Strange Beast animators Anna Ginsburg and Parallel Teeth (the moniker of WNW Member Robert Wallace) have combined their peerless styles to create a music video for Mr Jukes's "Grant Green," featuring none other than Charles Bradley. Mr Jukes is the solo project of Bombay Bicycle Club leader Jack Steadman. The video is funky, funny, and full of surreal excursions through a barbershop, the tube, and a lysergic party.
Illustration by Noelle Roth
MIKE O'DONNELL / EDITOR
Radiohead's masterful third album OK Computer is now pretty old, and so are you. But that's okay. Because Pitchfork has set out a fresh path down memory lane, guaranteed to make you fitter and happier. They've enlisted 12 visual artists to visualize the 12 songs from the band's beloved release, which just turned 20. We personally recommend listening to each track while staring at the respective artist's contribution for the duration, or until your eyes start to water. Pitchfork has dedicated a whole week of their site to OK Computer so if the electrifying work from these designers and artists sparks a fire, as it should, head over that way and nerd away.
Beyoncé just can't get the respect she deserves. Thanks to the side project of WNW Member Colby Spear, Joe Laquinte, Justin Au, and Line Johnsen, you can help Bey exact some Grammy revenge with "Lemonade Rage." Recreating an interactive 8-bit version of her "Hold Up" music video, the game lets you therapeutically smash cars into lemons (get it?!) so Beyoncé can make her lemonade. You also get to take a bat to some "Good Hair" ads too. If you're a member of the beyhive, it's the next best thing to that elusive "Album of the Year" award.
Update from the Lemonade Rage team: "We smashed. We raged. And we made a lotta lemonade. It was a good run. Unfortunately, we've received a legal order to shut down Lemonade Rage. We know. It's sad. A wise person once said, 'when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.' Well, we made lemonade and now we're receiving the lemons."
As we remember the late David Bowie, who passed away on January 10, 2016, here are 8 of our favorite visual celebrations of his life and legacy by WNW Members.
Read MoreMIKE O'DONNELL / EDITOR
No one can deny the joy of year-end lists, with their ability to help you both comb through the past 12 months of your life and catch up on all the goods you overlooked. WNW Members and music fanatics Eric R. Mortensen and Richard Perez are here to feed your fix with a unique spin. They're the minds behind 10x, which sees visual artists celebrating their personal top ten albums of the past year with reimagined cover art. This year, Eric & Richard intentionally decided to enlist a total of 19 visual artists. As Eric tell us, "So naturally we bumped it up to 19 artists this year, which was a totally intentional number and had nothing to do with anyone dropping out last minute. Totally meant for it to be 19."
It's amazing how well the project turned out, considering Eric and Richard are constantly trying to one-up and undermine each other in the interview below. They credit the brief they sent out to the artists. By setting certain parameters, the overall collection has an added touch of visual cohesion since the music selections are very eclectic. "We try to keep it simple, but coordinated. Fixed color palette, inclusion of a small logo, some basic rules as far as acceptable selections (no reissues, only releases from the current year, etc.) Some participants bend these rules, but that is half the fun."
Take a look at the past editions of 10x in case your "favorite albums of 2015" Spotify playlist is looking a little underwhelming. And remember that the next edition of 10x is only 12 months away. Eric & Richard are just as excited as you because their friendship depends on it. Because as Eric puts it, "As soon as the clock strikes midnight on December 31st, Richard is back in my crosshairs." That's a natural result of two freelance creatives with similar aesthetics going head-to-head for the same gigs. Richard, firing back with an "I’m shaking in my winter boots," explains: "I think there were at least two times this year where it came down to Eric or us at Skinny Ships. We settled it in the streets."
Tell us a little bit about your creative backgrounds. Who are Eric Mortensen and Richard Perez, and how did they get here?
Eric: I got into graphic design through music. My brother was in a band. All my friends were in bands. Even our mailman was in a band. I don’t know, someone told me The Postal Service was a music group. Anyways, I couldn’t play anything but I knew how to draw cool ska guys in photoshop. Now I get paid to draw cool ska guys for clients like NASA, Google, and Facebook.
Richard: I was introduced to the wonderful world of design in high school when I was the layout editor of the school paper.
Eric: Richard told me he took the layout editor position to impress girls.
Richard: Yeah that didn’t work out. Anyway. I went to SF to study design, snagged a studio gig at Office, before going out on my own. Somewhere along the line, I started focusing more on graphic illustration. Now I work with my partner, Jen DeRosa, under the Skinny Ships moniker. Where we get to do cool stuff for Google, Facebook and not NASA. NawSA.
WNW Member Mark Weaver
What is the 10x project, and how did it get started?
Richard: The 10x is an annual illustrated list of visual artists’ favorite albums of the year. The first was 10x10 in 2010 and originally posted to flickr (remember flickr?). Sharing just a list of my favorite albums seemed a little plain, so I jazzed things up with some illustrations.
In 2014 Eric joined the project and it’s all been downhill from there.
Eric: He means downhill like downhill skiing. You know, jumping off hills in neon colored outfits, crossing skis together in midair while an electric guitar wails kinda stuff. It’s just Richards’ weird way of saying I made the project cool.
Richard: In 2015 we upped the ante and asked a few fellow illustrators and designers to join in, bringing the number up to 10. It was a blast seeing what other creatives were listening to that year.
Eric: So naturally we bumped it up to 19 artists this year, which was a totally intentional number and had nothing to do with anyone dropping out last minute. Totally meant for it to be 19.
Richard: Yes. 19 is a nice round number.
WNW Member Richard Perez
What are the kinds of guidelines that you pass off to the artists?
Eric: We try to keep it simple, but coordinated. Fixed color palette, inclusion of a small logo, some basic rules as far as acceptable selections (no reissues, only releases from the current year, etc.) Some participants bend these rules, but that is half the fun.
What are some of the lessons you learned in previous years that helped the project evolve this year?
Richard: Just general time management. When it was only Eric and I working on this I remember we would both be working the night before to have artwork ready for the next day's post. Eric somehow managed to corral 19 artists this time around.
Eric: We also invested a lot more time into making the website more engaging... 10x16 is a huge leap forward from 10x15. We were lucky to work with Joey Maese to develop something special this year.
WNW Member Jessica Hische
Are you both musicians, or do you just love the ways that music can intersect with the visual arts?
Eric: I don’t play anything but I know Richard has a little OP-1 keyboard. I like to imagine he composes exclusively for the audience of his two cats, and that his shit is really good. Like super progressive shit for cats.
Richard: This is true.
WNW Member Simone Noronha
What are your 3 favorite album covers of all-time?
