Watch the Read a Book music video

As part of the ongoing CHF interview series for the In Rainbows Animated Music Video Contest, we bring you our first video interview. Tyree Dillihay, who directed the Flash-animated music video for Bomani “D’mite” Armah’s track Read a Book music video while working at Six Point Harness, details the production process, how the BET project landed in his lap, and the overwhelming reaction the video saw on the internet.

I personally think Tyree is being modest about the number of views Read a Book received so far. Of the clips currently still viewable on YouTube, there’s a good 3 million views, and previous clips accounted for millions more. I’d argue that Read a Book was one of the most viewed web clips of 2007.

I also want to direct your attention to Tyree’s Flash-animated short film Differences, which was also produced at Six Point Harness.

As part of the ongoing CHF Radiohead/Aniboom Interview Series, we visit with Andrew Kauervane, an artist with a history of music videos, and also a man with some skin in the game. He recently submitted this Flash-animated piece below to the contest. This is Andrew’s take on Radiohead’s moody track All I Need.

Here’s some concept designs Andrew sketched out before diving into production:

AARON SIMPSON: Tell us about the concept of your Radiohead contest submission?

ANDREW KAUERVANE: My concept really revolves around the concept of loneliness and love. I know it sounds corny but that’s what the lyrics did for me. My video exhibits a bit of a self-help message: There is someone out there for everyone. A rainbow to add meaning to your life. You just have to look for it; don’t mope.

AARON: How did this differ from your work on the SheBeats video you produced?

ANDREW: It’s significantly different because I’m doing something I like. I get to be as versatile as I want with the artwork and concept. With this one I’m going for a more avant garde look. I have flashing splatters serving as fills for items, film grain over the animation, and old black and white photography of wars, outdoors, and even newspaper clippings. I’m having alot of fun with this.

AARON: So, how is the process of directing a music video different from other animated work you’ve directed?

ANDREW: It’s not really that different. I stumble through pretending to know what I’m doing and people seem to like the outcome. With music videos it’s a lot less mathematical if that makes any sense. When I do “traditional” cartoons with a set script, voices, and all that I have more of a start to finish mentality. With music videos I feel like the only thing on my mind is doing it and liking the result. I’m a music kind of guy; it just brings out the best of me.

AARON: Do you have any routines for uncorking your creativity?

ANDREW: Yeah, it goes back to the music thing. Typically to get things flowing I listen to a band or musician that has a particular quirk that makes me click. That’s really about it.

AARON: Do you feel constrained to the narrative embodied in the lyrics?

ANDREW: I do. But that doesn’t mean I can’t really bring out the best of the lyrics in visual interpretation.

AARON: Do you find feedback important during the creation process?

ANDREW: I’ve actually never really thought about that. I suppose I do, I’m constantly sending progress of my work back and forth to this girl. I guess if I’m really close to the person I think feedback from them is really valuable; it is important.

AARON: Speaking of “important” – how important is it to keep the animation aligned with the rhythm of the music?

ANDREW: It is typically vital that the animation of a music video syncs up with the rhythm. At least for me anyways. It keeps me interested to see things move in accordance to its sound, it makes the animation vivid and, I think, makes listening to the song more enjoyable if it’s your first time hearing it.

AARON: How do you break up your process within the software? Animatic, rough animation, final?

ANDREW: At this point in my “career” I’m actually getting more into the preparation processes. In the past, I didn’t do any kind of storyboard or rough animation – I just had a drawing of the characters head shape behind everything, and I went straight into animation. However with the Shebeats video and now this All I Need project, and even with my more recent cartoon projects, I’ve been dipping my fingers in some storyboarding. I always thought it was interesting to see rough drawings go into something polished, so for me it makes the animation experience somehow… psychologically rewarding. If that makes sense.

AARON: Let’s take a look at some of Andrew’s storyboards from his Radiohead contest submission:

AARON: Do you currently have a favorite animated music video?

ANDREW: I would have to say my favorite animated video of all time is Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz. To this day I still strive to learn to make my animation move like Jamie Hewlett’s. Truly talented people.

We were already impressed. Tom Neely didn’t need to go become an award-winning graphic novelist, or launch an amazing gallery show. His self-published graphic novel The Blot was received with an abundance of rave reviews, and his gallery show at the Black Maria Gallery was packed with 34 new paintings and scores of people at the opening. But now we’re more impressed.

Neely at the Black Maria Gallery

Before all that, Neely wowed us with his film Brother, Can You Spare a Job?, which resulted from the success of his entry into the 2003 Bush in 30 Seconds contest, where he placed as one of 4 finalists in the Animation category. His follow-up was an eye-popping music video for the band The Muffs – again in the Fleisher-style. In this Radiohead Contest interview below, Neely details the production of this video as well several other projects he has his fingers in now.

AARON: Why are music videos often so “experimental?”

TOM: I guess there’s just more freedom because it’s film done on a small scale with fewer people involved. I think that’s the best way to get really creative ideas made. Music often lends itself to more abstract ideas, so experimental visuals work well with that. It’s more accessible for a short video to be abstract or experimental for some audiences because the music gives them an anchor to help understand the film. Looking at music videos on TV these days, I think we need a lot more experimentation to come up with some better ideas.

AARON: How is the process of directing a music video different from other animated work you’ve directed?

TOM: Well, I’ve only really done 2 cartoons. Stylistically, my two cartoons are very similar, but the differences between The Muffs video and Brother, Can You Spare a Job? were pretty significant. For Brother… I animated the whole story without sound. When it was near finished, Greg (co-writer on this cartoon) picked out a lot of music that he thought would fit. In many cases we were amazed that some musical cues just fell right in place perfectly. Others had to be edited, or the animation would be tweaked to fit a little better. With the music video, the music came first and was the inspiration for much of it. When I heard the opening chords of Don’t Pick On Me I immediately saw the opening scene of the Villain tying Kim to the tracks while a train was chugging along in time with the music. The whole idea came to me pretty easily the first time I heard the song. Brother… was my first cartoon, and the animation is much more limited and relies heavily on Flash tweens and symbols. I think I made some significant improvements when I did The Muffs video. But looking back at it a few years later, it looks a little too “Flashy” to me… Not that there’s anything wrong with Flash, but when you’re using it to make something that looks more like old animation, the limitations become obvious.

The Muffs – Don’t Pick on Me

AARON: So what work-arounds did you employ to make Flash work for you?

TOM: Flash has a lot of limitations, and I think I found every one of them while working on this cartoon. But the one thing that I think Flash does well is working with that rubber-hose style. For many of the arms and legs of the characters in my Muffs video, I would draw with the stroke set to 5 or 6 and then animate those parts directly in Flash by drawing with the pencil tool. After animating a full sequence of rubber-hose arms, I’d then select all of those strokes, convert lines to fill, color them, and then add a black outline stroke around the new shapes. Some of them would have to be re-drawn in the end, but the stroke tool works pretty well for rubber-hose animation.

AARON SIMPSON: For your Don’t Pick On Me music video, what reference animation inspired you?

TOM NEELY: I’ve always been a big fan of the early Fleischer Studios stuff. All the Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons are my favorites. Nothing beats the weird surrealism and frantic action of some of that stuff. The Kim character was sort of designed after a combination of Betty Boop and Olive Oyl. Early Mickeys and Bosco and really just about any black & white era animation is a big inspiration to me. I love all that stuff. The villain character was largely inspired by Snidely Whiplash from the Dudley Do-Right cartoons, but also many of the stereotypical silent-era villains that inspired the character of Snidely. For some of the gags, I took a lot of inspiration from the king of gags – Tex Avery. The safe falling on the X gag is stolen from one of his cartoons (I can’t remember which one off the top of my head). The banjo gag is a variation of the old dynamite-piano-key gag that was in a lot of Tom & Jerry and Daffy vs Bugs and other cartoons. I’m not really a gag man, so I relied heavily on gags that I’ve always loved from old cartoons. It’s hard to come up with new gags when it seems like all the best were already made by Avery and Jones.

AARON: How important is it to keep the animation aligned with the rhythm of the music?

TOM: I think it depends on your story. With my video, I wanted the characters to be acting and singing along with the music, so it was very important. But other videos might be less reliant on that kind of timing. This cartoon was the first time I ever animated to sound. Kim singing is my first attempt at syncing the mouth animation to sound. It was hard to figure out. I don’t know anything about time-sheets or any of the “real” way that animators do that. I just figure out my own way to do it. I think, for the most part, it worked out okay. But there are some parts of the animation that I wish were synced to the beat of the music a little better – like the mallets hitting the villains head in the last scene – they’re just slightly off from the beat of the song and that has always bugged me.

AARON: Do you have any routines for uncorking your creativity?

Rise Above – 2007 print by Tom Neely
from his show at the Black Maria Gallery

TOM: I take a lot of long walks around my neighborhood when I’m working out story ideas. Just me, my dog and my iPod and I’ll just wander around the streets thinking about how to work out my stories. Once I figure out the problems, I go home, sit in my back yard with a pot of tea and write/sketch out my ideas in a sketchbook.

AARON: Once those ideas are in motion, do you find feedback important?

TOM: It can help sometimes, but often I find it more of a hindrance. Everyone brings their own ideas to the table, so anyone who looks at your art will give you advice based on how they would do something. I usually find it more frustrating than helpful. When I’m working on more personal work, like my comics or painting, I don’t really show anyone until I’m done, or near done. I don’t like to have anyone else’s voice in my head while I’m working on my own art. I always think about something Philip Guston once said about this:

(paraphrasing) When I first come into the studio to work, there is this noisy crowd which follows me there including all of the important painters in history, all my contemporaries, all the art critics. One by one they all leave. Eventually all of them will disappear. Then even I leave the room and then I can begin to paint.

When I have a problem that needs some outside opinion, I have a few close friends who are artists that I trust to give me good advice. But for the most part, I prefer to finish a project, then hear the critiques and learn from mistakes that I find in the finished work. Otherwise, too much outsider interference can really slow down or destroy my creative process.

AARON: Do you have a favorite animated music video?

TOM: Hmmm… I don’t know if I have a favorite. Off the top of my head a few pop into mind – that new Bjork video (Wanderlust) is pretty cool. That White Stripes video that was animated with Legos is really cool. Monkmus has done some good ones. I like all the Gorillaz stuff. I really like some of Steve Woloshen’s abstract scratch-film animations. He did one to a Hendrix song (Curse of the Voodoo Child) that would sort of count as a music video. I haven’t really kept up with some of that recently. Some of the best animated “music videos” were done back when Louis Armstrong or Cab Calloway lent their songs and voices to Betty Boop cartoons.

Snow White (1933) Cab Calloway singing St. James Infirmary
Betty Boop film directed by Dave Fleisher, animation by Roland Crandall

AARON: Your graphic novel The Blot was well received last year. Do you have another one on the way? Any more animation in your future plans?

