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.

"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!

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!

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!

Eyedrops Spec Spot "TGIF"

Here's my latest stop-motion project getting some love this week, I'm fairly swamped with work at the moment so I'll take time to deconstruct it in future blog posts.  For now, enjoy!  I worked hard on it dammit.

CREDITS: Directed by Mark Phillips
Written by Mark Phillips & Luke Rotzler
Additional Animation by Luke Rotzler
Sound Mix by Dave Wolfe
Voices by Luke Rotzler, Mark Phillips & Marybess Pritchett
Additional Sound by David Pietricola
Produced by Lifelong Friendship Society
Original Concept by JWT 

Leo Burnett "Language of the 21st Century" Intro

Shot on a Canon 7D w/ Dragon Stopmotion, composited in After Effects.

I worked on this project via The Lifelong Friendship Society in collaboration with agency Leo Burnett & artist Kieran Antill for the agency's 2011 Cannes Presentation.  The blocks themselves were actually quite large, over a foot-&-a-half across and hand-constructed by the good people of twoseven with wood.  It may not look like much but it was definitely one of the more physically challenging shoots I've been on lately, if only due to the weight of the cubes & the heat that day.  Riding $10K of camera equipment on a bike across Williamsburg to try to make call time probably didn't help much either...

BONUS: The official website up now: www.AlphabetOfToday.com

Coming Soon: New Stop Motion!

I'm currently wrapping up a couple of stop motion projects that I shot earlier this year, they should be up within the week!  In related news, I think I've done enough stop motion compositing for the summer.  

Visine "TGIF" Director's Cut

Leo Burnett & Kieran Antill "The Language of the 21st Century" 

I'd also like to thank everyone who came out to support at the Brooklyn Film Festival!  It was a great year & I'd like to congratulate all of my fellow filmmakers who put the 'tainment' back in 'edutainment'.

I didn't have time to photoshop more people into the audience.

... almost done!

Here's a screen from a stop-motion spec piece I'm doing for Lifelong Friendship Society.  If all goes as planned it should be done within a week!

Bounty: The Raw Footage Part 2

Here are more animation clips from the Bounty project.



Fun with magic paper towels.



This was actually my favorite shot from the whole project.  Our assignment for this animation was to have them flying through the air rockin' out and then end with a wave at the camera.  Luke animated the bald dude and I had a little too much fun animating the other scientist doing the robot.  We were a bit ahead of schedule at this point so we had fun the frame with random things that would eventually be cut out.  There was no sound to work off of for this one so you'll have to use your imagination.



I had a lot of fun with this shot as well.  This is basically what happens when you feed an animator enough beer to convince himself that it'd be a good idea to make one of the characters get tired of holding his arm up while freeze-framed.  Needless to say, it was cut from the final project.

Bounty: The Raw Footage Part I

Here is what the animation looked like for the Bounty project before any visual effects were applied to the footage.  Today I'm posting mostly shots involving the scientists driving in their car.  To give you some idea of the rig we built quick for it, here are some pictures:

... and now onto the videos:





This was the first stuff we shot of the scientists in the car.  The funny thing is we both wore white that day and it wasn't until a few seconds into the animation that we realized it was affecting the lighting.

Lesson Learned: Your personal wardrobe can affect post-production in stop motion.




This shot was pretty basic.  Just some singin' and PT pullin'.

This was a fun shot because we got to finally try out the rig we built for the car.  The script called for the car flying through the air & the storyboards I had drawn up called for spinning cameras and such, so we needed something that would be flexible but would also offer precision.  Also, fist bumps.

This shot was fun because not only did we have to animate the characters, we had to have the car tilting lengthwise as well as do a 180-degree spin mid-shot.

I had a lot of fun with this shot. The tiger rig wasn't super flexible to work with but I think I got some good action out of it.

... and if you're wondering, that's an MMA fighter coming out of his mouth.

Marked Animation 2011 Reel: UPDATE

Marked Animation 2011 Reel from Mark Phillips on Vimeo.