Eric:
Haha Sound by Broadcast (Artwork by Julian House)
Out of the Blue by Electric Light Orchestra (Artwork by Shusei Nagaoka)
Power, Corruption and Lies by New Order (Artwork by Peter Saville)
Richard:
Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson (Artwork by Barry Godber)
Power, Corruption and Lies by New Order (Artwork by Peter Saville)
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space by Spiritualized (Artwork by Farrow)
What are your 3 favorite albums of all-time?
Eric:
Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys
Graceland by Paul Simon
Blue Album by Weezer
Richard: This is tough, but at this precise moment:
Odelay by Beck
The Beatles by The Beatles
Low by David Bowie
WNW Member Damien Correll
Are you always listening to music while you work, or do you prefer zero distractions when you listen to music?
Eric: I consider the ability to listen to my own music while doing my job to be one of the greatest luxuries one can be afforded.
Richard: Lately it seems to be 80% music, 20% podcasts coming through the office speakers. But some aural distractions are always needed.
WNW Member Chris Muccioli
WNW Member Eric R. Mortensen
Do you guys collaborate on other projects, or do you just join forces each year for 10x?
Eric: Because of our similar aesthetic approaches we tend to bid against each other on projects throughout the year. 10x is a time when we set down our swords and come together in collaboration to defeat our common enemy: seasonal affect disorder. But let me be clear… as soon as the clock strikes midnight on December 31st Richard is back in my crosshairs.
Richard: I’m shaking in my winter boots. But yeah, we’re usually competing for the same gigs, I think there were at least two times this year where it came down to Eric or us at Skinny Ships. We settled it in the streets.
Who are some other WNW members whose work you admire, and why?
Both: I think we would love the opportunity to highlight some of the amazing 10x participants who are also WNW members:
Mark Weaver, Chris Muccioli, Damien Correll, Jessica Hische, Simone Noronha, Grace Danico, David J. McMillan, Shawna X
Anything else you’d like to add?
Eric: Buy some new records in 2017!
Richard: ✌
WNW Member David J. McMillan
If you're a fan of music, or have ever been to a concert, chances are you've come across the work of WNW Member #10521 Mike King. He has designed well over five thousand concert posters since the late 70s for band and venues all over the country, getting his start making posters for the punk/noise bands he played in. Luckily, the greatest hits spanning his entire career will soon be available. Mike is currently crowdfunding Maximum Plunder: The Poster Art of Mike King, a book that brings together over one thousand of his concert posters. Below, we caught up with Mike to discuss how his style and process have evolved over the years, and how he developed the discipline and commitment to master his craft: "Discipline and commitment implies that there was some planning involved to get to where I am now. The truth is I just did them and kept on doing them and the next thing I knew I was a designer with a career."
There are only two weeks left to help fund this book that celebrates the alliance of music and design. Head here to help support this project.
I was one of those guys in high school who drew instead of studying. I wanted to draw comics, but was crap at it. I always loved music, but didn't feel like I was allowed to play it. When I discovered punk rock a whole new world opened up to me. I played in some bands, made posters for those bands and then started making posters for other bands and it snowballed from there. I no longer play music.
Discipline and commitment implies that there was some planning involved to get to where I am now. The truth is I just did them and kept on doing them and the next thing I knew I was a designer with a career.
The process varies from project to project, often dependent on input from the client. But I am lucky enough to work with some folks who just let me be me. Sometimes it’s easier if I’m not a fan of the band. If I really like something I have a tendency to overthink it.
I take everything into consideration: band, venue, date. If a concert is on October 31 it seems like that would affect the poster. If the band is The Misfits you would want the poster to look like it was on October 31 even if the show is in April.
I don’t usually listen to the band while working on the poster. If I haven’t heard the band before, I don’t. As a professional I don’t want my musical taste to get in the way. If I want to know what a band is about, I usually look at their merch: the T-shirts they sell are way more insightful graphically than the music
I would describe my “style” as varied. I like to think I have more of aesthetic than a style, but maybe I am kidding myself. I like a lot of different styles and I try make my work as varied as possible. I approach each project on it’s own terms.
I started out drawing, then I moved to a xerox machine which led to photoshop. Lately it seems like I am drawing more. All of my new methods are top secret.
Certainly, with album art there tends to be many more people involved and much more revision. The design skills required are the same as posters; it’s the skill involved in dealing with people that can be the challenge.
Posters for events have to be done right away. Album art (in theory) isn't designed in as much of a rush.
I feel like even when I was in the Northwest, New York always had an influence.
Paul Rand, Wally Wood, Jeff Kleinsmith, Ben Shahn, Saul Bass, John Heartfeld, Rodchenko, Dadaism, Constructivism, Hot Rod magazines, Victorian advertising, Punk zines…..
It’s hard to pick posters I am proudest of, because I can find flaws in every one.
A few of the posters I dislike the least are:
Vampire Weekend - Crystal Ballroom / LCD Soundsystem - Sasquatch Music Festival / Flaming Lips - Edgefield / Bad Religion - RCKNDY / The Decemberists - Royal Festival Hall
Working in a bookstore, janitor, Titan of industry
When I am not working, I am thinking of working.
“Smoking all that weed isn’t so good for you.”
I go to free nights at museums most months (there are way more museums here)
Unlike the Northwest, I have to pay to see concerts, so I haven’t seen as much music as I'd like.
I like sketch night at the Illustrators Club. There are several record and book stores I like in the lower east side. Mostly I just wander around.
I am a lone wolf, but not by choice. I would certainly thrive as part of a creative community... but I barely know anyone here.
I love the new Savages album, lately I am into oldish metal (Anthrax, Slayer, Iron Maiden), OG New York Punk and No Wave (Television, Suicide, Heartbreakers, Lydia Lunch) and the Bad Brains.
Please check out the book, and even if my WNW page says I am working, hit me up anyway… my schedule is way flexible.
In Beck's career of over twenty years, he's had some pretty oddball music videos, released primarily in the nineties. Like "The New Pollution", "Sexx Laws", and "Nicotine & Gravy."
He's just released a video for his new single "Wow", which harkens back to those days both musically and visually. Which is to say it might give you a contact high.
Art directed by WNW Member #5541 Bráulio Amado alongside director Jimmy Turrell, with animation by WNW Member #6274 Antonio Vincentini, "Wow" lets you revel in all of the non-sequiturs Beck is known for. Created in just eight days, no music video could do a finer job accompanying a song with the following lines: "Standing on your lawn doin’ jujitsu/Girl in the bikini with the Lamborghini Shi Tzu.”
We have to admit: we almost called this post "James & Jamie Make Sweet Music Together." Alternative titles may or may not have included: "Two WNW Members Hit a High Note" & "An App That's Music To the Ears of Kids and Parents." Now that we've gotten our terrible music puns out of the way...
