... and now it's time for some random animation.

Because I missed you!

NEW MUSIC VIDEO "LET IT RIDE" by Locksley

After a long wait it's officially online!  Check out the stopmotion music video I directed for Locksley for their new single "Let It Ride."  Behind the scenes coming soon!



full credits here.

"Last Days of Coney Island" Behind the Scenes

Earlier this year I had the crazy opportunity to work with animation legend Ralph Bakshi on his new film, "Last Days of Coney Island."  Here's some of my behind-the-scenes work on some FREAKS.

... for more behind the scenes, check out the Last Days of Coney Island Vimeo Page.

Animating the Art of Dance

... in all of its gracefulness.

"LET IT RIDE" Shot Breakdown

Here's how I put together a shot from my upcoming stopmotion music video for Locksley.  If you wanna check it out on the big screen your next chance is at the LES Film Festival Monday, June 16th at 7PM & 9PM (for more information click HERE).  Until then enjoy these video guts!

"LET IT RIDE" Premiering @ Brooklyn Film Festival

Showtimes are at 6PM Tuesday June 3rd & 2PM Sunday June 8th.

For tickets & more information visit the film's BFF webpage.

The Brooklyn Film Festival runs from May 30 to June 8th, 2014.

TED-Ed: "Historical Role Models"

Here's the fourth & latest animation I've directed for TED-Ed (voted one of Time Magazine's Top 50 Websites of 2013 & winner of three Webby Awards!).  It's all about the virtues of American historical figures.  Check it!  I'll be posting some behind-the-scenes work for it in the coming days.
I'm taking some time off from TED for the next few months to catch up on other work, but I hope to come back to TED later in the year with some fresh eyes.  They're some of the best and easiest people to work with, so hopefully it won't be too hard to stay away for so long.

I've also been working on another animated short that's gonna be big!  With explosions!  Kids like those right?  More soon...

From the Archives: Levi's® Purple

This past January marked the fifth anniversary of my move from Chicago to Brooklyn.  During those first few months in NY I spent a lot of time working on a weird variety of jobs for LFS, one of them being Levi's®.  Many a nights' sleep was lost to adding dots to capes and feathers to helmets, but in the end the client wanted something that was so oddly color-corrected that you couldn't make out much detail, let alone what's going on if heaven-forbid they cross in front of a dark background.  Ah well!  It was a fun project regardless and as I mentioned in my original post, a good way to justify some of college.

What Was I Animating 10 Years Ago?

Everybody starts somewhere.

A couple months back I was cleaning house and going thru some old stacks of CD-R's... or as our kids will call them, "SPINDLES OF WORTHLESS DISCS"... and came across an old archive of some college projects.  Exactly how far have we come in ten years?  I was still laying this sh*t off to VHS!  Look at those tracking problems!  Do most people even remember tracking?
... but I digress, please enjoy these four animation exercises from back when multi-plane animation wasn't just adding another layer in After Effects.  I did these for Lisa Barcy's Stop Motion 1 class at Columbia College Chicago -- the first project featured on the video was the first proper stop-motion I ever shot!  Yikes.





Have a great weekend everybody!

TED-Ed: PEMDAS

I'll be posting more behind-the-scenes whatnots for this and other TED-Ed work shortly, and probably some sorta nipples for good measure.

VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists!

... mmm-MMMM!  Just in time for Thanksgiving we as a people can finally come together to celebrate not just the gifted or "talented" artists, but the 100 SEXIEST ARTISTS.  Check out the short animation above (credits) that I worked on & for more of Malika Favre's excellent work go here!  I haven't seen the show on TV but I can make a few guesses as to who they may have picked for their top 100:

1.  Shirtless Picasso ... obviously.

2.  Ann Romney

3.  Billy Zane as The Phantom

4.  James Quall 

5.  Courtney Stodden

6.  Mama Berenstain Bear

7.  Young Tim Meadows

8.  Robocop Action Figure w/ Battle Damage

9 - 100.  Grace Kelly, because my goodness!

NEW TED-Ed Animation - Electoral College

I just finished up my latest project with TED-Ed about everyone's favorite least-controversial subject of The Electoral College.  It's free, buddy!

Special thanks to my lovely producer Bridgette Spalding and the handsome sound designer Eric Hoffman.

TED-Ed: The Powers of Ten

I'm a bit busy at the moment to write too much more about it at this time, but check out TED-Ed and my website for more information!  Unfortunately at the moment the great sound people over at Henry Boy went uncredited, but that should be amended shortly.

Stay tuned for more!

Coming Soon: TED-Ed

I've been busy with more fun freelance projects lately, the most recent to have wrapped is a short I directed, designed & animated for TED Talks' sister site, TED Ed.  A few months ago my friend Jeremy pointed me to this page on their site saying that I should put my name in the hat for animator nominations.  A few weeks later I was contacted about doing some work and was assigned a four minute lesson.  I was granted a lot of creative control and it was such a pleasure to have the opportunity to work on a project for TED.  Before it's official release, I'll be posting a few bits from the production like storyboards, sound work, design ideas, and other random info.  

In the meantime, here are a few screenshots of what to expect: 

Awww yeah there will be pianos!

... this is where creative control is fun to exercise.

There will also be pianos in pants.

Everyone's fourth-favorite 20th Century physicist!

Marked Animation 2012 Reel™

Happy Monday!

Rotoscoping a Bodega Apple

A few weeks ago I needed to concept out some rotoscoping using Photoshop.  I used an apple I bought across the street and using a makeshift lazy susan I shot it on my kitchen countertop.  

Almost 30 and this is what I do with my life.

I brought those images into Photoshop and using a palette of about four colors I painted each frame independently and produced this simple but stylish rotoscope sequence.  More to come! 

