ONE SHOT _ Making Of & Creator Credits

In early June, musician Hunter Hayes got the idea that he wanted to be a cartoon and an animated video for his single "ONE SHOT" was the way to go. Just before Labor Day and 400 man hours later we delivered our shot at it, above.

From L to R: Lisa Halsey, Rickey Boyd, Trea Bailey, Ashley Malone, James Elston, Hunter Hayes, Tyler Goll, Abdel Pizarro, Michael Lapinski, Joel Gibbs

Hunter enthusiastically pitched the video to Magnetic Dreams Studio as starring a guy with "shot goggles" who thinks he's a superhero the more he drinks when the reality is far more mundane and messy. I fleshed out the concept from there with COO Jeff Galle and we tugged even more on visualizing those themes in the lyrics that yearned past the good times for another shot to get it right.

The story would be told from the perspective of a hungover Hunter rebuilding the night from false memories and embarrassing Instagram evidence to the contrary, each chorus a new bar and each verse a new reflection.

The first step would be to arrive at a caricature for Hunter (along with band and friends) and a look for the spot that communicated the spirit of "Hunter" and the song. It needed to have a little edge, like Family Guy meets Teen Titans, and a dose of superhero pop like Batman '66.

I have genuine affection for a number of the takes above and they would have resulted in a very different spot. But, the approved design by Ashley Malone, below, was that sweet spot that set us on our course. I knew she could cartoon but man it was also fun to find out how much fun she had drawing drunk Hunter's antics. With her design at the fore, Ashley became the lead designer, animator, and core of the project.

From there, a visual development team consisting of myself, Ashley, Trea Bailey, Eva Helwig, and Jasmine Soompholphakdy worked up the various gags and visuals that populated the story.

Various board panels from both Ashley and Trea that were later comped

together by Joel to create the opening montage.

One thing I couldn't shake was the need for both an unexpected element up front and a confidant to guide Hunter through his trough. I found both in the guise of a llama, llamas look inherently both comforting and condescending, that rode him home. I was prepared for everyone to shoot down the idea but it stuck.

Final boards were illustrated by Trea and Ashley and Trea was crucial in illustrating the gorgeous images that would become painted key art at climactic moments. Editor Tyler Goll cut the animatic and we were off and running!

The great thrill of this project was to get the right people on the job and let them do their thing, especially with a quick turn pressure cooker deadline. For example, as sort of an animated superhero parody, I thought to call in a reunion of some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle buds who I knew would knock it out of the park even after almost 2 decades apart.

Below, I'm looking to credit everyone involved, not only with their job title but also with some of my favorite bits they brought to the project. Any pink text are links to their sites.

Ashley Malone (lead character designer, lead animator, board artist) - so much of Ashley is in the sheer volume of work that comprises this video. But, I'll forever love the moment I saw her clean-up of that initial side glance that the llama gives Hunter upon waking. Some of her rough sketches of Hunter in action were so good that I couldn't bear to lose anything in cleaning them up so I used them outright.

Board panels and final characters by Ashley Malone, final background by Michael Lapinski

Trea Bailey (character designer, background designer, animator, board artist) - Trea was a font of ideas, visual solutions to thematic questions, and his innate grasp of composition and body language resulted in such beautiful key illustrations like the band performance and pedal tavern.

Line art by Trea Bailey, color art by Michael Lapinski

Jasmine Soompholphakdy (vis dev, sound effects designer and animator) - so glad to have Jasmine's sensibility on this project. I'm a fan of her personal work and just wanted her to be able to infuse it into her work with us, such as, the byzantine way she arrived at the brand for the cinnamon liquor AND THEN making it the sponsor of the race car.

Eva Helwig (vis dev) - Eva knows cartoons and she an her sister are starting their own cartoon empire. Her early takes on Hunter and the llama in particular were key to doing right by their relationship.

Kimberly Cranfield (character designer) - Kim was only able to be on for a brief while but she owned those hockey players.

James Elston (character clean-up) - Jim's a former Disney clean-up artist who we called onto the ice in overtime and delivered on finishes for hockey player key art.

Lisa Halsey (money lady, Predators fan) - a die-hard Predators fan, she refused to let me name our doppelgänger hockey team "The Nashville Noodlers" and instead christened them "The Smashville Catflingers."

Character art by Ashley Malone and James Elston, color art by Michael Lapinski

Rickey Boyd (character clean-up, animator) - a man of many talents, it was great to get Rickey on this one actually performing one of his early loves, animation. Quick with the pencil, I was also fortunate to get him to draft an expressive moment of the pedal tavern passengers behind Hunter.