Members #10045 Jamie Kosoy and #10101 James Bartley created a game called Melody Jams, which just launched in the app store today. How do you play? You drag any combination of extra cute monsters up on a stage, where they start playing a tune with the instrument of your choice. You can add lots of monsters on the screen to create and compose your own songs. From there, you can tap to select instruments to play alongside them. It’s easy enough for a baby genius but fun for everyone, even parents.
Though collaborators on this large undertaking, Jamie and James have surprisingly never met. Living on opposite coasts, they figured out how to work together through what was James' first foray into app development, "We’re basically total strangers 3000 miles apart who decided to embark on this prolonged hack day together. Figuring out how to work through that took an immense amount of care and respect of one another, and I think we handled it well."
We spoke to Jamie and James about their experience, inspiration, and the educational opportunities of Melody Jams. They made it clear that this kid (and adult!) friendly game can be enjoyable for even the most tone-deaf among us. Jamie add, "I played saxophone and piano back in the day. I was terrible at both. I love Melody Jams because I can finally play music and sound good."
James: I’ve been freelancing as a motion graphics animator in New York City for about 7 years now. I originally went to school for interactive but soon after graduating decided to follow my growing interest in animation. I’ve also played music my whole life and still casually play in bands outside of work. I’m super excited to be involved in a project that combines these worlds.
Jamie: I got a BFA in Multimedia before I went to work making movie websites for awhile. I always loved programming and art and motion and interactivity. I still kind of want to be a Disney Imagineer. After close to 10 years working at an awesome agency in New York, my wife and I moved to San Francisco to be closer to family and I struck out on my own.
James: I wanted to create a project with good intentions that brought together a mix of different creatives. When I began developing the idea of a Melody Jams type project, I knew it’d be the perfect project for me to connect with all of the inspiring animators and musicians I'm fortunately surrounded by. In addition, I've always been interested in getting involved in education. We just needed someone that could bring it all together. Jamie and the guys at Arbitrary brought the skills and the know-how to bring Melody Jams to life.
Jamie: James got in touch with me through a mutual friend with a motion test of what he was thinking about for Melody Jams. When I decided to start doing my own thing, I made a promise to myself to keep time open for projects that were inventive and fun and fostered personal growth as a creative person. I put together a small team alongside myself to help build the app out.
Jamie: When you open the app up, tons of extra cute monsters appear on the bottom of your screen. You can drag each of them up to a designated spot to bring them to life. Once they’re up on the main stage, they start playing a tune with their instrument of choice. You can add lots of monsters on the screen to create and compose your own songs. From there, you can tap to select instruments to play alongside them. It’s easy enough for a 2 year old but really fun for everyone, even parents.
James: The animated characters linked to each melody hopefully keep kids engaged visually while recreating the intimacy of creating music with friends. I’m really excited to see how kids and adults like playing along with their own instruments. I believe that exposing young kids to creative improvisation early on can be really beneficial.
James: Yes, absolutely. While working on this project I did come across a handful of similar music apps for kids. They were full of beeps, sirens, and honking which, as a music guy, I couldn’t really enjoy. I didn’t see why music apps couldn’t have music that parents could enjoy at the same time.
Jamie: The landscape for kids is really pretty dire! There are a couple of app makers out there making really beautiful and interesting things (Toca Boca, Tinybop) but most of the rest of it is really bad. I hadn’t really dug into it until we started on Melody Jams, but it feels like there’s so much room for improvement.
Jamie: I’ve got a niece now, but no kids [yet]. My wife is a design-thinking teacher, so I’m inspired by her when it comes to kids and educational technology.
James: I have an awesome nephew who was a big inspiration in the creation of this app.
James: I’ve played a ton of instruments over the years but I’m primarily a bassist. Nathan Mckee, who composed the first music for Melody Jams, and I currently play in a band together in NYC. Throughout my childhood my parents were very supportive and let me have a practice studio in our basement. Over the years I had dozens and dozens of musicians over just to mess around, explore, and “jam”. My favorite thing was always improvising with friends and I hope the app re-creates that experience for others.
Jamie: I played saxophone and piano back in the day. I was terrible at both. I love Melody Jams because I can finally play music and sound good.
Jamie: Oh dear, I could write a dissertation on optimizing assets for iOS here if you wanted. One of the most interesting aspects of the project for me was that James and I were working on this together, but we’ve never collaborated before. We’re basically total strangers 3000 miles apart who decided to embark on this prolonged hack day together. Figuring out how to work through that took an immense amount of care and respect of one another, and I think we handled it well.
James: I can say as I write this that I've still never met Jamie or the guys at Arbitrary in person. We did video chat daily throughout the project while using Slack to stay connected throughout the work day. Through this all I feel we developed a great working relationship. As for the app itself, every phase of the project was a learning experience for me. I’ve never built an app before as I primarily work in motion graphics. In my world it’s animate, render, deliver. The app process requires a ton of planning, testing, and as Jamie mentioned, optimization. You have to constantly be investigating the limitations while trying to find new ways around them. There were a lot of new factors that I had to consider with every design and animation decision. Since we were working without any budget and in our off time, we had to move very strategically and make decisions with respect to what was possible to achieve with everyone's schedule. It was a very challenging experience but I really enjoyed it!
James: I received a ton of advice during this project that was extremely helpful. Knowing I was entering an area I knew little about, I made sure to ask anyone I could get in contact with for guidance. Also, collaborating with someone who had the experience I lacked made this all possible and provided for a great learning experience.
Jamie: I’m just trying to keep up with Charlie Whitney. Jay Quercia and Phil Sierzega are amazing designers who ceaselessly inspire me.
James: Erica Gorochow, Marcus Eckert, and Lucas Zanotto have been a big inspiration for me. They are all super talented animators who put out awesome apps over the last few years.
Jamie: We’ve got more jams on the way, and I’m planning to make more apps with spirit just like this.
James: I look forward to collaborating with new animators and musicians to create more jams. Outside of that, I hope I can continue to work on projects that I’m proud of.
In our first edition of Listening Not Listening, not dissimilar to its first cousin never removed Watching Not Watching, WNW Member #9098 Evan Brown reviews the newest (and perhaps final) album by Iggy Pop, Post Pop Depression. After Evan guides us on a poetic tour through this "moody, sinister and oddly seductive" album and the "long, shambolic career" of the "Godfather of Punk," we pick the LA-based copywriter's brain to learn which of his projects have made him the proudest, and how music keeps his creative engine humming.
Still surprising after all these years.
Iggy Pop’s had a long, shambolic career. While the late 60’s flower children were waving peace signs, Pop was fronting The Stooges, a nasty proto-punk outfit known as much for its knuckle-dragging rock as for Iggy’s wild performances. A drug casualty by the middle of the 70’s, Pop was resurrected as an art-rock professional, with the help of David Bowie.