Tom Neely’s self-published graphic novel
The Blot - Order Now

TOM: Yeah, it’s been doing really well. I won an Ignatz Award, got a lot of good reviews, and ended up on several “Best of 2007″ lists in the comics journalism world. It’s a self published book and it’s been a lot of work to get it out there, but it’s doing well so far. I’m happy with it.

As for current projects in comics: I’m working on a comic book that will be a part of a box set by the band The Melvins. I’ve always loved the Melvins, so it’s been a lot of fun. The box set is a limited edition vinyl release of their album A Senile Animal that will come out from Hydra Head Records later this summer. Many of the song titles for that album were things like The Blood Witch and A Talking Horse which made it easy to come up with an interesting cast of characters. The story doesn’t follow the lyrics of the album, but their lyrics are pretty surreal and nonsensical anyway. I’m using that surrealism as the inspiration to write my own story with these characters. It’s sort of like a comic-book music video for the whole album (you can see the first 6 pages on my blog). I’m also writing my next graphic novel, but that’s still in the early stages and I don’t know when I’ll be done with it. And I’ve been posting weekly “comic strip poems” on my blog every Wednesday. It’s funny to me that everyone keeps telling me that my comic strips are depressing.

In animation, I’ve been doing a lot of freelance work for Disney. If you’ve seen the “my pets” thing on their Game Kingdom website (must be a paid member to view), I created and animated all the hybrid-animal pets that you can “adopt.” Apparently it’s the most popular thing on their site and they’re thinking of making toys of the characters that I designed. Someday I’ll wake up and see them on Saturday morning cartoons and I won’t see a dime from it – ha ha! I’ve also done a little bit of background clean-up work on the new Kids’WB! series The Spectacular Spider-Man.

I’m helping my friend Levon Jihanian on an animated short that he has created. It’s sort of an Adult-Swim-ish cartoon based on his Giraffe Death Force characters. He is doing all the key art and backgrounds while I’m animating it for him in Flash. It will be very limited animation in the style similar to the old Johnny Quest cartoons. And lastly, I’m doing a little animated intro to a friend’s independent film that involves two platypus characters and a bong.

So, I’m still doing lots of Flash animation every day for freelance work, but I don’t have any of my own animation projects on the horizon. I’d like to do more of my own animation someday, but lately I find myself wanting to get away from the computer and just going to the drawing board to pursue my more personal work in comics and painting. But there are ideas in the back of my head for cartoons that I will hopefully get around to someday.

In October of 2007, CHF featured M. Wartella’s psychedelic music video for The Go’s track You Go Bangin’ On. He joins us today for a very insightful interview into his process, his past music videos and his recent work on Adult Swim’s upcoming series Superjail.

AARON SIMPSON: How did the You Go Bangin’ On music video land on your plate?

Go watch M. Wartella’s music video
You Go Bangin’ On

M. WARTELLA: Well, we’ve been friends with and following The Go since their Sub Pop days. We try to catch their shows when they come through town (New York City), you know, hang out, drink their beer, and over the years we’ve just kind of become friends. Since they were looking to do something different for their latest record, they asked me to do the album art. Of course, as soon as I heard the new tracks, I was happy to oblige because I think this is their best release to date, and the critics seem to agree so far. But basically, the band decided they wanted to have an animated music video too, so that is how it came about.

AARON: Did you “pitch” your animation concept to the band before starting?
M. WARTELLA: At first, we wanted the whole video to be animated, kind of like a Yellow Submarine or Josie & The Pussycats thing where the band is drawn as cartoon characters. But as I started thinking more about it, I realized that most people, especially the band’s fans, would probably want to see real pictures of the group, not my drawings. So we started playing around with more of a Terry Gilliam/Monty Python paper cut-out approach. Of course, I realized that this was going to involve a photo shoot, and once I knew we were gonna have to do a shoot, I decided that we should just film the band “live” against a black backdrop, and then superimpose a “psych-out” style animation on top of them, like an old Jefferson Airplane or The Strawberry Alarm Clock type thing (below).

AARON: Explain the process behind creating the video.
M. WARTELLA: Well, we shot all the live footage last July 4th out in Williamsburg, when the band was swinging through New York on tour. Lighting is key to getting good video footage, so we really took our time and set it up right and we used the biggest, hottest lights we could get. Since this was a real low-budget thing, I went down to Chinatown and had a huge black felt backdrop made. We hung that in a friend’s silk-screen studio, and then it was just a matter of getting the band there. Always tell the band to get there earlier then you’re gonna need them, because they’re always late. And with make-up people and the video crew all on the clock, every second counts. Of course the whole band did finally arrive, which was a major accomplishment since Marc, the drummer, ripped his hand open the night before when we were all trying to jump a chain link fence after drinking at the bar. He had to go to the hospital and get stitches and everything. Probably didn’t get much sleep, but he still made it and did a great job. If you look close you can see his hand is bandaged in a few shots.

AARON: And the actual animated elements of the video?
M. WARTELLA: Well, it was actually really easy to set up. First I did a tight edit of the footage, and then I imported the Quicktime into Flash, and just started working right on top of the video, drawing, sketching and experimenting right there in Flash. All the shots were already set up and the cuts were in place, so that provided my structure, and then it was just a matter of finding cool optical effects to accent the band. I spent about one month off and on doing the drawings, watching old psych-out footage and picking up the tricks, that sort of thing. At the end, I exported the Flash files as .swfs and composited them onto the video using After Effects and Photoshop. There isn’t really any blending or blur on the artwork… my goal was to make it as electric and vibrant as possible. Pure electricity. Just something that would completely bug your eyes out. The crazy thing is, the first few times I watched the video it had that effect, but after working on it so long, it just seems normal to me now!