Keith Conroy (background design) - the man drew some of the most complex, perspective-driven, cityscape backgrounds in my time at Ninja Turtles and made total sense out of them. Who better to do a comic version of the honkey tonks of Nashville's Broadway? No one.

Background design by Keith Conroy, color art by Michael Lapinski

Emilio Lopez (digital painting) - E-Mann has the touch. A painter for cartoons, comics, and video games he's got a style that is both dynamic and nuanced and very necessary for the key art here.

Jimmy Tran (digital painting) - I didn't have the chance to work with Jimmy at Turtles but he quickly became a go-to color guy, making sense out of complexity and, in this case, making pedal taverns soar.

Abdel Pizarro (animator) - I knew any of the action shots belonged in Abdel's hands as well as crafting all of the anime blurs. But, it's the addition of a little butt wiggle to "broken Hunter" that will forever be his mark on this piece. 

Shinichiro Matsuda (animator) - Shin has done great visual effects and comp work with Magnetic but it wasn't until "Doing It" that he cracked me up as a character animator. He's responsible for some of my favorite shots in both, the belt buckle slow dance in "Doing It" and Hunter stealing the drinks here.

Line art by Trea Bailey, color art by Emilio Lopez and Michael Lapinski

Joël Gibbs (comp artist) - already directing several other projects of his own, Joël jumped on here and brought above what was needed in turning each shot green and working with us through the 25th hour.

Tyler Goll (editor) - from literally start to finish, it's Tyler that got all our ideas to fit and hit. He also cut a perfect promo for the video using Jasmine's sound effects.

Beau Sherman (production Coordinator) - you want a calming presence to make sense of the chaos. That's Beau.

Randy Saba (producer) - beyond staffing this gig, the man has great taste in cartoons and I always knew I could trust his feedback.

Rhea Borzack (head of production) - the backbone of production/ comp, Rhea carries so much with grace, including a drunken Hunter.

Special thanks too for Jeff Galle and Mike Halsey for making this happen with Mike Dupree at Warner Music and being key sounding boards throughout the process.

Line art by Trea Bailey, color art by Emilio Lopez and Michael Lapinski

OK, if THAT wasn't enough for you, here's another 40 minutes below of me talking about creating the video with Hunter and Trea. Much respect for Hunter for not only wanting to do a project of this kind but also for launching from our studio in a total Made In Nashville fashion. It's rare to not only have this sort of creative freedom with his already cool creation but to also to be able to process it in public after it's all said and done.

"NOBODY CARES" _ An Update

At the end of last year, I helped a group of local Nashville students create an artwork that expressed the violence in their neighborhood. It's called "Nobody Cares." For more detailed information, go HERE.

They depicted themselves as piñatas, burst open and spilling traits on paper that would be their eulogies, those qualities the world would lose in their passing. But the piece wouldn't be finished until the public was able to interact with it at the Frist Center gallery in the entrance hall this April. Now, only a few months later, the artwork is literally overwhelmed with the red and pink accounts of violence the viewers have experienced and of the lives they mourn. 

And, here's feedback from the Associate Educator at the museum:

"NOBODY CARES has really filled out and is a vibrant shock to the viewing public as a whole. Many responses have been shared to the point we are having to regulate the weight of the paper messages so other can continue to add to the piece."

Today's a day to remember the deceased, celebrate the living, and denounce those who choose to bring more violence into the world by their own hand.

ELMO'S ALPHABET CHALLENGE _ Concept and Background Art

Growing up, no other work of art made more of an impression on me than The Muppets in all of their incarnations and Jim Henson has always been an idol of mine for the imagination, wit, and compassion he brought to his work. With that in mind, I've been very fortunate this past year to hook up with Mike Halsey and Don Culwell's MAGNETIC DREAMS Animation Studio in Nashville to work as Art Director on a number of Sesame Street-related projects. Not the first I worked on but the first out of the gate, the direct-to-DVD movie ELMO'S ALPHABET CHALLENGE was released this week.

Directed by John Hamm (not to be confused with the slightly less debonaire Mad Man) and with creative direction and character design by Rickey Boyd (a Muppeteer in his alter ego) ELMO'S ALPHABET CHALLENGE applied Sesame's classic sense of parody to a number of familiar video games as Elmo, Abby, and Telly are sucked into the game to battle an impy elf through the entire alphabet. All said, it was a feat to assemble what were essentially several mini-movies in totally different styles, each with their own set of challenges. After about 2 years of working out of my home studio, it's been rewarding to work in studio with such an incredibly talented bunch and I always get a thrill seeing everyone improve a work across the production pipeline.