Songs like “Lust for Life” would get rediscovered in the 90’s as both the soundtrack to the heroin-chic movie Trainspotting as even more improbably to Royal Caribbean Cruise Line commercials, pulling off the neat trick of propelling Pop’s career into Godfather of Punk status while selling out.
But that’s only part of the story. We’re also talking about someone who sang a duet about lost love with The B-52’s Kate Pierson, enjoyed a healthy acting career, released an album where he crooned jazz standards, and another sung mostly in French. He’s not the easiest guy to sum up.
Lou Reed died three years ago, David Bowie’s ghost is still visible in our collective rearview mirror. But the man whose real name is James Osterberg has outlived his contemporaries and at this point his nothing left to prove. Perhaps it’s this very reason why he’s perversely dropped an album that is bemusing, exciting and great.
Post Pop Depression was created by a super group of sorts, featuring Josh Homme and Dean Fertita from Queens of The Stone Age and the Arctic Monkeys’ Matt Helders on drums. Homme is a kindred spirit who soundtracks Iggy’s vision with a melodic groove not heard since Iggy’s Bowie period.
The albums overall tone is moody, sinister and oddly seductive. The first track, "Break Into Your Heart," announces his intentions: “I’m gonna break into your heart / I’m gonna crawl under your skin.” And he stays there for the remainder of the album, commanding your attention with a narcotic mid-tempo unease throughout.
“Gardenia” is a cheap film noir. “American Valhalla,” channels Gary Numan’s Teutonic rhythms. The most infectious song on the album is “Sunday,” a minor to major key shift with a throbbing disco bass line and beat.
If once upon a time, Iggy anticipated (however ironically) the idea of “Success,” then “Sunday” puts him in a position of having made it, only to find he’s enduring the kind of existential crisis that the seventh brings for all of us. We look forward to that proverbial day of rest, yet it’s one we can’t ever fully enjoy because of what the following day brings.
The final refrain underlines the sense of depression just beneath the surface of this album: “Got all I need and it is killing me—and you.” But just as it fades, the song turns into a string-laden melancholy waltz that would have felt right at home on Lou Reed’s Transformer.
The most intense song is the closer “Paraguay.” It’s less about a place and more a metaphor for escape. Pop reaches an angry crescendo at the end, feeling like he has nothing left to give and angry that you want more. Pop even updates a line from The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” Only now, it’s gone from an S&M yearning to that of a guy who just wants a break, lamenting that all he wants now is to “be your basic clod, who made good, and went away while he could.”
If Iggy broke into our hearts and crawled under our skin at the beginning of Post Pop Depression, he leaves us with vitriol and anger at what we’ve done to him. “I’m sick and it’s all your fault. And I’m gonna go heal myself now.”
For all I know, the album’s title is a pun on Iggy’s stage name. Bowie’s Blackstar is recognized in hindsight as being a definitive goodbye from a man who knew he didn’t have much longer to live. Post Pop Depression might just be an album that explores what happens when Iggy Pop puts on his shirt for good and stops performing live or making albums. Let’s hope it’s only a literary exercise. But if this does turn out to be Iggy’s last musical statement, at least it’s a hell of a good one.
I was a Cesarean born with my arms crossed, daring someone to bring me into the world. My dad was a journalist and also a writer, and my mom was a copywriter. I was destined for advertising and writing. I have lived and worked in Atlanta. New York, Montreal and now Los Angeles.
I work at Media Arts Lab on Apple but that’s all I can say Except for the fact my coworkers rock.
Pacific Standard Time. It was the perfect amalgamation for me: music, art and smart. Plus I got to work with Ice Cube.
Destiny’s Dark Below was one of those projects that allowed me to get super niche, as in subreddit niche. It showed what you could do with not a lot of money and I got to flex some humor writing chops
And I will always be proud of the adidas Originals Star Wars Cantina spot. Not just because of how it turned out but I worked with a stellar bunch of creative people. That was a formative time.
In terms of non-advertising side projects, I’m writing a book of short stories based on song titles. One of them was published last year in Cancello Venice. I have also recently gotten back to my lifelong love of playing drums, and am currently teaching myself to play the bass. I also love to cook.
I listen to music all the time. I tend to listen to either familiar stuff that becomes background music, or more instrumental music. I cannot work to anything by Kanye. If I hear “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros one more time I won’t be responsible for my actions.
Too many to name. But the top three right now….Either “Mag Earwhig” by Guided by Voices because it’s just so mysterious, “In The Court Of The Crimson King,” by King Crimson because it’s harrowing, or Funkadelic’s “Cosmic Slop” because Pedro Bell.
As for videos: “One Day Like This” by Elbow, or “Weighty Wait” by Bobby Birdman. Both have strange visual juxtapositions that shouldn’t work but do.
Doesn’t matter if you are old, young or in between: listen. The more you keep your mouth shut and observe, read and experience, the more it will inform your work. It will also make you less self-centered to pay attention to other people.
Get out of your comfort zone. We hear this one a lot, but it’s true. Specifically when it comes to your work. Creatives shouldn’t lock into one style. You shouldn’t pigeonhole yourself. One of my favorite visual artists is Wassily Kandinsky. If you compare his early work to where he ended up, it’s a dramatic evolution.
Wassily Kandinsky
Right now it’s Aron Fried. He’s one of those guys where I knew his work before I met him, and then had the pleasure of working with him at my last gig, to discover he’s a humble guy and talented to boot. He’s an example of the versatility I’m talking about. He’s done funny spots for The New York Lottery but he also did some fantastic and touching work for Toms.
Original Artwork by #4743 Brian Gossett
WNW Member #4743 Brian Gossett is a Designer + Drawer + Director + Dad based in Austin. An ADC Young Gun who has worked with top clients like Nike, Apple, and W+K, Brian also once ran a successful music mixblog. So it only made sense for Brian to take our WNW Mixtape series for a spin while we featured him and his work: "I love sharing music and art with everyone; it’s what makes our age of information so great!"
The city of Austin influences much of Brian's work and creative style. It also drives this mixtape, titled ATX Vibes, so hit the "Play" button before you read our interview below and bask in his eclectic work. Click here to listen to "ATX Vibes" on Spotify.
I wanted to create a mix that captured the thing that makes Austin so great, the mix of old and new. A lot of people in Austin are pushing back from the progression the city is heading in. While while I do think it’s important to maintain the authenticity of Austin and what makes it great, I do think the direction the city is going is awesome. The mix itself is an eclectic mix of of the old and new, all with a timeless quality. Artists from the 50s and 60s that sound as relevant today as ever as well as current artists who are tapping into a sound that evokes nostalgia. I wanted the mix to feel southern yet progressive. Good vibes and energetic. I also decided to end the mix with a couple songs based around the word river. Austin’s heart is the Colorado River, or as we call it, Lady Bird Lake. I love Leon Bridges "River" so much it’s practically on every mix I make these days.
