Sometimes very cool people ask me to make them something animated. Here's what that looks like.
The Woodlands - short bumper animations for Bento Box Entertainment (The folks behind Bob’s Burgers)
In the early 2000s I had a comic strip called “The Woodlands” that ran in Nickelodeon Magazine. When Bento Box Entertainment approached me about creating animated bumpers, I put together a quick low-tech animatic using Windows Movie Maker and a phone voice memo recorder - just to pitch the idea, assuming the professionals would animate them properly.
They liked the charm of the rough version so much they used it as-is. So that's what these are: very badly animated, very poorly voiced, and very silly.
Original sketchbook page for “Mr. Pine’s Lovely Afternoon”
Two music videos for JUMP FOR JOY! By Caspar Babypants (aka Chris Ballew of The Presidents of the United States of America)
In 2017 I got to talking with Chris Ballew, who was working on a new Caspar Babypants album (his children’s music project.)
He’d seen the Bento Box shorts and wanted something with the same DIY vibe, so we made two music videos that summer - “Underground” even features some of my Woodlands characters.
I loved the Presidents of the United States of America when I was in high school. Never imagined I’d get to collaborate with the guy who sang “Lump” one day.
This one, “Blackberry Pie”, is my personal favorite of the two. This “ooh-whee“ chorus gets stuck in my head to this day.
This one, “Underground”, features some tree characters from my Woodlands comics.
Robbert Bobbert & the Bubble Machine “We R Super Heroes” (for Yo Gabba Gabba!)
In 2008 I started working with Robert Schneider (of The Apples in Stereo, one of my all-time favorite songwriters) on Robbert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine - his children's music project.
I designed the character and created the full CD package, which included a comic book inspired by the songs, a coloring book with song lyrics, and a fancy sleeve with pockets. Easily one of my favorite projects.
After the album came out, Yo Gabba Gabba! wanted a Robbert Bobbert music video for the show. Nickelodeon's animators took over but stuck closely to my character design and hand-lettering. They also invited a bunch of cartoonists to contribute drawings of their own weird superheroes - and if you look closely at the 1:48 mark, you'll spot mine: a caped crusader in red called "The Secret Admirer," tossing a rose.
A very lo-fi promotional video from 2010 demonstrating how to draw Robbert Bobbert, shot in one quick take at a kitchen table. I still find it unbelievable that the video and the song are the exact same length.
THE POET - Silence Has A Lot To Say
During the pandemic, some friends made a sketch show called "Dadurday Night Live" and asked me to contribute a film. I'd been messing around with animation on my iPad and made this short adaptation of a Poet strip.
I wanted it to feel like a weird foreign film with subtitles and indecipherable dialogue - sort of like the characters in Animal Crossing. It's also a bit of a test run; I've thought about making a longer animated version of The Poet someday.
Did you notice the opening shot of a falling leaf is the same piece colorized up above? Turns out I really like drawing and animating falling leaves.