AARON: Song lyrics can often be suggestive or downright abstract. Do you feel the need to tell a literal story with your animation?

M. Wartella on the stage of the
You Go Bangin’ On shoot

M. WARTELLA: I think that would have to be a case by case basis, and it would depend on what you were trying to accomplish with your video. With The Go, some of the lines I decided to illustrate in a very literal way, but it is almost impossible to do that for every line. So that is where the artist’s own sensibilities come into play, and hopefully your style jives up with that of the band.

AARON: When compared to a traditional narrative short, is the storytelling process different for a music video?
M. WARTELLA: I think the secret to a good music video is the constant build. You always have to be out-doing yourself, and that is the approach I took with You Go Bangin’ On. Each verse or chorus has to up the visual ante from the one before. Just build, build, build, build until you get to the end and it is just about to explode and then the viewers are like, “Wow… I gotta see that again!”

AARON: You have so many creative outlets – comics, animation, illustration. Do you have a favorite?
M. WARTELLA: I would definitely place animation at the top of that list. I’ve always been lucky enough to be able to make money off of my art, ever since I was a kid, so I really do enjoy all the various outlets and opportunities that’ve come my way. Of course, I still get a thrill seeing my work in print, like I’ve been contributing to Arthur magazine lately, and doing packaging is creatively a lot of fun given the right project, but animation and video is definitely where I have my sights set. It’s a medium that can be amazingly captivating — especially when music is involved — and now with the web finally at that level where the average joe can download a clip in real time, I think we are at an unprecedented point in it’s history.

AARON: You’ve been working as a professional artist since the early 90s. When did you make the digital transition?

M. Wartella’s Ackxhpaez

M. WARTELLA: Well, I’ve actually been working as a published artist since the 80s! When I was a kid, about ten years old, I sold my first weekly comic strip to a small local newspaper in Pennsylvania. I did that for about a year and a half — never missed a deadline either! So that was my first taste of cartooning and getting a little of that recognition of having your friends see your work in print. By the time I was in college in the early to mid 90s, I started doing stuff for campus publications, and eventually started a daily comic strip called Ackxhpaez. That in turn got picked up by the editor of the alt-weekly paper in town, who had come across some of my work and hired me to do weekly strips for them. By the time I moved to New York and really started working “professionally”, I already had a good portfolio together and it all grew from there.

My first computer was a Commodore 64 in the 80s, but my art was limited to making little sprite-type animations or the equivalent of ASCII text drawings. Around 1994, I started working on a Mac, and did a few crude animations using their old HyperCard program. Then Macromedia came out with Director and Shockwave which was great. I had no official animation training, but I just kind of intuitively started picking it up. The final key was being introduced on a job to the Wacom on-screen drawing tablets, I call ‘em “digitizer pads”. This was basically like moving up to a Word Processor if you’d only ever used an old typewriter. It just made digitizing your art so much easier and I still use the Wacom screen tablet to this day… nearly ten years now. Coincidently, it was on that job that I met Aaron Augenblick, who would later go on to start a full-fledged animation studio using the same technology.

Front Row (from L to R): Jeremy Jusay, Kevin Lofton, Aaron
Augenblick, Jared Deal, Lou Solis
Back Row (from L to R): M. Wartella, Kimson Albert, Ed Hawkins III,
Peter Browngardt, Lynda Nettleship, Kris Wollinger, Joy Kolitsky, Ian
Zucchino

AARON: The buzz on Adult Swim’s Superjail is bubbling. Tell us about your experience on this new series.
M. WARTELLA: Well, Superjail is a great project and a lot of fun. Aaron Augenblick, the show’s director, and Christy Karacas, the show’s creator, are both really creative individuals, so the entire process was very laid-back and entertaining. Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts I wasn’t able to be as involved with the actual drawing of the show as I was with the pilot, so I’m just as excited to see the episodes as you are. The final writing for the series was done by John Lee of Wonder Showzen fame, who I am coincidentally working with on the Adult Swim show Xavier: Renegade Angel doing animatic storyboards.

But with Superjail, every episode would start out as a rough nugget of an idea from Christy. Aaron came up with a really cool way to work, where we’d get all the artists together and actually write the show as a group. That worked out great, everybody throwing out ideas in a roundtable environment, and that really gave me the opportunity to flourish because working with Aaron I’d always be coming up with ideas of little gags to hide in the background, or just little improvements I’d think of on the spot.

M. Wartella’s design for the Adult Swim
series Superjail

But it was a great experience to actually shape a show like Superjail because the writing is where it all starts. And with everyone all together, you just get swept up in the imagination of it all, acting out the different characters and just making jokes up off the top of your head. And I’m really into plot structures, like with movies and all, so for me, developing a script is kind of like putting a puzzle together, when to reveal what pieces of information so as to keep up the suspense or whatever. I can’t say enough good things about working with those guys and the experience, really.

AARON: Do you find feedback important during the creation process?

Cover art for the book
Chew On This

M. WARTELLA: Feedback is extremely important for me, which is one of the most frustrating things about being a cartoonist, because there isn’t that instantaneous reaction like if you were a musician or actor on stage. Oftentimes, you’ll draw something and you’re lucky to get a few emails about it down the line. But that’s why contact is so important, and I always try to write to artists whose work I come across and like. Just a few words to an artist in an email can really create an incredible catharsis.

