Stoopid Monkey's youtube channel

Last week saw the announcement and commencement of a new youtube channel created by Seth Green and Matt Senreich; Stoopid Monkey.

I was lucky enough to get a chance to animate a little on Stoopid Monkey over at Buddy System Studios. The Buddies have been exploring and perfecting a unique style of animation using paper-doll-like puppets shot on a downshooter green screen and composited with live action - see their Soulja Boy animation.

Click here to see the Buddies' blogging about Stoopid.


(Cameron Baity did the character animation here, but I animated Stoopid's tail on a second pass.)

Here's a little behind the scenes, including my brief waving scene which is eerily reminiscent to the Hoppus video in the Foo Fighters post:


New videos every Friday for the next ten weeks! Subscribe to the youtube channel and check 'em out!

Foo Fighters: Miss The Misery

Summer of 1995 in Baltimore, Maryland. This was the poster that I hung on my bedroom wall:

(It's still hanging there, amidst Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Stone Temple Pilots posters; like a time capsule of high school in the 1990's.)

Winter of 2011 in Los Angeles, California. I'm told I get to direct the official music video for the Foo Fighters' song "Miss the Misery" off of their newest album, Wasting Light.

After a ton of hard work (with less than three weeks between hearing the song for the first time and delivering the final video), the video is premiering today on Fuse TV at 2pm, 9pm, and randomly throughout the day and will later be posted through Fuse the Foo Fighters' official websites.

EDIT: Here it is, the completed video for Miss the Misery:
The concept for the female character in the video came after I saw a website linked to by a friend on Facebook, showing Chinese artist Liu Bolin's urban camouflage body paint. Other inspirations included the work of Emma Hack, Joanne Gair's Disappearing Model, and a Canadian Salvation Army commercial.

At one point in the making of the video, Aiden, the actor, had 83 layers of paint on his face. Linn, the actress, had all of the blood rush to her feet and nearly fainted after holding her position for so long while being painted. (There's still a lot of pioneering to be done with pixilation, so we often had to discover what was and wasn't possible along the way.) Still, even with these hardships, there was never a complaint out of either of these dedicated, talented actors. (Not to mention the ceaselessly committed and inspired crew I was lucky enough to work with on this!)

Keep your eyes peeled for my brief appearance on Hoppus on Music tonight at 11pm. (All times eastern.)

EDIT: Here is my awkward appearance on Hoppus. Don't Blink!


Click on the pictures to embiggen them.
Here are the credits for all of the amazing people who helped on this!

CREDITS
Actor: Aiden Ivy
Actress: Linn Bjornland

Director: Pete Levin
Producer: Andrew Ahn
Producer: Daniel Kang
Associate Producer/1st AD: Eisen “Ace” Yoon

Director of Photography: Josh Silfen
Animation Director: Musa Brooker
Editor: Ishai Setton

Key Body Painter: Justine Serebrin
Key Body Painter: Samitra Borhanpour
Animator: Chris Calvi
Animator: Dan Driscoll
Animation Assistant: Eri Hawkins
Animation Assistant: Ashley Arechiga
Animation Assistant: Nicole Emmons
Art Department Assistant: Jennie Cotterill

Gaffer/AC: Armin Balg
Gaffer: Nathanial Fu
Gaffer: Kyle Murphey

Original Prints: Nigel Sanders
Make-Up Artist: Fanny Herrera
Make-Up Artist: Amanda King

Storyboard Artist: Sam Hale
Post Production Effects: Takashi Takeoka
Post Production Effects: Sol Friedman

Behind the Scenes Videographer: Audrey Stanzler
Animation Production Assistant: Sam Amin
Animation Production Assistant: Danielle Bonadona
Animation Production Assistant: David Braun
Animation Production Assistant: Lauren Brown
Animation Production Assistant: Laura Cechanowicz
Animation Production Assistant: Lisa Chung
Animation Production Assistant: Christy Heyob
Animation Production Assistant: Jay Kim
Animation Production Assistant: Lizzy Klein
Animation Production Assistant: Nalena Kumar
Animation Production Assistant: Burak Kurt
Animation Production Assistant: Brandon Lake
Animation Production Assistant: Amy Lee Ketchum
Animation Production Assistant: Louis Morton
Animation Production Assistant: Spencer Ockwell
Animation Production Assistant: Kelsey Stillmaker
Animation Production Assistant: Vincent Tang
Animation Production Assistant: Michele Yang

Location: Monk Space
Tape Transfer: Point 360
Catering: Fiesta Mediterranean Catering
3D Set Photography: Jon Schnitzer

Special Thanks: Deux Jeans, Max Winston, Screen Novelties, Jen Hoche

The Nature Conservancy: Rivers Are Life

Check out this new animation and set-building I did for The Nature Conservancy. Hooray for good karma animation! And I got to revisit those junior high school lessons on ecology that had faded into the recesses of my memory.





Special thanks to Liz Pringle for construction assistance! Behind the scenes photos by Jennifer Hoche.

XBox Kinect: Joy Ride

Three days to do almost about a minute of pixillated animation in a ton of different locations with a crew who was used to live action and winter light fading quickly? We did it! The crew, including director Scott Culver and DP Dallas Sterling, were incredibly talented and a lot of fun to work with. Although I think we all could have done without the vicious windburn in the middle of the desert. I served as animation supervisor.

Check out the spot, produced by g-Net Media for a new game on the XBox Kinect system:



Photo by Scott Culver

Photo by Dallas Sterling

Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas: Full Episode

Also: it seems Lost creator Damon Lindelof has been Tweeting about a sequence I animated! Neat!

12/24/10 Update:
The show, as of last week, was the 18th top downloaded TV episode in the entire history of iTunes! NBC liked it enough that they're re-airing it at 8pm, Christmas night.

Community: Abed's Uncontollable Christmas

Tune in tomorrow night (Thursday, December 9th, 2010) to see NBC's Community as a stop motion world of holiday wonder! (a.k.a. the mental delusions of one of the characters.)

Here's a sample of what you're in for (this shot animated by my friend Eileen Kohlhepp):


And a look behind the scenes:


I did a bunch of the animation in the library and in Santa's workshop for those of you watching at home. Community's got some of the best writing on TV and I'm happy to have had a chance to work on this.

The animation credits aren't included on the episode, so Dino posted this:

And the credits can be scrolling by all pretty-like here at 23D Films.

Yamasong Teaser

The teaser for Yamasong, previously mentioned here.

9/7/10 UPDATE:
Yamasong won Best Animated Film and Best Animated Fantasy at Dragon*Con 2010.