character designs 1

it was an interesting challenge for me, and for ghostbot, to design characters that were based on real people, but completely stylized and cartoony. there were four main characters that fell into this group, as well as dozens of other characters that weren’t based on real people, but had to fit the style of the video. we did a fair amount of back-and-forthing to get the characters to work. they had to feel connected to my drawing style, but also work for ghostbot.
my character, pete, took a bit of tweaking to get right. we wanted a strong graphic design to all the characters, and i liked the sort of squiggly flow of the arms and legs. so our first step was to get rid of any harsh angles: elbows, knees, etc. then we worked on getting a simple shape for the hair, rather than a bunch of scratchy, messy lines (which is what my hair really is). it’s always a delicate balance between reworking a drawing enough to get it tight and graphic, but also remembering to retain the charm and spontaneity of the original sketch. the cats at ghostbot have perfected that balance.
here’s the final pete design:


the co-star of the piece, and the second “character” to be fleshed out, was my car. the car was meant to be a makeshift version of KITT, from knight rider. the idea was that my character, who is obsessively trying to follow his hero’s footsteps, has transformed his beat-up gremlin into a crime-fighting super-car. he achieved this by taping some red flashlights to the hood. and probably adding a blinking red readout on the dashboard. oh, and he also installed the world’s longest sun visor.
in ghostbot’s version of the animatic, the car was dark green. but in the character design phase, they thought it would make more sense if the car wasn’t painted. but was instead a beige, primer color. ultimately, we went back to the green, feeling that it was closer to the black transam my character would be emulating.


-pete

next: background designs

LOST and found

woohoo! LOST was awesome sauce last night. i won’t spoil it for anyone that isn’t caught up yet, but i was so excited that i was right about ben’s inside man on the boat. i’m almost never right about LOST-related stuff. in fact i thought the polar bear was hurley in a bear suit. and i thought the smoke monster came from sawyer’s butt. i still think, at any minute, gilligan and skipper are going to appear. i haven’t given up hope.

so how are you guys? has anyone seen any good movies? these past few weeks have been horrible movie weeks. the top 5 box office leaders were all under 40% at rottentomatoes. yikes.

i just watched the trailer for the new edward norton hulk. i’m not sure what to think yet. i think it looks well written, well shot, and well acted. but the cg.. hmm. apparently hulk is played by eddie murphy in a muscley green fatsuit. at one point i heard hulk yell ’norbit!’

-pete

animatic!

an animatic is basically storyboard that has been timed out to play sequentially. it’s a great tool to test the pacing of a scene. some animatics can be as simple as a storyboard slideshow, while others can be quite complex, with camera moves and bits of action.

we did two major versions of the animatic. the first pass was one i had done when i thought the video was going to be live-action. so it’s a bit weird, compared to what we ended up with. but the big moments are there. then ghostbot remade the entire thing themselves, in flash. this way they could use that file to work from: updated assets, moments, backgrounds, etc.

i immediately loved the animatic that ghostbot sent me. they managed to make it charming and playful, while still being very loose and rough. it was wonderful, because it was very easy for me to get a sense of what the final piece would feel like.

animatics can be a tricky thing. just like demos for songs, you have to include just enough information to convey your intent, without including too much that people might get bogged down on (“can we make it less green”, “can the explosion look like a q-tip”). i think ghostbot hit that mark perfectly.

here’s a look at the progression of the action montage section of the video (the bridge of the song).

my storyboard version:


my animatic version:


ghostbot’s animatic:


thanks for reading/watching.

-pete

next: character designs

drums

we just got back from tracking drums in nashville. it was supercool! neil found an amazing drummer, jason tiemann, to lay down some serious funk grooves for two days. jason was an absolute machine! everyone involved in recording was excited about the process. jordan came up from florida to film. he had me on a separate wireless mic. i kept forgetting it was on. so while jordan was in the other room filming jason drumming, or neil playing the b3 organ, i was in the studio making obscene noises. of course. or singing really bad harmonies to the playback. hmm. jordan’s going to have a lot of fun capturing all that footage.
we finished early enough that neil had a full day to record piano and organ. it was so fun! he was coming up with all these amazing space dance parts. our engineer, craig alvin, is unbelievable. his super attuned ear, and obsessive attention to detail got incredible sound quality from the drums. he’s also fun because he has a great sense of experimentation and play. he tried all these fun echo effects for the organ parts.
oh, and i ate waaaay too many tootsie rolls. uncountable. my teeth just gave their two week notice.