Check that out!  I have a Vimeo account now.  That's what they refer to as the moxie.  Also -- if you happen to be interested and wish to contact me in regards to a shot breakdown please do not hesitate to do so.


UPDATE:  Shot breakdown is now available in PDF form here (file is approx. 2MB).

Yesterday I Fulfilled My Dream of Animating Meat

I'll upload the video once it's all done.

Work's been picking up again lately but I'll do my best to keep everything around these parts reasonably updated 'til things slow down again.

Also, I've started seeing this poster pop up around subways and bus stops around the city lately, and they wonder why it's hard to get people to respect animation as an art form...

"Toemeo... Blowmeo... Glowmeo... Growmeo... Gnomeo?  EUREKA!"

Okay, realistically is there any other way to come up with the idea for that movie other than mispronouncing the word "Romeo?"  Do we really need to word puns on one movie poster?  What does "a lawn way" even mean?  Is that how some people raise their pets?  Who was the clever little scamp who also figured out they could fit the shape of a gnome inside of that title's logo?  Their mother raised them well.  You can tell they paid more attention to the texture on the gnome's feet than they did on the whole concept of this movie.  

At least it will follow proudly in the footsteps of other such CGI fare.

Coming Soon...

I have some high hopes for this one, folks...  (click to enlarge)

Jan Svankmajer "Meat Love"

... an old favorite from an old favorite.

Behind the Scenes: Bounty

More photos from the Bounty project.

We took a lot of test photos to test the perspective of the lenses.  The cardboard in my hand is a car placeholder.

We had to make a couple of trips to the fashion district for fabric.  Fish out of water.

Man and Mannequin.

Originally we were making the set green until we found out they wanted it to be white.

Working with canned snow is frustrating.  There's no better way to put it without using the [other] f-word.

"Aerial" view of the set.

The snow tiger's mouth.

Luke Rotzler doing some animation tests.

We built our own camera rig for shots that required panning.

Different tree variations

Time for some 'LAPSE.

Here's a time-lapse video of us working in the LFS Studio from around mid-November to mid-December.  There are a few days missing here and there because we were a little too busy at times to check and see if the camera was working, but I think you get the gist of what went down.  Weekends are for the weak after all!

... oh and the Kevin Rudolph video made it into the latest edition of STASH!  Hell yes.

Armature & Prop Designs for Bounty

These are the original designs I did for the Bounty spot I posted a few weeks back.  Designing the characters wasn't anything new since I've had to make character sheets for animation in years past, but the car was definitely a little trickier since I'm not much of a 'technical' guy.  Maybe I shouldn't say trickier, but technical drawings to me are boring to work on.  There.  I said it.  Wait no... maybe I shouldn't say boring. How about, "not as fun"?

... sadly the Chilean Miner never made it into the final piece.

Props to Erika Bettencourt who did a fantastic job of making all of the armatures and being the personification of glue that held the project together.

You may have noticed that the chinchilla was Shake Weight®-less in the final version.

Props to Craig Grigg who blew our minds with making the car look better than I modeled it.  The man is a living legend when it comes to props, folks.

More behind-the-scenes to come!

... oh hey it's that thing I've been working on!

This is Part 1 of why I've been neglecting my friends and cat since October.



I designed the stop-motion characters, designed the car models, was director of animation and, most importantly, played the gorilla working out in the gym.

I have lots of pre-production and lots of animation that didn't make the cut that I'll be posting in the near future.

Part 2 of why I've been neglecting my friends and cat since October coming soon.*

* ... as soon as it's done.

Chinchilla, Meet Shake Weight®

I haven't done a lot of stopmotion since college but the year 2010 has proven to be a return to form for me in that regard.  From storyboarding to designing characters, props and sets to animating it all once it's ready they've been keeping me very very busy at work.  I won't say too much about what it all entails until I have a finished product to show but until then I'll post what I can when I have time.

To get things started, here's a chinchilla exercising with a shake weight. 

More to come!