I wouldn’t necessarily say I am an illustrator—and honestly labels are starting to become a bit hard to nail down for me. When people ask me what I do it’s hard to put a singular label on it. I’m more a maker of things. A tinkerer. Or reluctantly, yet the most accurate, a commercial artist. When I think of illustrators, I think of someone who is honed in on one singular style. While I feel more that there is a voice, or a taste behind the images I make or the stories I try to tell. My background began in a loose exploration at fine art, drawing, painting, realism to abstraction. I discovered graphic design while attending the University of Houston. I spent some time doing print design, then web design, and then parlayed that experience to moving to Los Angeles. Eventually I found my love for the moving image within the motion graphics industry. I love the motion graphics and animation industry as it allows me to be more illustrative. I began with a more generalist mentality and approach to client briefs but over the last 7 or 8 years I’ve begun to take on projects that I feel appropriate to my taste and voice as a commercial artist. I love solving creative problems while also honing my craft and continuing to develop my style.
Currently I am mixing my love of mid-century illustration with the influence of my city, Austin. I am bringing in a lot of Southwestern themes into my personal work and putting them into a graphic context. I have been trying to build a style around a graphic and illustrative mix that is a bit rough around the edges but also calculated in geometry. I also love printmaking such as silk-screening, gocco, woodblock, linocut, and bringing that simplicity or reduction of color and texture into my personal work. My commercial client work is a bit broader as I do find flexibility to offer my clients a wider range of creative solutions. Sometimes my clients want me to bring more of my personal work style into a project but I do love tackling new challenges and exploring different image making techniques to tell their story.
The blogging scene blew up in 2006/2007 and I jumped into it around that time. My first blog was sort of a catch all for things I thought were cool, be it products, art, design, whatever. I also occasionally posted a mix I made up onto the blog. I have always loved compiling compilations for as long as I can remember. I used to put mix tapes together on a dual cassette boom box I had, where I had to literally let the track play off one cassette or cd as the tape live recorded it. It’s crazy how far the technology has come when I think of it. But like a lot of dudes, I made mix tapes for girls I was dating. I also made mix tapes for friends as I was sort of the tastemaker or our group. Getting back to the blog, I noticed a lot of the people who were visiting my blog were responding to the mixes so I dropped the general blog and built a new site in Cargo to focus on the mixes. It took off immediately and I was getting a lot of press from all over the net. I loved making thematic or conceptual mixes as well as seasonal or holiday related mixes. For example, I loved this book called Take Ivy that was originally published in the 60s. These Japanese dudes came to the US and soaked up all of the Ivy League school style and published a book documenting the style of clothing in that specific context and called it “Ivy Style.” I was also really getting into Vampire Weekend at the time which I felt encapsulated the vibe of the book so I built a series of mixes around the idea and piggy backed on the "Take Ivy” name. Word got out and eventually the mixes were posted on the official Yale and Harvard school blogs. There were other great series and concepts that I still hold dear that conjure up memories or movies in my mind. I like to sort of make soundtracks to my life as music is a great memory signifier for me.
I would say hands down David Holmes’ scores for the Ocean's Eleven films. He not only created a timeless score to the films but acted as the music supervisor sourcing songs he loved that seem to perfectly capture the vibe of the films. I was so into them that they inspired a series I had on my blog called The Heist Mixes. I built fake heist movies in my mind and sourced a lot of music that captured this retro cool vibe and then found exotic settings to place them in. I used a lot of my own photography for the covers of the mixes too with a template of clean white typography over them. The mixes became very popular and got a lot of circulation around the internet. A couple years later I met David Holmes at a screening of Vertigo at Cinespia in the Hollywood Cemetery. He was spinning before and after the film and I got all of my Ocean’s films autographed. I think I was the only one there who knew who he was but he was super cool and appreciated my love for his scores and told him how influential they were for me. My taste in music owes a lot to David Holmes.
I am all over the place, from Prince to Willie Nelson to A Tribe Called Quest to Johnny Cash to Shuggie Otis to Kendrick Lamar to Stereolab to The Rolling Stones and everything in between. I love to try it all out and put things either together stylistically musically or find something amazing about taking different genres of music and making a cohesive mix work together through a concept. While my personal work has a very southern vibe to it, I am not all that big into country music, at least modern. I am more into the classic legends of country. I love Willie, Hank Sr., Cash, but also love Townes Van Zandt, Beck, Kurt Vile, or Ween who bring blues and country into their sound but don’t let it dictate them stylistically. I also love soul and hip hop and honestly can get really heavy into 90s R&B and listen to TLC for an entire day!
Wow, not sure where to begin. I wouldn’t say there is a singular album cover but I do love the work of Reid Miles who defined the look of Jazz with all of his Blue Note record sleeves. He was a master of type and image and composition. Still a huge influence on my work today.
I am honestly in this bubble at my home studio and being a father of two little boys keeps me occupied to the point that I don’t really get out to enjoy the creative scene, which I am sure is thriving. I am excited that my buddy Justin Cone, who runs Motionographer, moved back to Texas. He and I hang out quite a bit and he has a son who is the age of my older boy. The cool thing about Austin is that everyone seems to be making stuff, whether its music, art, design, illustration, craft beer, coffee, pottery, crafts—really everyone is. It’s nice going to Radio, my favorite brew and brew, and striking up a conversation with someone and eventually finding out they are in this amazing band or have a line of jewelry.
I love doing commercial work for the quick turnaround. Recently I finished up a series of short informative films for Makani with Giant Ant that explains the technology of their energy kites which is a Google-funded program. I also just helped Oddfellows out with some really short 6 second spots for Twitter that details some of the reach of video content on Twitter and how it helps brands build business.
I first find as much time to spend with my wife and two boys, River and Sage. When I am not doing that I am typically making personal art for my new Instagram account which you can follow @brianmichaelgossett (shameless plug). I wanted to challenge myself to make more images for myself and to help hone my craft and personal style. If I am not doing that I am making mixes on Spotify or listening to records. I also enjoy working in our garden, going for hikes, exploring Austin, and indulging in guilty pleasures such as watching football or playing some old Nintendo games.
Oh boy, well I should mention a goal of mine this year is to put together a strong 5 minute set to try out at open mic comedy venues here in town. Ok, here it goes.
I hope I die at the age of 86, so people can say “he was 86’d.”
When I see an old couple biking together I think, “they must be on their way to shoot a Cialis ad.”
Why aren’t “California Pizza Kitchen” restaurants just called “Pizza Kitchens” in California?
The worst sound you can hear in a public bathroom is the iPhone shutter sound effect.
Ok, that’s four!