AARON: What is on your plate ahead? More music videos?
M. WARTELLA: Well, we are in pre-production on another music video for The Go – for a new song of their’s called Puzzle People. You can imagine what the visuals on that one’ll be like. I love working with bands whose music I’m into. I’ve been trying to talk Christy into doing one for his band Cheeseburger — you know, like with a giant claymation cheeseburger chasing the band down the street or something.

But I do think it is important to have that connection to the music… I don’t think I could make a very good video for Ashlee Simpson or Josh Groban. But there are a lot of great bands and artists in New York right now, it’d be great to build on that.

Album cover art for
The GO’s album Howl On The Haunted
Beat You Ride

I’d personally love to do a video for Awesome Color or collaborate with someone like Ryan Adams who is a cool visual artist in his own right.

AARON: Do you have a favorite animated music video?
M. WARTELLA: I have fond memories of the “Sledgehammer” video, though I’m not particularly a fan of Peter Gabriel. Or maybe “TV Dinners” by Z.Z. Top. I dunno about MC Skat Cat. What is he a scatological cat? That’s dirty. I really like those bad 80s animated music movies, like Rock & Rule and Heavy Metal. And of course Fantastic Planet (below). Though that isn’t technically a music video, music plays a big role in creating the feel of that film.

AARON: Anything else?
M. WARTELLA: I guess that’s it. Over and out. Thank you!

A few familiar faces have started submitting their animatics to the Radiohead Animated Music Video Contest over at Aniboom. Have a look, and then go submit your own – only 12 days left!

Mike Hollingsworth chose the Bodysnatchers track for his entry:

Alex Dron and Bede Brown’s take on Jigsaw:

**** UPDATE ****

Ryan Kramer also produced his submission in Flash, for the song All I Need.

Not inspired enough yet to submit your video to the Radiohead Video Contest? Well perhaps Motomichi Nakamura can whip you into shape. His new Flash-animated music video for Temposhark’s track Blame keeps it simple – using black, white and red colors to create a lasting impression. Head over to SubmarineChannel to watch the full video.

[link]

A little over a year ago, we featured James Reitano’s brilliant music video for Cut Chemist’s single Spat. He’s now joining us for a Radiohead/Aniboom Contest interview.

AARON SIMPSON: How did you “pitch” the concept of the Spat video to Luke MacFadden, otherwise known as Cut Chemist?

JAMES REITANO: I actually wanted to make an educational video with Jurassic 5, kind of a Schoolhouse Rap thing. Luke had seen the All Caps video, and wanted one for his upcoming solo record. After a failed start in early 2005, we revived the idea in spring of ’06, and got it going.

AARON: How did this string of animated music videos all come about?

JAMES: I think I fell into it by accident. KutMasta Kurt talked me into doing an animated video for his Masters Of Illusion LP with Kool Keith. I had never taken on 3 minutes of animation before, so I was hesitant. Kurt kept assuring me that it was doable and we wrapped it up in 2 months, and the reception was really good. From there, Biz Markie asked for one, and, the ball just got rolling. And I also have a deep love for music, so it’s kind of not too surprising that I’d be involved in one way or another.

AARON: Are there any tricks to producing a music video?

JAMES: The biggest trick is asking the client to give you a chunk of money. Once you have that commitment from someone, the trick is making yourself a hard schedule and sticking to it.

AARON: Do you feel constrained to the narrative embodied in the lyrics?

JAMES: That’s the first thing I try and get on the table. I’d rather not stick to a strict lyrical narrative. I think that can be a mistake. I’ve always loved videos that capture the emotion of the music or the general vibe. Sometimes you can do interesting things by playing off of the lyrics, but I’ve always preferred to keep the visuals ambiguous.

AARON: How is the process of directing a music video different from other animated work you’ve directed?

JAMES: The music video clients always tend to be thrilled to see their music visualized. Plus it becomes your own little short film with far more freedom than something like a broadcast series or title sequence which is usually based on a pre-written script.

AARON: How do you come up with concepts for your music videos?

JAMES: I like to have a little shelf of ideas ready to go. Most times the band approaches me with a general idea, and then we built on that. That can be a great process.

AARON: Do you find feedback important during the creation process?

JAMES: I think general critical feedback is vital. The beauty of the internet is you’ll hear what people really think of something, rather than the usual cocktail party critique of “Wow, that’s soooo awesome!” It’s important to have 2 or more associates who can give you unbiased criticism on something. But won’t make you cry!

AARON: Below is an image gallery of Reitano’s development artwork from various projects.

AARON: When did you first start using Flash?

JAMES: I first learned Director in 1997. That was my first try at animation. I loved it, but was always frustrated that I had to convert my vector art to bitmaps. So when I learned Flash a year later (Flash 3 I believe), I was thrilled.

AARON: How do you break up your process within the software – animatic, rough animation, final?

JAMES: I usually start with some key tests in Flash or After Effects. From there, I start the storyboarding/animatic process. Then I start on the key animation, working toward a final cut, either in Final Cut or After Effects.

AARON: With MTV’s viewership in decline, and TV viewing of music videos at an all-time low, why (and where) are music videos still important?

JAMES: I think it’s probably more important than ever. I do think the marketing of music is changing drastically, and, video (and animation especially), is going to be a part of that. Maybe not the whole 3 minute song, but definitely incorporating visuals to music. It’ll be important for music video directors to involve themselves into the online distribution process as well. Getting YOUR video out there will be as important to you as it will be for the band. A clever music video director (like a Michel Gondry) can turn the video into an ad for himself as much as it is for the band.

