SESAME STREET _ House of Bricks & More

HOUSE OF BRICKS

This week saw the premiere of a few more Sesame Street segments with backgrounds and animation produced by Magnetic Dreams Studio. It's always a treat to be able to dive into a classic Sesame parody and marry the aesthetic of the show with that of another pop culture institution, in this case the very adult Netflix series HOUSE OF CARDS. AND, we got to filter it through the tale of the 3 Little Pigs. Marty Robinson's "Frank Underwolf" may be my favorite recent Muppet performance.

You can see the full spot above and here is the original HOUSE OF CARDS opening for reference. Re-creating the time lapse montage was my most enjoyable task for this spot.



The first challenge was to re-imagine the Capitol Building, Supreme Court, and White House as constructed of straw, sticks, and bricks. These are my concept designs, final modeling was done by Stephanie Miranda Goldstein.

But, the real test was for us to destroy them. All three buildings needed to be built and rigged to be blown apart. Our simulator Wenie Rahardja did all of the heavy lifting here, working out the particle dynamics with Stephanie under the guidance of Creative Director, Rickey Boyd. Additional animation by Jamie Coakley. Here's a cool sneak peek at our Capitol Building sim in one of its later stages.

SUPERGROVER 2.0 - "Fruit" and "Underwater Bowling"

This week also featured the return of 2 new segments of Super Grover 2.0.

"Fruit" starred a pineapple painter who allowed me to include some paintings of food-related inside jokes from Sesame's past.

Loaf of bread, container of milk, stick of butter

Operatic Orange

"Underwater Bowling" featured the amusing premise of an Octopus and Shrimp unable to keep their pins from floating away. Brad Applebaum and Ayan Akbar on modeling and Josh Stafford and Judd Eschliman on compositing did a fantastic job capturing the detail, lighting, and spirit of the location.

I shared the above model sheet by Rickey and myself to give a sense of the production process involved in one of these spots. For more on this pipeline, check out the video below. Our production manager John Hamm illustrates what it requires to take a Sesame short from green screen to your screen.

pipeline process from John Hamm on Vimeo.

SESAME STREET _ The Cookie Thief

The Museum of Modern Cookie Art (MoMCA?) made its debut on a recent special episode of Sesame Street, "The Cookie Thief." A closed door whodunnit, the show features a self-regulating Cookie Monster who is falsely accused as the titular art thief by the museum guard, guest-star Rachel Dratch.

             

Magnetic Dreams Studio provided CG set extensions and exterior of the new location as well as historical art studios of some master painters (by Stephanie Goldstein and Brad Applebaum). More than that, the special afforded us the opportunity to paint cookie-themed Muppet parodies of classic artwork. They were all painted digitally (with the extremely responsive brushes by Kyle T. Webster) and then printed, framed, and hung in the set. What an incredible way to collaborate with the stellar Sesame crew. You can see my "Cookie Night" and "Girl with a Cookie Earring" paintings as they were hung, below. Note: It's humbling and futile to try to do justice to a Vermeer in 3 hours.

Some paintings, like the above two and the "Pablo Picookie" below as well as the featured "Muncha Lisa" were scripted inclusions. Otherwise, it was fun to draft up a museum's worth of iconic imagery. 

Our cookie painters included: Rickey Boyd, Kirby Atkins, Ben Fosselman, and Kim Cranfield, along with Rhea Borzak, Taylor Blair, and Joel Gibbs. The Muppet Fans at Tough Pigs featured some of our paintings HERE (along with some half-baked art criticism) but you can check out a collection of mine below:

(this one is a cross between a Kandinsky and the opening credit chalk cookies)

(Matisse does "The Ladybugs' Picnic")

BONUS: Here's a look at my rough logo concepts for the Museum. Number 3 was clearly inspired by the Met's logo. Number 2 was the approved design.