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.

STAR S'MORES _ Art Direction

The 45th Season of Sesame Street premiered last week and with it came the 2nd Season of COOKIE'S CRUMBY PICTURES, a show within the show that features Cookie Monster parodies of popular films.

It's a continuation of Magnetic Dreams Studios' work on various Sesame projects and another chance for us to do farcical recreations of movies that inspire us. None of them elicited more enthusiasm and creativity from our team than the Star Wars spoof, STAR S'MORES!

Below are some pieces of concept art and finished frames. As Art Director, I create the initial brainstorming pieces with Sesame and Creative Director, Rickey Boyd. 

Determining the nature of our dessert-based "Death Star."

Once it was confirmed that it would be mechanical, I incorporated baking-themed hardware (muffin trays, spoons, waffle irons) into the interior design.

From there, I'll do rough photo plate work-ups as reference for backgrounds that will be fully modeled by our CG dept. There's usually one per episode but we ended up with 4 for this one.

My rough concept for a graham cracker and kitchen cockpit for the "S'morellennium Falcon."

And... the final model by Brad Applebaum with additional lighting, color, and effects by our Compositors. 

Finally, I'm responsible for any of the 2D assets: photo plates, logos, graphics, and any puppeted characters.

A closer look at my 2D Tatooine and our cameos of a "Banthalupagus" and "R2-PU."

With stellar writing, performances, and source material to work from, these have been a blast to develop. We're currently in production on the recently-announced Avengers and Jurassic Park spoofs and here's a sneak preview of a few more upcoming episodes this season...

CRUMBY PICTURES _ Art Direction for Sesame Street

Long time, no blog.

I'm finally able to open the oven on CRUMBY PICTURES, the Cookie Monster movie trailer parody series that premiered on Season 44 ( ! ) of Sesame Street this week. Rather than a classroom curriculum of math or literacy, these shorts teach executive functions (self-control, patience, delayed gratification) by having the impetuous monster face personal challenges as the star of famous flicks (including Lord of the Rings, Life of Pi, and Hunger Games).

MAGNETIC DREAMS has worked with Sesame Workshop for years now (Elmo the Musical, shorts like Birdwalk Empire, Super Grover 2.0) creating computer-generated characters and backgrounds to accompany Muppet performances shot on green screen.

For Crumby Pictures, the goal was to make the production feel as much like the original movies as possible from little Easter Egg details to overall polish.

In classic Muppet fashion, the opening starts with a bang. A send-up of the Universal logo animation, one bite into a chocolate chip planet results in an exploding crumby debris field (rigged by Benjamin Rodriguez). Below is an alternate snazzier version of the logo I had proposed.

THE BISCOTTI KID (parody of The Karate Kid) was the first to air as a sneak preview on the internet. After the video are my logo and some still frames (Creative Director, Rickey Boyd and Comp Director, Rhea Borzak). A lot of great in-jokes in the script and I threw in some recognizable objects like the handheld drum from Karate Kid 2.

THE SPY WHO LOVED COOKIES (parody of both the old and new Bond movies, including the song "Cookie Fall") was essentially our pilot episode of the series. Most episodes contain a single full CG set (here, Ladyfinger's lair as concept art by me, final model by Brad Applebaum) and photocomp plates that I create and are thoroughly embellished by our compositing team.

Below are my backplate for the vista outside Ladyfinger's Lair and unused backgrounds for scenes in M's office and Q's lab that were cut for time.