AARON: Do you have a favorite animated music video?

JAMES: There’s so many, but one of the first I ever saw was Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel’s video for Tom Tom Club’s Genius Of Love (which is based on James Rizzi’s pop art work). This really captures the song as well as the bands whole aesthetic.

AARON: What are you currently work on?

JAMES: Right now we just finished up a video for Manchester Orchestra which is in the approval process. The biggest thing is an upcoming graphic novel for Wu-Tang’s GZA which I’m writing and illustrating.

After challenging the conventional album distribution system last Fall, Radiohead has turned its attention to how animated music videos are produced. On March 17th, the band announced that it had teamed up with Aniboom and Adult Swim for a groundbreaking music video contest. The concept of a user or listener-generated music video contest goes back to Madonna and MTV’s 1986 Make My Video competition, but when a band of Radiohead’s size is paired with the connective possibilities of the internet, we’re likely to see uncommon results.

Those results will arrive in 4 stages, starting with the April 27th deadline for the storyboard submission round. In this initial phase, animators, writers and other artists can submit a clip displaying their concept for a music video – using any song from Radiohead’s #1 album In Rainbows. The field will be subsequently whittled down to 10 semifinalists, who will each be awarded $1,000 to make a 1-minute music video. These 10 are culled to 5 finalists, whose work is then presented to the band.

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke

Finally, on June 30th, the winner will receive $10,000 to make a full version of their video (complete schedule and rules)

The 4-step process is a clever approach to the ever popular world of user-generated content, or UGC. It lowers the bar for entry, allowing artists to dip a toe into the contest without committing a month of their life to a submission that may not even make the finals. It’s actually an analog of the traditional method employed at major animation studios: concepts are presented, a rough pass is produced and then the final work is revealed to scrutinizing executives. Only here, the “executives” are one of the coolest bands in the world.

And while we know Radiohead for their progressive approach to the music industry and their unique blend of sonic experimentalism and alternative rock power, they know a thing or two about music videos. Jamie Thraves’ music video for Radiohead’s 1995 track Just is often listed amongst the best music videos of all time, and another three, Fake Plastic Trees, Karma Police and Street Spirit (Fade Out), have received similar acclaim. Their music videos are simply legendary. It’s enough pressure to make an animator freeze up in fear.

So to help get the ball rolling, Aniboom partnered with the dynamic animation duo comprised of Jon M. Gibson and Gabe Swarr. The two were tapped to create a promotional and inspirational animated short (below) which would accompany the contest announcement.

You may know Gibson from i am 8-bit, the video game themed art exhibit that has now spawned a popular book, but he’s also a sought-after screenwriter for studios like Disney and Nickelodeon.

Jon talks with Gabe and his wife Karla
at the i am 8 bit show
(photo credit Andrew Speers)

Swarr’s resume goes back to Spumco, where he helped pioneer the online Flash animation movement, but he has since made a name for himself as a director and storyboard artist on animated TV series like El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera. The two have been collaborating for years now, but this is by far their biggest experiment. Over a million online views later, the two have to be pleased with how their promo short turned out, but let’s take a look at how that all came together.

Both Gabe and Jon joined CHF in an interview – the first in a lengthy series of Aniboom/Radiohead pieces we’ll be revealing over the next few months.

AARON SIMPSON: Gabe, you mentioned on your blog that this piece deviates from your natural style. Did you draw from any sources to discover this new look?

GABE SWARR: Actually, when we were first talking to Aniboom, they mentioned “realistic” and “photographs” and I immediately didn’t want to do it. It just didn’t interest me at all. I thought this thing was going to be bad and really couldn’t wrap my brain around it.

So after Jon convinced me “we should at least try it,” I put it out of my mind, and tried not to think about it for a while. I try to do this as much as possible, and then let the idea come to me naturally. My friend Ricky calls it “unloading.” The idea actually came to me in a dream a couple days later. I woke up early in the morning and jotted down the concept.

Information Graphics
by Peter Wildbur & Michael Burke

As far as the look is concerned, I really like anything incredibly graphic, be it sprites from videogames, ads, maps, or even graffiti. A couple of years ago I bought this book called Information Graphics filled with diagrams and maps and instructions. In there was a really cool looking medical diagram of how to use an ICU. That mixed with some subway maps, and some cool textures I came across and the look was born.

AARON: So much of your work is in the comedic direction, was it refreshing to “play it straight” on this one?

GABE: This one was like a giant experiment. I always like to try new things, but a lot of times, they are just too crazy. I remember I sat down with Matt Gadbois (our expert After Effects compositor), and explained what I wanted to do and he just couldn’t figure it out. Maybe I just didn’t explain it too well.

The whole thing was a big gamble. We were on a VERY compressed schedule and to try this many new things at once was a formula for disaster… but we did it. If we had more time, I would have done a lot more in 3D. But I had to restrict it for the time allowed.

AARON: The video seems like a heavily stylized metaphor for the contest – idea, creation and distribution. Was that your vision?

GABE: Yes, exactly. Someone gets inspired by music, and creates something. The video is about the journey that the inspiration/music takes through your body. The actual path was from the headphones, to your ears, fills your brain with ideas, it goes to your heart for the meaning, you eyes for the vision, and finally your hands for the conduit to the world.

AARON: Do you personally find music artistically inspiring?

GABE: Of course! I love to listen to music with my eyes closed. I’ve done that since I was little. I think that every genre of music has really powerful imagery which usually has nothing to do with what they are actually singing about.

