to do some fun things that shouldn't even qualify as work.

This was one of those projects.

We had two weeks to complete it from start-to-finish, and I got to act for once! I hope you enjoy it. Also, who knew that a drawing I made while bored while working in the science department back in college would end up being in a Google commercial? See if you can spot it.

Scrabblemation

I saw this on Motionographer today... fantastic, fantastic work for Scrabble of all things. Like I didn't enjoy America's Favorite Word Game™ enough already (that reminds me... I left my board at someone's house awhile back so I need to go buy a new one, hopefully I don't have to trip balls in order to do so). Great work by Wizz.
In other news, I'm working hard on trying to get a couple of projects off the ground. I can't discuss things in too much detail since one is still in the stages of pre-pre-production, but the other is a new music video for everyone's favorite group... Locksley! Yup. The boys that gave me the opportunity and put me where I'm at today are bringin' me back for Music Video Part Two (Part DEUX). When I'm not cooking obscene amounts of food for Sam Bair, we're crackin' away at the egg that is creative output. Hopefully I'll have a few more things to post soon as things develop a bit more.

Until then!

M

Mike Judge's "Extract"

via videosift.com

Few people capture the mundane characteristics of every day life quite like Mike Judge. It took me a couple of years to learn to appreciate the man (I thought Beavis & Butthead was annoying when it first aired and it took me a few seasons to warm to King of the Hill) but I think the guy nails it in his live-action work. Office Space & Idiocracy were both instant classics for me and while they may have had their flaws, they really did influence my daily world view, as ridiculous as that might sound.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to his next feature. It looks fantastic.

Marked Animation 2009 Reel

88-Keys ft. Kanye West "Stay Up! (Viagra)"

My boy 88-Keys in his new video for his first single off of "The Death of Adam" with Kanye West. Highly enjoyable... 88's performance sells it for me.

"Please Say Something" by David OReilly

I have a lot to blog about lately, ranging from new website updates to my 2009 demo reel to new work & even to new work that I haven't even been able to work on yet. Unfortunately I've been so busy on a project at LFS that I've been unable to keep up with the blog, but I can assure you that next week I'll be back at it. Until then, check out this great animated short by David OReilly, it's a really great piece of work with a wonderful story and some really mind-bending transitions:


Please Say Something - Full Length from David OReilly on Vimeo.

Kid Cudi "Day 'N' Night" directed by So Me

These folks always do great work and Kid Cudi's new music video is certainly no exception. Also, if you haven't heard much of Kid Cudi yet DOWNLOAD HIS MIXTAPE HERE. It's great! That guy's gonna be big in a big way.

Lifelong Friendship Society 2.0

Lifelong Friendship Society's brand-new website went live today, with an all-new flash interface, work reel, and a slew of projects we had archived on the servers. Check it out here!

Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job!

Season 4 is currently airing every Sunday night (Monday morning I guess...?) at 12:30 AM EST

Watch it. Even if you hate it.

Illustration in 2009

When the new year came and went around a month-and-a-half ago, I decided to be more of realist when it came to making resolutions for 2009 and quickly shot down any personal goals of traveling more, wasting money on frivolous things and/or cutting back on my drinking. Instead I opted for two other ideas: learn the 3D program Maya and get back into illustrating on a more consistent basis. As my friend Mark Theriault has graciously reminded me, getting into Maya is a whole new beast in itself with a whole new world of technical issues & frustrating problems, so we'll see exactly where that taco will take me once I gather up the nerve to eat it.

Man with Finger Mustache ⓒ 2009 Mark Phillips

Illustration, on the other hand, is what got me into animation in the first place and was something that I did nearly every single day of my life until I was out of school. Drawing saved me from the hellish boredom of countless math classes & even earned me my first car. After perusing my website statistics on the fine internet service known as Google Analytics, I found that although it was the least updated of all of my pages, Marked Animation's illustration section actually received the most traffic out of any other page on my site. Thus, last week I began scribbling away again when I would get the chance and came up with some new material that will make its way onto the interwebz when I update everything soon.

Morning Breath featured in the March 2009 issue of Complex Magazine, which I receive in the mail for no reason since I never subscribed to it to begin with

Speaking of illustration, you should check out the work of the fine gentlemen at Morning Breath. They've done some amazing design work and chances are you've seen the various products of their labor floating around all over the place (one of the more recent pieces that comes to mind is the cover art for TV on the Radio's highly-acclaimed album, Dear Science). Earlier in 2008 LFS and MB were supposed to work together on a music video project for the group known as N.A.S.A. but the project unfortunately never materialized beyond pre-production. Regardless, I've kept in contact with them and hopefully a collaboration of sorts will come to fruition in the coming months!
... Plus I feel the need to prove myself to Doug (pictured on the right), who is one of the few people that I've met who can drink a beer faster than me in a casual setting. That, people, is called talent.

Chester French

The music video for their single "She Loves Everybody" premiered yesterday on MTV. It's a great song, take a listen if you haven't gotten the chance to yet.

New Reel & Site Updates coming soon!

If there's a better way to doom the progress of a website or blog than to create an entry about how you're planning to make changes and updates soon, I don't know what it is. I'm going to fight the cliché however and go into this with an optimistic face.

Stay tuned! New work will be posted in the following month if all goes well! In the meantime, check out my friend Joe Nelson's website Cujo-Dah. That guy does some amazing work and I hope that we can collaborate on a [non-sex] project in the near future.

Montana State University What UP.

The Catalyst from NINU EYE + CO. on Vimeo.

This was posted on Motionographer's student section earlier this month and I felt the need to repost on this blog. Being a native of Montana myself (and a one-eighth native of Montana Native-American) I can honestly say I haven't noticed a lot of notable design work coming out of that state. I'm NOT hating but the Big Sky country ain't exactly known for its animatery. I thought this piece was really nice though, even if I'm super biased on the matter.
The original post from Motionographer reads as follows:

"Okay, so this promotional video for the Montana State University School of Art doesn’t fit the normal schema of Students posts, but I think it belongs here anyway.

It was directed by Zachary McIntosh, who once studied graphic design at MSU but then left at the age of 21 to work full-time. Now, a few years later, he’s slowly earning his remaining credits to get his degree. It’s a cool story, the kind that I find inspiring."

BIG UPS MT!

Starbucks "Are You In?" Campaign

Since around the time of my last post back at the beginning of January, we've been working nearly non-stop up until a few days ago at Lifelong Friendship Society getting the latest spot for Starbucks out the door. I was lead animator and Travis Spangler was in charge of design and the overall look of it. We had a great team of animators (Alex, Tim, Ish, Lily & Rosie) and knocked it out despite the seething amounts of sexual tension in the room whilst we all worked (that 3AM unshowered musk really heats things up). I've never lost so much sleep on one project, and for me that's really saying something. I even gave up my 8-month boycott on coffee so I could make it through.

So far the response has been pretty positive, and we even got featured on Youtube's main page!


And now I present to you the full 2:40 version...

Metronomy "A Thing For Me"

88 turned me onto this video earlier today, it's SICK.


A Thing For Me from Metronomy on Vimeo.

(sick in the good way, not the AIDS-y way)