A few years back we developed and produced a pilot for Cartoon Network.
The production was fairly compressed (after a long time waiting for lawyers). In some ways we made the mistake of not "pushing back" and insisting on a proper schedule and development period. It's always a difficult balance.
We re-cut the pilot -which was just supposed to be "animatic" into more of a trailer.
Turns out we're already a client (they purchased Register.com a little while back and they're our web registry).
Fly Communications was the agency. They were great to work with. Very open to our ideas and responsive with their own. Terrific agency.
At Asterisk, Doug Compton was the animator with additional animation and assistant work by Christina Capozzi Riley and some additional inbetweening by Liesje Kraai.
NOVA was always a favorite show of mine as a kid. There was something powerful in its presentation of knowledge -like "National Geographic", as well. The universe contains these amazing things, and here they are, on display for you to try to understand.
We have some animation in a segment of NOVA: scienceNOW which airs tonight.
The segment was directed by Pamela Mason Wagner.
Christina Riley did all the animation and motion graphics. There are six little clips within the piece.
The story concerns the development of suits suitable for long distance space travel -like a Mars mission. The featured design uses tension within the fabric of the suit to apply pressure to the body along the specific points. We had to illustrate this idea, amongst others.
NOVA: ScienceNOW airs at 8 PM on most PBS stations (check local listings).
First, a reminder that "Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides" will broadcast on American Masters on most PBS stations tonight at 8:00.
We did over 30 sequences, most simple photo montages, but some more fine tune work as well -including a showcase of Bridges' extraordinary behind-the-scenes Widelux photo books which he makes for all of his films that we did in a funky under camera stop motion, the title sequence, and other bits of design here and there.
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Another documentary project we worked on, VEGUCATED, has just completed it's trailer.
Working with Gail Levin is always a blast, and being associated with "American Masters" is a terrific honor -it's unquestionably the premiere venue for biographical documentary.
For the past few months we've been working with Gail on "Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides". This will premiere in just a few days -Wednesday, January 12 at 8:00 PM on PBS (check local listings).
At 90 minutes it's longer than my attention span usually allows, but the scope of Bridges' film catalog can carry that duration impressively. Add his photography, painting and music into it and a complex portrait begins to emerge.
We did opening titles, graphics packaging (lower thirds, etc), a few photo montages, some pseudo paint on glass animation, and some under camera stop motion animation of books.
So this is the last of the Christmas related posts.
I'm not really into Christmas, honestly. So it was a great pleasure to get the call from Morgan Spurlock's production company a few years back to create some graphics for Rob VanAlkemede's "What Would Jesus Buy?"
The structure of the film changed towards the end of production and our sequences were cut, but it was still a great experience.
We don't do too much in the way of 3D graphics -maybe one or two projects a year. This was animated by Phil McNagny.
This is a little film we did at The Ink Tank for Children's Book of the Month Club based on the very great Sandra Boynton's song and story.
It was one of the last pieces shot on film. The bulk of the animation was done by Kris van Alphen, who was recommended to R. O. Blechman by Paul Driessen. Kris did all the animation on the first season of "Caroline in the City" -the studio produced a new opening every week for 26 episodes.
Krystoff Giersz did the revision work. Kris van Alphen was living in Belgium so it was easier to have someone local take care of the changes. I only remember two. One was to make the musical notes bigger when they flew out of the book. The other was to make the bird at the end turn around to look at other ones.
Here's the final animation of the TeleTV board we posted yesterday.
I can't recall all the production credits.
I know Krystoff Giersz was responsible for the character animation. Helena Uszac did the assistant work. Thessia Machado did most of the compositing and effects.
Miki Navazio did the music, which I think is great. After this project he went to law school -that's where the money is.
Not only did we create the titles and an animated sequence for Gail Levin's documentary on Cab Calloway the film was edited by Pascal Akkesson at our studio.
This proximity not only allows for close collaboration, it gives the possibility for quick fixes.
The European broadcasters needed a visual bridge to insert some narration. We were given a couple pieces of art and asked to make something work.
It's by no means brilliant, but a simple sequence which filled a gap in the film.
Coming soon (probably tomorrow), a little write up on the extensive Charles Burchfield show at The Whitney.
In the meantime, one of favorite regularly recurring features: Our Work in the Real World.
Not only did we do a bunch of graphics for Christopher Noey's documentary "All About Prints", we designed the packaging.
I didn't even "face" the DVDs. They were already like this.
Note: Our friend Martha Colburn did a blast of animation for the neighboring "The Devil and Daniel Johnston". If I'm not mistaken Greg Ford produced some animation too which is only available on the DVD.
Shot on Saturday for a "sketch" we're contracted to produce.
Above: me looking pudgy like Michael Moore.
Above: That's a racing trophy which Brian's father won standing in as The World Cup. Irene Sherman lent us her children, Zack and Maya, for the morning. They were great.
Zack's friend Jeremy helped out too. He and his dad were a lot of fun to watch just throwing the ball around.
About 10 years ago Brian and I worked on a commercial for Purina ONE dog food.
The spot (which ran for a long time) featured a newspaper cartoonist (actor) who did a daily strip inspired by his dog (dog). It was mostly a shot of him talking in his studio and cut aways to the dog doing cute things. Overall it was a very well produced ad.
We did a few little bits of animation for it. One shot had a close up of a newspaper "come to life". The final shot had the animated dog run in to cue the logo.
What we had the most fun doing was making some of the dressing for the set. These included a series of dummy comic strips and a comics page to put the animation into.
Of course, these strips aren't visible but the model drawings we created are.
This was all done by the great Ron Barrett. Readers may be familiar with him as the artist behind the book "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs". Older folks might recall his "Politenessman" strip for the National Lampoon.
Regrettably, I can't find the comics page he made. It contained maybe 20 or so original comics, some his own take on classics like "Beetle Bailey" or "Blondie".
You can catch a brief of the top of "Nothing But Action" as the camera lands on the strip.
Ed Smith, one of the great dog animators of the past hundred years, did the animation.
The live action was shot on film and the agency had concern about matching film stock (that's what they get paid to bring up). We also shot on film using their same film stock. The dog at the end was shot in three passes: a matte pass (black on white), a fill pass (black line on white dog) and a texture pass (the paper texture). This was all composited in a very expensive edit room.