AARON: The lyrics to Bodysnatchers hint at being trapped inside one’s own body. Did you lean on any of the song’s lyrics for inspiration?

Concept Sketch by Gabe

GABE: It kinda fell together actually. The concept came first and then I heard Bodysnatchers. It was a natural fit for the idea. The song drove everything from the look, the feel, and especially the timing. I broke down the lyrics, tempo, and the beats, and then tracked everything to that. In my opinion, all the best music videos are made that way.

I have to say, I love doing music videos. I would never pass up a chance to do one. They are so much fun to visually represent something completely non-visual. I had the same approach when I did the i am 8-bit opening (below) and Fuck Her Gently for Tenacious D.

AARON: Did you create an animatic before diving in?

GABE: Of course, they are deadly essential and I never work without them.

AARON: And what decisions are made during the animatic phase?

GABE: Usually there are very few changes from storyboard to animatic, but this time I got a good chunk done and started the animatic right away. After it started coming together, I went back and boarded the rest and then finished the animatic. The board and animatic were both done in a day. A very long day.

AARON: I’m guessing that wasn’t the only long day – it looks like some elaborate masking was employed in this video. Was that all produced in Flash?

Early video concept

GABE: Yes, some crazy tedious masking went into this one. I did all the animation in Flash. Every shot was then composited in After Effects, like the process used on El Tigre.

AARON: With so much directing lately at Nickelodeon, do you get to animate much anymore?

GABE: Well, I’ve been recruited to do a lot of the Flash animation fixes for El Tigre. I’m slowly getting back up to speed. I love to animate, I think it’s one of the most rewarding parts, but the setup and prep work in Flash takes so stinking long.

AARON: Is this tedious process something you see technology fixing down the road, or is it just the nature of building digital art?

Parenting functionality promised
for next version of Flash

GABE: I think with the new parenting function of the new Flash might help, but I think it’s just the nature of the beast. If you want to keep everything really efficient and well organized, it takes some time to set it up right.

AARON: What’s it like collaborating with Jon?

GABE: I love working for Jon because he really trusts me. He leaves me alone to get stuff done, which is the best kind of Producer. I’ve had so many experiences where I spent more time explaining things than the actual time it took to finish those things. He’s really good at dealing with the client too. Jon does all the back and forth and I don’t have to deal with it.

Gabe’s El Tigre design

I think it’s kinda the same working relationship that William Hanna and Joe Barbera had. Joe would go out and take meetings, pitch and sell, and Bill would sit at the studio and run it. It worked for them for decades.

One more amazing thing about Jon is that anyone that knows him, knows that when he comes up with an idea to do something, usually it’s happening within a week if its conception. There’s something not right about that boy. He must have made a deal with the devil. Well, at least that’s one client Jon can deal with by himself.

Jon M. Gibson
(photo credit Andrew Speers)

AARON: Speaking of Jon, let’s turn our attention to Mr. Gibson. I’m going to start with a non-question. This is a pretty incredible opportunity for an animator…

JON M. GIBSON: I’d like to start with the opposite of a non-question: How sick are you of people saying you got into animation because you have the last name Simpson?

AARON: It was either cartoons or pop songs, but Jessica won’t return my calls. Back to the question – opportunities like this don’t come along every day; can you put this one in perspective amidst all the other online UGC projects out there?

JON: The biggest difference — users don’t have to submit a final, polished, over-the-top, “wow”-a-second video. It’s merely a presentation piece. You create a storyboard, and then move onto the next step. Aniboom recognizes that making a music video isn’t easy — not one bit — so expecting one user to produce the holy grail of awesome vids without many resources… well, that’s just silly. What this contest allows for is a step-by-step process, as ANY other production would be run, starting with the most important element of all — the storyboard. That’s the road map for the entire storytelling process, and at least from our perspective, story and character are king, and both of those are made or broken in the storyboard process. If something isn’t working right, it’s much easier to tweak it on a storyboard than in an animatic or after animation has started. So with this contest, users can actually get feedback while still advancing to the next round. Maybe something worked amazingly well, while this other little element didn’t — the judges will have enough foresight to see that potential.

AARON: Were you a fan of Radiohead prior to landing this project?

Jorge Gutierrez

JON: If you ask our pal Jorge Gutierrez, the ridiculously multi-talented co-creator of El Tigre, not nearly as “big a fan” as he is. We had to come to terms with this before accepting the project — because we knew if we disappointed Jorge with this particular video, our fate would feel something like drowning in a bathtub filled with tequila.

But, dude — of course. What’s the point of having your own studio if you can’t work of stuff you actually want to work on? Gabe and I vowed from the very beginning to only take on projects that we had a passion for. Sure, sometimes we don’t like something outright, but our gut says there’s something cool about it. Your gut’s usually always right. It’s like when you see a girl and there’s just that “thing” that attracts you to her, but you can’t… quite… put your finger on it.

I feel like I drifted from the question a bit. So, anyway… Karma Police was heard on many carpools to high school my sophomore year. My buddy Pat did dig the Radiohead quite a bit. Made those cold Michigan mornings a bit more tolerable, ‘cause he had holes rusted through almost every inch of his car. That sucked. But I gotta say — “Optimistic” from Kid A is my favorite Radiohead song. It’s one of those songs where I get so caught up in the music that I could never actually recite the lyrics for you — it’s got such a fucking fantastic mood.

AARON: Any word from Jorge? He must have seen the video by now.

Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi

JON: This is why I love Jorge — he deliberately issues “challenges” of sorts. He knows exactly how my brain works, as well as Gabe’s. He knows that if he prods us a little we will strive that much harder to impress the hell out of him. He did that to me in 2004 when I said I wanted to do an art show about 80’s videogames called i am 8-bit. He said I was biting off a lot more than I could chew. And everything he said was right — it was hard as hell — but because he said that, I wanted to do it more. Same thing with the Ralph Bakshi book. A lot of people said we (my co-author Chris McD) were crazy — that we’d probably start but never finish. No one else was stepping up to the plate, and we knew the book had to exist. To have the privilege of chronicling someone’s legacy — that’s motivation enough.

At the same time, I really like to see how close friends react to any project. Whether it’s writing a book or a script or showing off a finished video like this — whether the reaction is good or bad — your close friends are the only ones that are going to be totally honest. My mom is never going to tell me she hates something. I can’t speak for Gabe, but I think we both value our inner-circle screenings tremendously. This is where the rawest opinions are spoken, whether we agree with them or not. When doing ANYTHING in a creative field, it’s important to have that kind of feedback system. I never want to be insulated to the point where I’m not asking other people’s opinions about EVERYTHING I do. It’s like driving drunk.

AARON: Did you guys have the choice of any track from In Rainbows?

In Rainbows

JON: Yeah, we had carte blanche of any track from the album, and Bodysnatchers was an instant standout. It has energy — a pulse. And if you listen closely to the lyrics, everything syncs amazingly well to the visuals. But that’s also the awesome thing about this Aniboom contest — anyone who enters is given the same choice of any track. That makes judging exponentially more difficult, but that’s the fun of it, right? — seeing how varied the results will be. It’s always cool to see how hundreds of different artists interpret something. No single idea is God.

AARON: What kind of turn-around time were you looking at for this kickoff piece?

JON: Well, we had a lot less time to complete our video than everyone else entering the contest will have. It was a rodeo of a schedule — about two weeks. That meant a lot of late nights, but the response we’ve gotten has made it so worth it. Though, none of us would ever recommend this tight a schedule for any production. It hurts. You sweat. It’s always nice to sit back, put something away, and get a chance to breathe. When you look at it again, it’s with fresh eyes — and a fresh perspective.

Breaking down the track

This is often times a luxury that just isn’t realistic in the production pipeline, but as an artist, you should always try to take that breath. And man, it’s all about having a killer crew. Gabe and I just work naturally well together, and special props must be given to the brilliant Matt Gadbois for headlining the heavy After Effects work.

AARON: Can you point out which elements in the video were built by Matt?

GABE: Every camera move and transition was recreated and perfected in After Effects by Matt. At one point, he didn’t like the way it was turning out so he gutted the whole setup and re-did the entire first half. He’s great! I love to work with perfectionists that aren’t crippled by their own obsessions.

JON: Like Gabe mentioned, all the animation was done in Flash, but the rest of the video was assembled, composited, and pieced together like a really intricate puzzle in After Effects. The animated character layered over the live-action footage, plus the motion-control on the jostle of each step — that’s Matt. The color treatment on the rainbows flowing through the body — that’s Matt. So many integral aspects of the video — like the many layers of subtle but incredibly effective visual filters — were all Matt. And he did so much more than that. He was often the last guy in the office, because he had to do final outputs. Basically, Matt rocks. Matt fucking rocks! He’s an incredibly integral part of the team, and has been indispensable to our other friend’s productions as well, especially with Jorge’s projects like his pilot at Disney, Pepe the Bull, El Tigre, lots of great stuff with the awesome Dave Wasson, and so on.

AARON: Was the band involved in any of the creative details of your video?

JON: The band had total concept approval, but gave us complete freedom to explore that concept. Gabe came up with a really cool way to visualize the idea of how an artist might be inspired by music. It’s such an abstract concept that figuring out an idea to illustrate that “inspiration” wasn’t easy. In fact, there were a few failed concepts that we immediately flunked when we discussed amongst ourselves. After some debate, finally — it was fleshed out. Using the Bodysnatchers track, we used bits of the visual design of the album — stark blacks and whites with washes of rainbows. We pitched that to the band and they didn’t disagree with a single word. This is an amazing thing — artists trusting other artists to do what they do best is how some of the coolest projects come to fruition.

It’s something that Ralph Bakshi always did so well — hiring guys for their own personal style of art, then making that work within the context of the story he wanted to tell. Dudes like Barry Jackson, Peter Chung, Ira Turek, James Gurney, Thomas Kincade, and so many others were graduates of that technique. He trusted his guys to run wild. That’s why Gabe and I are such good friends — he’s not afraid to just roll with it, experiment, flex those creative muscles. It’s when you get totally comfortable as an artist that it’s probably time to retire. I want to learn something new every single day until I die.

Gabe and his Mario collection

You know why I really like Gabe? He doesn’t exclusively watch Tex Avery cartoons and drool. He listens to Devo, electro-clash, and always has a new obscure song for me to listen to. He watches TV shows and movies while he works — Mr. Ed, the Coen brothers, anything Tezuka. He reads lots of graphic novels — American and Japanese. He scours the internet every day for… stuff. Just cool, interesting stuff. He plays lots of videogames, old and new. The dude has the biggest collection of Mario merchandise I’ve ever seen. That’s why we get along — we’re both incredible media whores, and know that inspiration ultimately doesn’t come from guys doing the very same thing as you (like animation), but from all that other wonderful stuff out there.