I dig Will Bryant’s work, who also just moved back to Austin by the way! I love Jay Quercia’s work, obsessed really. Jimmy Simpson is also doing fantastic stuff.
I want to say thanks for bringing me on to share the mix. I love sharing music and art with everyone; it’s what makes our age of information so great!
If you're a fan of Brian's musical soundscapes, check out another one of his recent mixtapes. The music is outshined only by his description of it: "It's called 'The Sexual Behavior of Young People.' With Spring and the birds and the bees on the way I figured it was a topical mix. It’s a really fun mix of swoopy strings, downtempo, sex jams. Imagine it as a soundtrack to a soft core film from the 70s and with the mix pressed on crackly vinyl. It has a Euro vibe to it as well which makes it all the more exotic and erotic. I tend to make fake soundtracks to movies that don’t exist to really conjure up images in my mind. This one would star Jennifer Lawrence as the engenue and she’d have a love affair with a young married man in France when she visits on holiday played by Gaspard Ulliel. It’d take place in the year 1974 and they’d drive along the French Riviera in his 356 Spyder smoking cigarettes and making love in lavender fields."
Darling Chuck will be DJ'ing our 4th Annual WNW Holiday Party on Thursday night in Brooklyn. For those of you attending, have a great time! For the rest of you unlucky souls, Darling Chuck was generous enough to contribute some "Bae Vibez" so you can pretend you're there. You can open the Spotify playlist here.
Image by WNW Member #8233 POOL Studio
WNW members often generate their most stunning work by getting into a creative rhythm, at the most random hours of the day. Naturally, many of them accomplish this through music. WNW HQ has put together a mixtape built by a group of WNW members who each picked a song that fuels their creativity. Give this a spin, wherever you are; this week's edition is an eclectic mix of rap and R&B, with some guitar masterwork thrown in for kicks.
You can download the Spotify playlist here.
DISCLOSURE
We asked photographer and WNW Member #4657 Nick Walker to create an original mixtape featuring some of the musical artists he's had the opportunity to photograph. "All of the artists that I’ve shot have been really awesome to work with… I’ve been very fortunate in that regard. I got to say that when I got to shoot Rae and Rza, it was probably one of the milestones for me. When I first started photography I told myself that one day I’d figure out how to shoot the Wu… Although I didn’t get to shoot the whole crew… Rza and Rae were literally a dream come true and will always go down as one of my favorite shoots."
HANNI EL KHATIB
HAUNTED GEORGE
RAEKWON
RZA
Nick Walker was born and raised in Los Angeles. He's worked under the likes of Doug Inglish, Robert Maxwell, Hilary Walsh, & Emmett Malloy. His clients include Interscope, Nike, Domino Records, Elle Magazine, BEBE, and BCBG.
Nick Walker
Ty Segall
We asked photographer and WNW Member #4557 Ebru Yildiz to make an original mixtape featuring some of the musicians she's had the pleasure of photographing. "I feel incredibly lucky that I got to photograph so many of my favorite musicians. Over the years I realized I have two constant feelings during my shoots with musicians: complete awe for these people who can create sounds that can make me feel things, and an immediate confusion that they are actually real people who check their Instagram, eat, laugh and what not. In my head they are these magical beings free of earthly bothers.
When I start working on a portrait, almost always the first thing I do is dedicate some time to listening to the band's music, in most cases over and over too, just to understand, and observe how it makes me feel. That is where I find my inspiration: the overall feel of their music and their lyrics. When planning, I always leave room to play for the day of the shoot. When I meet them in person, their personality becomes a huge part of how the whole shoot shapes up."
Sleater-Kinney
Shilpa Ray
A Place to Bury Strangers
Thee Oh Sees
Ebru Yildiz was born and raised in Turkey and moved to New York in 1998. While she was pursuing her Masters degree in Communications Design at Pratt Institute, her passion for music led her to seek it out everywhere - large clubs, small bars, back rooms, house parties, and the multitude of DIY venues in Brooklyn. Soon she found herself documenting the thriving New York Music scene. Only a year after she started photographing, she was invited to be part of a group exhibit at CB's Gallery called "Back To Bowery" along with acclaimed music photographers such as Godlis, Roberta Bayley, Mick Rock and Billy Name. Since then she has exhibited several times in New York and her photographs have appeared in print and online publications such as Pitchfork, NPR, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Spin, NME, New York Magazine, Brooklyn Vegan, 'Sup Magazine, XLR8R, Village Voice, Time Out NY, and Huffington Post, etc. She was selected as one of "The 50 Greatest Music Photographers Right Now" by Complex Magazine in 2012. She also won the Independent Music Awards' Vox Populi Award in Concert Photography in 2009. Ebru currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
Ebru Yildiz (Photo by Mitchell King)
Check out the new music video for Trevor Dickson's "Powers" by photographer, director and WNW Member #2470 Romain Laurent. This Vimeo Staff Pick warmed us up with some summer vibes and quirky beach romance. Romain is an ADC Young Gun and has worked with clients such as Google, Netflix, Hermes, Reebok, Coca-Cola and Xbox.
WNW Member #2571 Stefan G. Bucher recently completed an incredibly extensive project, a music video for "Goodbye Jane" by Wesley Stace using rotoscoped animation. After many months and 12 pounds of tracing paper, Stefan still somehow had the energy to share this experience with readers on his blog. Why? Because on top of all of the new challenges, physical exertion, and lessons learned, this project was as much a labor of love: Stefan was working with one of his idols of over 20 years. And so, Stefan has written all of the following text, detailing the day-to-day processes and epiphanies that only the artist himself could share.
By Stefan G. Bucher
Wesley Stace has been one of my favorite artists for over 20 years. I first heard him on the dearly departed KSCA 101.9 in Los Angeles when he still went by his stage name John Wesley Harding, and again shortly thereafter on the “High Fidelity” soundtrack. We had a chance to speak after one of his concerts, and I told him that I’d love to do some animation for him should he ever have need. To my great surprise and delight, he said “Yes! As a matter of fact, I need animation right now!”
Wesley was touring in support of his excellent new album Self-Titled and was working on the accompanying videos. Director Matt Grady — with camera men Adam Ginsberg, Ryan Balas, and Jorge Torres-Torres — had filmed the band performing six of the songs in the studio. Now they needed extra material to edit into those performances to have a distinct look for each piece.
I’d originally fallen in love with Wes’s music for his sharp and often funny lyrics, as well as for his quick and self-effacing banter between songs. When I offered him an animation, I had thought of singing Daily Monsters. He rightly felt, though, that they weren’t a good match for the more personal and wistful songs on his new album — the first he’d released without the armor of his pseudonym.