[video clip?] [stills from video footage]

MLB 08 the show

woohooo! so neil just ran to the store and picked up the new MLB 08 game by sony, that 'sweep the leg' is featured in. it's the fourth song down on the list, too. which means you can see it right away when you go to jukebox mode. i'm so excited! our first song in a video game! now i'm still waiting to hear back about 'yars revenge'.
thanks so much to eddy and the guys at sony for including us in such an awesome game.
-pete

michael video mentioned at cartoonbrew and coldhardflash

hey everyone, just a quick post to say that we were featured at cartoonbrew (a fantastic website devoted to great animation). the post is about halfway down the main page. or direct link here: direct link

thanks so much amid!

-pete

edit: i just found out, it's also featured on coldhardflash.com

storyboard

before ghostbot came onboard, adam, neil, jordan and i came up with dozens of fun ‘moments’ that we wanted to see in the video. we were pretending that this would be the opening credits of an awesome cheesey cop show that never aired. we knew we wanted someone sliding across the hood of a car. we knew we wanted a big explosion. we knew we wanted crazy car jumps.

before we got together, i had the idea of making the video about me trying to be a good-samaritan vigilante-type hero. saving the world one cat-in-a-tree at a time. but i knew it had to be silly. big efforts for small outcomes. if a cat was stuck in a tree, i had to jump a car off a ramp to save it. if a lady needed help crossing the street, i would dive-roll somersault across traffic to get to her. i wanted my character to be so single-focussed on his task, that he often caused peripheral damage.


so when we all started talking, all these ideas started meshing together. a structure started to emerge. the early storyline had the explosion happening early on, with the jump off the parking garage as the final stunt. it lead into the ending of landing into the pool. so structurally, the storyline was very similar to what we ended up with. but once ghostbot came onboard, they helped to sculpt the story into something more cohesive. more connected.

some storyboard pages





-pete

next: the animatic - moving storyboad

don’t forget to check out ghosbot’s blog: http://ghostbot.blogspot.com/

more demos

we’ve got four demos done now:
dance alone
leroy and me
paper airplane
something to hide

we’re going to track drums in just over a week, so we gotta get a move-on to finish up the other demos in time. there’s four more that we’ve got in the pipe, but we’ll need to write probably another three or four after that. as of now, the other four we need to track are:
mayor of the moon
cellphone
floyd’s bluff
no disassemble

jump in, let's save the world

hello everybody. a few months ago, me, neil robins (my writing partner/ producer), adam degraide (ceo of astonish), and jordan chesney (videographer), all got together in a little room in rhode island to discuss the ‘michael’ video. we knew it had to be as fun as the ’sweep the leg’ video was, but we didn’t want to cannibalize ourselves. once our ideas got rolling, it became clear that we wanted to do something in the vein of the spike jonze video for the beastie boys’ ’sabotage’. something retro, something silly. we wanted to reference old buddy-cop shows (essentially ‘michael’ is a buddy-cop song, only one of the ‘cops’ is a talking car).
but during the course of the discussions, our ideas had started to exceed our resources. we had cars crashing into storefronts, gas stations exploding, cars flying off the roofs of parking garages. great, fun stuff, but difficult to achieve. then we started thinking about the idea of doing an animated video, and it all started to come together.

a while ago, i was researching animation houses with the intent of doing a short, simple animated video for ‘mr b’. i found a small studio in san fransisco called ‘ghostbot’. they launched the esurance spy-action series of ads starring erin. their work is stylish and simple and super-cool. i contacted them about ‘mr b’ and they seemed excited to work on it. and of course, i was excited to work with them! soon, things started to shift, and we realized that it was too soon to make a video for a song that we weren’t planning on releasing to radio. it made much more sense to make a video for the next single. sooo i sadly told ghostbot that we would have to wait to work together.

once adam made the decision to do ‘michael’ as an animated video, i leapt for the phone to see if ghostbot was interested/available. they were!

(at the ghostbot studio in san fransisco)




-pete

next: a storyboard emerges

don’t forget to check out ghosbot’s blog: http://ghostbot.blogspot.com/

working titles

right now i’ve got a couple of working titles. most of them are fleshed out lyrically. some i just have a general idea. i’ll have to match them with one of the instrumental pieces we have sitting around.

dance alone
leroy and me
paper airplane
the lonely futurist
cellphone