As Art Director, I did a good deal of the concept art and on-air background art for the project that I can give some insight into the different segments here (click on art thumbnails to enlarge them). EAC was a huge team effort and I'll be shouting out other artists as I go. You can also learn more about the whole team, complete with head shots, HERE.

HAPPY WORDS

Confession: I had never even played Angry Birds before illustrating this parody background. With two lost days of addictive "research" I tried to cook up something that didn't look like any of the seemingly infinite number of game environments. The BG is designed to account for levels of atmosphere for the objects to fly past and to also allow for parallax between the layers of tropical foliage. This one was animated in Flash by John Hill.

Here's a preview:

JUST DANCE Parody

This scene is a cel-shaded spoof on Just Dance with motion capture choreography at the core of the animation (animator Andrew Lee Atteberry needed to play down his slick moves in his role as A.B.C-More). For this one, I proposed a number of backgrounds and ran some test animation of the lights to the music in After Effects. "Q, Q, Q!" The soundtrack rang in our heads for weeks. On these Sesame gigs, I try to sneak in nods to classic Sesame shorts when possible. Hard to tell because we went monochromatic here in order to pop the characters, but, can you place the homage that the background pattern is referring to? 

SUPER MUSTACHIO BROS.

A comp of 2D Photoshop assets in a 3D environment that's meant to evoke the art direction of the Super Mario world. We transition from the more fantasy pastoral landscape to industrial as the tension mounts. The real treat was being able to lay out the modular assets in side scrolling maps of the scene like those form the old Nintendo Power magazines. Long-time Nickelodeon co-hort Astrid Riemer was also an asset builder on this one.

Here's a preview:

PAC MAN Parody

Somehow this little bugger with all of its pixel specificity proved trickier to work out than some of the others but Elmo's "Muncha-Muncha!" line delivery was particularly cute. Astrid made the changes to the multiple levels. To the kids watching, I'm sure this looks as archaic as hieroglyphics. Jason Parish designed the pixel art objects.

GUITAR HERO Parody

This is a collage mock-up of the stage, guitar neck, and other elements for the Guitar Hero parody that I constructed and lit in Photoshop. I'd say this is an example of a scene where our compositing team went above and beyond in terms of fleshing out the shots with their own lighting and atmosphere. Jason Parish designed the alphabet icons.

WORLD OF ELFCRAFT

I can't seem to locate my Photoshop collage/painted style frame for this one but, trust me, it was awesome. Below is a detail of the back plate I did for the CG environment that was modeled by Brad Applebaum (who, along with Craig Simpson and Jamie Coakley Jr., was also responsible for the design of the MARIO KART parody). I particularly enjoy this scene for the work of animators Abdel Pizarro and Matt Egler who I also got to share Qdoba and a cubicle bay with during the project.

 

Here's a preview (Spoiler Alert - it's for the letter "Z," the end of the alphabet and climax to the Challenge):

COMIC EVENTS _ Nashville Public Library Lecture

This Saturday, May 12th, I'll be co-delivering a lecture at the Nashville Public Library with fellow Archaia creator Janet K. Lee that traces the history of comics, aka "sequential art," alongside the development of the artform. The lecture is also a pre-cursor to a weekly summer workshop we'll be teaching for aspiring comic creators ages 12-18. More information below.

For the poster, we decided to map a general comic history across six panels and staged in front of the library itself. Below are closer shots of my contributions. (I think Janet completely embodied McCay's art in her Little Nemo panel)

FEEDING GROUND _ Store Signing!

On Wednesday, November 30th I'll be doing an all-day FEEDING GROUND comic signing at RICK'S COMIC CITY in Nashville. Info below and here's a link to the Google Map.

2710 Old Lebanon Rd Suite 3
Nashville TN 37214
(615) 883 - 7890

It's a great shop with a deep selection of back issues and toys that also does a great job of displaying a group of the previous issues of most titles on the main wall.


For those of you that are new to FEEDING GROUND, here's a brief description and some links to bring you up to speed:

A new nightmare plagues the Mexico-Arizona border. A famine caused by Blackwell Industries drives Diego Busqueda, a noble coyote, to lead a band of Mexican border crossers across the unforgiving Devil’s Highway, a desert cursed with blistering days and deadly nights. Back home, Diego’s daughter, Flaca, discovers that something hungrier prowls the factory fields. Stalked and persecuted, can the Busqueda family maintain their dreams of immigration or will the unspeakable horrors of the desert tear them apart? On the Feeding Ground, there is no freedom without sacrifice...

- Previous Blog Posts
- Our Facebook Group Page
- The Archaia Website


And, here's the trailer we cut for the book.

Hope to see you there!