Around this time, I was at the tail end of taking a few months off from work. After having improvised a lot of animation for the Monsters using a program called Anime Studio, I wanted to teach myself at least some aspects of “proper” animation. I’d begun fiddling with a little sequence where my own head would turn into that of a monster. I filmed myself in the mirror, going from a placid look into a wild whiplashing spasm.
I started the animation by tracing my head on transparent paper — a homemade version of rotoscoping — and then morphed myself into monstrous shapes. A lot of the initial pencil work happened while I was on jury duty. You can see the original demo below, and you’ll understand why I got some strange looks from the people around me in the waiting room at court.
This is the piece that I showed Wes. For me, it would be an homage to the classic 80s video for the band A-Ha, directed by Steve Barron. It was one of the videos that made me want to become an artist. I asked Wes, “Don’t you want… don’t you deserve… to have your own version of ‘Take On Me’?” “On any level!” he replied, “I should think it’s every singer’s dream come true!” And we were off to the races!
We talked about different concepts for different songs, but settled on “Goodbye Jane” and on the very simple idea of the images getting darker and darker towards the end, when they’d be obscured by an ever denser field of pencil lines to show the character vanishing inside his own memories. With this I went to work.
Based on a few quick tests, I’d settled on ten frames per second instead of the 12 that are usually considered the absolute minimum for animation. (By comparison, the classic Warner Bros cartoons had 24 frames per second, Pixar has 30.) I liked the languid, dream-like feeling that fewer frames created — images arising and vanishing in a memory, just as they do in the lyrics of the song.
ONE SECOND OF MOTION. IT’S LIKE AN OLD JACKSON 5 VIDEO, ISN’T IT?
The original plan was that we’d leave the verses as live action footage and fade over into animation for the choruses, but when Wes saw the first 10 seconds he smartly played on my vanity. “Wouldn’t it be great if the whole thing was all your animation?” Yes. True. Obviously. How could I argue, when he was so clearly correct? Of course, that pushed the frame count from maybe 400 frames to 1,810. But again… vanity.
I began by making printouts of the original studio footage. One frame per sheet. I’d slip each one underneath a piece of vellum paper and started tracing. The trick was to figure out the minimum amount of detail to bring the performance alive on paper. Too few lines, and the animation becomes too abstract to make sense. Too many lines, and faces start looking wrinkled, and everything vibrates from frame to frame. A little vibration in the lines is the great appeal of this method, but too much would be frantic.
SMALL FACES AMPLIFY MISTAKES. GOTTA KEEP A STEADY HAND...
Motivated in equal parts by artistic vision and base expedience I decided to omit all detail from the bodies. Just for starters, a Martin guitar has six strings and 20 frets. And a bridge. And a hole. Even if the guitar only shows up in half the frames, that’s 25,200 extra things to draw. 25,200 chances to forget a part, or make it go squiggly. Besides, leaving out all those details really does look great! It focuses the eye on the faces. And I love how the guitar melts in and out of the silhouette of the body. It gives you a lot of information on the shape of the instrument. Back in college, the great Norm Schureman always pushed us to edit our drawings — to put in detail only where it was needed, and to describe the rest of the subject with as few lines as possible. It’s our job to guide the eye.
AFTER A FEW MONTHS OF THIS WORK, ALL OF LIFE DEVELOPED A PENCIL OVERLAY IN MY MIND. IT’S WORRYING.
My original plan was to draw 100 frames a day, which would mean about three weeks of pencil work, another few days of scanning and putting the frames in order in After Effects, maybe two days of color work, and I’d be done in a month. Seemed totally reasonable, and of course it had no basis in reality whatsoever.
As it was, I averaged about 20 frames a day. Some days I managed up to 60 frames, other days I was lucky to make it to ten. Cables and tuning pegs take time, and as much as I’m a disciplined worker, my brain simply couldn’t handle more than a few hours of tracing each day. I wanted a Zen project, but as it turns out, I’m no monk. The tedium becomes a physical force. To get through the whole lot took three and a half months. The resulting stack of tracing paper weighed 12 pounds.
12 POUNDS 14 OUNCES OF TRACING PAPER, 20 POUNDS 5 OUNCES OF TRACED PAPER. BEFORE A QUARTET OF HABIT WINE.
The scanning process actually went pretty smoothly. I whipped through it in a week. I oriented the scans by tracing two big registration marks printed along the top of the original footage printouts. Same method I’d been using since I was 15. Low tech, but effective. Proper animators use registration pegs, which makes a lot of sense and would’ve helped me in a number of ways later on, but sometimes enthusiasm wins out over diligent advance planning.
Early on I’d noticed something that had escaped me when looking at the original footage. The video had been shot with a handheld camera for a documentary feel. This looked great within the full studio environment, but of course I’d decided to show Wes, his lead guitarist David Nagler, and bassist Eddie Carlson stripped of their surroundings. In this minimalist setup, free of all spatial context, the handheld camera shake made it look as if I was drunk at the scanner.
When this dawned on me I was 100 frames into the project, and I had no solution. I had a vague hope that the shake would look cool once it played out over three minutes, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t. The sensible move would have been to re-asses, to stabilize the live action footage, and start over on the trace. The ideal move would’ve been to reshoot the whole thing with a tripod. On a white background. Without anybody being artfully blurred. But that’s loser talk. I’d muscle through. My true worry was that I’d not find a workable solution straight away, and that I’d throw in the towel. Instead I doubled down and decided to trace the entire piece as it was. This way I’d be so invested that I’d have to find a solution later on. You don’t walk away from almost 2,000 drawings.
In the end, the solution was to stabilize the traced frames in After Effects, which involved going through the shots and manually defining two points in each frame that were stable relative to each other — the top and bottom of a microphone stand, for example. The farther apart those two points are, the better, because there is more tolerance for being a few pixels off in the marking process. The application would then rotate the frames to always keep those two points in the same position relative to each other.
A CLOSER LOOK AT SOME OF THE MOTION TRACKING WORK.
As it turns out, this would have been infinitely easier had I done it in the live action footage, what with its sharp edges. Squiggly pencil lines really keep everything a bit looser than one would hope. After the initial pass, I went through a few more times to make adjustments. Yes, that was another month of work, but nobody likes an unsanctioned shoulder shimmy.
One unhappy side-effect of rotating the drawings to stabilize them is that many now had detail that fell outside the frame and areas where there was no more drawing to show. Some of those instances I could fix by zooming in, others required going back to the original drawings and adding things.
AH, TUNING PEGS… MY OLD ENEMY!
While working on all of this I began to notice that I didn’t like some of the edits between shots. Wes would jump from one end of the frame to the other, for example. Other times we’d go from a now static setup to a tracking shot. Both had worked well in the original edit by Rachael Fiorentino, but felt jarring without the context of the studio environment and the unifying element of camera shake. So I added a few of my own camera moves in After Effects. Lastly, there were one or two shots that cut on the beat of the song, but left Wes with his mouth open in mid-sound. Again, no problem in the original footage, yet not quite graceful in my version. It bugged me. I had to create a few extra frames for which I had no original footage, so I carefully frankensteined suitable faces, bodies and guitar strums.