... something to try with the kids!

Wild Wild West Intro

Animation on American television was going thru some awkward times in the 1960's.  Gone was the heyday of earlier decades; the artform had become cheaper and rigid looking (see: Bugs Bunny & Kool-Aid), but I was impressed when I came across this show opener for the old CBS show Wild Wild West earlier this week.  The animation is better in places than others, but I really enjoy how the characters and posing is rendered, almost like they were drawn for figure drawing or fashion.  The animator behind this sequence is Ken Mundie, a former apprentice at Disney studios before he went into commercial work and.... Life with Louie?  Small world!

Bahck to Blahging

Here we are, almost five months after my last post and what do I have to show for it?  Welcome back to the Marked Animation blog, where I'll return to form posting updates and all that related internet whatnot.  I've also neglected my Twitter recently, something I'm still not sure if I'll get back to doing any time soon.  While I do appreciate it for its networking capabilities and ease of communication, honestly I feel it's just one more thing to worry about in life that's already full of things to worry about.

What I have been up to lately is heading up a few freelance projects which I'll be addressing more in upcoming posts.  

I've been working with a good variety of Wacom products recently, like the still-kinda-brand-new Inkling and the Cintiq.  

If you're looking for something that will revolutionize your sketchbook, don't buy the Inkling -- at least not yet.

There are plenty of things I like about the Inkling, but none of them make me want to use it on a daily basis.  The overall layout of the packaging is great, everything you need is stored in a flip-open carrier that can fit easily into a pencil case.  The easy import of drawings into Photoshop or Illustrator is also a great plus, especially if you're not generally happy with the vector-tracing features in Illustrator.  Lines come in with nice weight variation and ready to edit, bezier-style.  You can also separate your sketches into layers and make adjustments accordingly, a great feature that gives you a lot more flexibility.  

However, there are some issues that Wacom needs to address in the Inkling's design and technology to make it must-have hardware for everyday artisting.  After a couple of weeks of regular wear-and-tear from living inside of a backpack pocket, my Inkling pen no longer wanted to stay inside of its slot.  It hangs loosely inside but no longer "clicks" into place on the spring, meaning that it won't properly charge while plugged in.  To relieve this, I put some electrical tape and a penny over the slot to keep the pen in place.  

Inkling closed.

Inkling open!

I think the technology behind the Inkling is a cool idea that's not quite where it needs to be yet.  While it works great for rough sketches and concepting, the line registration is generally not as accurate as I'd like even when working in ideal conditions.  Drawings can become muddled over minute variables like whether or not you're drawing on your lap or a table and wrinkles that come with physically drawing on paper which seem to interfere with the device's precision.  If you avoid adding too much detail to the image these issues aren't as noticeable, but for someone like me who likes to pile on the crosshatching and body hair, having to adjust or add in those elements separately seems like an unnecessary extra step.   The Inkling works great as a first step to design; a fast way to put your ideas to paper digitally... but ultimately I don't think it's worth the price or time yet.  Here are some side-by-side comparisons of actual drawings (left) vs. Inkling's import (right):

This is probably the best of the bunch, and the loose sketching lends itself well to the Inkling's strengths.

Detailed drawings don't hold up very well.  It's like someone tried to trace your sketch in a moving car.

Again, the overall idea of the image is there, but when you look at details like the collar and face there are discrepancies. 

As sloppy as this sketch is, this import disappointed me.  Even with the loose style you lose what held the original image together.

   

As for the Cintiq, it's the smallest version that Wacom makes and probably not their best but I love it.  There's nothing quite like feeling like you live in the future when you're sitting on the couch next to your girlfriend doing full-color animation on your lap.  Admittedly, the iPad isn't far behind with their upcoming pressure-sensitive stylus coming out in a matter of months and that screen and setup is much better, but for now I'll be more than happy to add my Cintiq to my mobile work station, something I can take with me and animate run cycles like this:

without arms, men are basically scrotums with legs.

"Second Hand" by Isaac King

I'm on another busy hiatus but hopefully things will be cooling down soon.  Thanks to the power of technology I can blog from the comfort of my own laptop inside of a van crossing Indiana (thanks for the ride, Locksley!) and finally get some time to catch up.
I love the art direction of the video above, it's such a great combination of mixing digital mediums that you don't see enough of really.  I love the way he handled the translation of the character designs into the quasi-3D environment; very well done!
Until I get back to NYC, I thought I'd post a few links to a few [more] things I've enjoyed via the internet lately:

MUSIC:
Kanye West & Jay-Z "Otis" (WatchTheThrone.com) http://watchthethrone.com/otis/
DoomStarks "Victory Laps" (2dopeboyz) http://www.2dopeboyz.com/2011/07/11/doomstarks-mf-doom-x-ghostface-killah-victory-laps-madvillainz-rmx/
Nikki Jean "La Di Da Di Da" (iTunes)
Rock Creek Park EP oddisee (iTunes)
Ghostfunk EP Max Tannone x Ghostface Killah (okayplayer) http://www.okayplayer.com/news/okayafrica-audio-ghostface-x-afrofunk-mixtape.html

VISUAL:
John K's Evolution of Macaroni (John K Stuff): http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2011/07/evolution-of-macaroni.html
Beavis & Butthead Return (MTV): http://t.co/LnSNvlx
Boob Physics (Babe Lab NSFW): http://babelab.blogspot.com/2010/08/boob-physics-101.html

Locksley Taxicab Promo

For their upcoming release, my favorite friendband™ Locksley commissioned me to design a 15-second promo to be played on the displays in the back of cabs in NYC, Chicago & Boston.  It was a just under a two-day turnaround so I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, but I'm sure most people will be drunk when they see it anyhow.

UPDATE:  Here it is as seen in the wild: