Sketch of My Pep-Pep

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I drew this last night while watching crappy TV, just as my father would've wanted.  Miss ya Pops!

Happy Birthday Rob Cohen!

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I drew this up in Illustrator today for my friend & colleague Rob Cohen who turned 30 today.  I didn't know him during his teen years but I needed to give that hairstyle the homage it deserved.  Happy Birthday Rob!

NOW & THEN  (...sorry Rob)

Remembering I Can Draw Things...

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Thanks for the ride back to NYC, Locksley!  Time to get back down to business...

BONUS: I drew this on some brown paper during a production meeting today & bumped it up with a few highlights in Photoshap: 

"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:

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

BBQ Flyer Design

I used to do crappy poster designs all the time back when I worked at Columbia College Chicago in the Science Institute.  I'd entertain myself by fitting the most disgusting and deplorable imagery I could find into something like an announcement for a weekend teacher workshop.  If you don't believe me, find a good picture of back herpes, bump up the contrast & invert the colors and you have yourself a beautiful starry background for your next poster.
Obviously, I've matured tons since then because I left out any such nonsense in this design I did for a BBQ recently:

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.

Random Sketches

Hey everyone -- my apologies for not getting to post more lately, things are busy as per usual.  Yesterday I had the pleasure of shooting a stop motion project with a bunch of guys I'd never worked with before in a studio with no AC for 10 hours and it was a blast!  Once the post & audio are finalized I'll have something to show.  I have a lot of work coming up this week with the Brooklyn Film Festival and the CunninLynguists video, so there will be good things coming up.   Until then, enjoy some random drawings I did last week.

Practice Posin'

Pensive Superhero Type

Sometimes you get bored halfway through a drawing and need to mix it up.