Could I have asked for additional frames from the original footage? Frames that certainly exist and would’ve been easily retrieved? Of course, but by this point I was propelled by a mixture of obsessive-compulsive madness and embarrassment for not planning the whole thing out better from the get-go. Every action now started with “Well, shit. Hm. OK, let me just… .” And the weeks were drifting by.
ONE OF THE LOVELY AESTHETIC MOMENTS THAT HAPPENED GOING FROM ONE SHOT TO THE NEXT.
Part of the joy of a project like this is figuring things out on the fly, and building elaborate workarounds. Of course, there would have been much more efficient ways of doing all these things, but the whole point is that I know that now.
The one thing I knew would be a breeze was adding color. I’d designed the frames to be easy to mask. I’d tested this on my own transformation from man into monster. Of course, I’m bald. And I wasn’t holding a guitar with fiddly little tuning pegs. These things really, really confused the otherwise near-magical After Effects Roto Brush tool. It didn’t much care for my ten frames per second, either — too much of a jump from frame to frame. All of this called for tons of little manual adjustments, each of which the program would then helpfully propagate across adjoining frames whether I wanted it to or not. Several times I finished a few hours of work only to realize that other parts of the mask had been utterly corrupted. When I finally had things just about right, I rendered a flat version of the video, and fixed the last bits by using a cloning brush.
AND SOMETIMES THINGS JUST WENT COMPLETELY OFF THE RAILS.
Aesthetically, I had started with the idea of keeping the skin and hair white, making the rest of the silhouette a solid black, and placing the whole thing on a solid color background. Maybe the background color would change through the video, but I certainly had something very minimal in mind. Once I saw the assembled pencil drawings in motion that seemed way too heavy-handed, so I started playing around. With every project there are dead spots where I can’t quite figure out what the shape of the whole will be. Those are unpleasant if not downright scary days, particularly on a very involved project like this. That’s where discipline and experience come in. At this point I know that an impasse won’t last, and that I just have to muscle on.
The somewhat delicate art demanded a light touch. Smothering everything in a heavy Béarnaise would’ve ruined the dish. I couldn’t figure it out for quite a while, but when I hit on the orange gradation into white I started getting excited. From there I just let the song guide me. I’d made the decision to just let the performance stand on its own — instead of cutting away to conceptual images, for example — but I wanted the color to help tell the story that was already evident in Wes’s face and motion. Things start out with a sunrise, storm clouds appear, night falls, and in the end it all fades away. (This is why I don’t write the lyrics.)
I NEVER MEANT 2 CAUSE U ANY SORROW. I NEVER MEANT 2 CAUSE U ANY PAIN.
All along the way I had kept the colors on separate layers from the drawing. I wanted to be able to remove dust from the scans without affecting anything else. That whole process happened on a parallel track. Unfortunately, each time I updated a newer, cleaner version of the drawings Roto Brush decided to recalculate the masks, creating endless little areas of havoc. It took me a few weeks just to figure out that this was actually happening. Until then I just thought I was losing my mind. By the time the penny dropped the drawings seemed pretty dust-free, so baking the line art and colors into one solid piece of footage seemed wise.
No… I know… Of course it wasn’t wise. There was so much dust left! So much. Each clean-up pass allowed me to notice another level of little dancing dots, and led to two more weeks of removing over 20,000 individual grains of dust one by one. I know that figure, because After Effects automatically assigns a number to each correction. I always thought I had a clean scanner. I don’t. Filthy. Filthy, filthy scanner. Still not clean. Never clean. Especially if you turn down the Gamma on your monitor to take a better look. Never turn down the gamma on your monitor. It’s horrible.
I’VE HAD IT WITH THIS MOTHERFUCKIN’ DUST ON THESE MOTHERFUCKIN’ FRAMES!
And through all of this, Wes hadn’t seen anything beyond the initial 100 frames. Which he’d liked. But he had also been concerned that some of the drawings didn’t actually look like him. Which they didn’t. He was right. I’d noticed the same thing. So this was a concern. A big part of the project for me was learning to draw better likenesses. I’ve always felt self-conscious about not being able to draw solid portraits.
It’s part of what motivated the designs I did for Jason Bentley and John McCarty years ago, as well as this (sadly rejected) flyer for Ben Watt.
THIS MAY WELL HAVE BEEN THE LOOK BEN HAD ON HIS FACE WHEN LOOKING AT THIS FLYER ILLUSTRATION. OH WELL…
I figured that I’d get more skilled as the video went on, and that a better likeness emerging over time would be a cool part of the video — the singer becomes more himself as time goes on and he knows himself better. Ex post facto rationalizations are a crucial part of the creative process.
Still, I was sweating bullets. With any regular project, I’d show work in progress along the way to make sure everything is coming together as it should. In this case there were so many parts I hadn’t quite figured out yet that the “in progress” versions just looked dispiriting to me. I thought that showing the video in that state — especially after having taken so much more time than anticipated — would’ve killed everybody’s enthusiasm. So I waited to get everything right, and my client was kind enough to let me. I gambled. Getting the enthusiastic thumbs up from Wes was a serious relief and a genuine delight.
In the process of making this video, I listened to “Goodbye Jane” hundreds of times, and I still love it. That’s the mark of a great song. I hope you’ll enjoy it, too. In fact, you should download the whole album on iTunes or buy it on Amazon.
Most of the time, jobs have tight deadlines and demand a clearly predictable outcome. It’s a rare luxury that I get to take this much time to play around and learn new things in the pursuit of something that’s unknown to me until it’s done. The fact that I got to do it for an artist I admire makes it that much more enjoyable.
EACH TRACING PAPER PAD IS COVERED WITH A RED SHEET. I USED THEM TO MARK A FINISHED BATCH OF 100 FRAMES. RED SHEETS = PROGRESS. RED SHEETS = HAPPY SHEETS!
Working Not Working has won the 2013 Webby and People's Voice Awards in the Professional Services category. Thanks and congrats to all of our talented members and Oak Studios for designing and developing a Webby-worthy site. We couldn't be more excited. We're so excited we made a spontaneous celebratory playlist. LET'S DANCE!
On April 23rd, WNW members #96 Ivan Cash, #1012 Scott Blew and Julie Matheny bring us Couchella, the first ever online music festival featuring original curated music. No expensive tickets, no sponsors, no pyrotechnics – just music. Nominate your band or favorite band today. Remember, don't eat the brown acid.
Are you a WNW member with new work to share? Email us.
