Title sequence for Cassie Shao’s "This Is a Story Without a Plan" screening at Annecy International Animation Film Festival

The title sequence I designed for Cassie Shao’s This Is a Story Without a Plan will be screening in the Perspectives Short Films competition at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, one of the world’s leading events in animation. I was honored to contribute to Shao’s inimitable process, which integrates cel drawings and acrylic paint with 3D environments. I’m so proud of her artistry being recognized at an such an esteemed, international level.

This Is a Story Without a Plan (2023) Dir. Cassie Shao

"Making Art in America, 2020-2021" by Angie Wang

I had the pleasure of watching Angie Wang's disquieting meditation on creating art in exile/isolation at the 2022 Los Angeles Animation Festival (LAAF) this past December. I loved how the encroaching shadows harmonized with low, pulsating dread underneath Wang's immaculate illustrations and muted color palette.

Angie is a co-founder of Comic Arts Los Angeles, James Beard Award winner, and previously a prop/FX designer on Steven Universe. She teaches at the USC Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California.

"What I Had to Leave Behind" Official Selection at 2022 Los Angeles Animation Festival

What I Had to Leave Behind will screen at the 2022 Los Angeles Animation Festival on December 10th. Founded in 2007, LAAF is the city’s only international film festival and symposium.

Earlier this week, Maggie Dave - Old You, the official music video animated by Cassie Shao for Christensen’s pop music project with Mark Christopher, was awarded Honorable Mention at LAAF. This honor is given "to work of an exceptionally high standard and worthy of festival praise." Shao is an alum of the festival, earning a nomination for her film There Were Four of Us as Best Student Experimental Short in 2019.

"What I Had to Leave Behind" at 2022 Palm Springs International ShortFest

As we wrapped miniature photography on What I Had to Leave Behind last spring, cinematographer Wenting Deng Fisher had an idea for a behind-the-scenes picture. I had to crawl underneath the set, a dollhouse-scale replica of my old Los Angeles Koreatown apartment, to get to the other side and give her the best angle. One year later, I'm looking at myself through this doorway, reflecting on all that was unknown at the time for my film & I. I hadn't yet added Cassie Shao's remarkable animation or Branden Brown’s evocative score (his first for film). Not even Jackie! Zhou’s immersive sound mix or Alastor Arnold’s impeccable color. This film would just be an empty room without my crew.

Wenting Deng Fisher adjusts her camera on the miniature set of What I Had to Leave Behind.

Later this month, our film will be making its west coast premiere at the 2022 Palm Springs International ShortFest, selected to compete in the "Best Animated Short" program. I'm overwhelmed with gratitude. For all those currently in the middle of a project or a pathway that seems obscured, keep moving. Don't be afraid to ask your peers for help. If and when you're blessed with their support, always give it back to your community two-fold. You're always stronger when you build together!

Palm Springs is an institution. Their thoughtful Oscar, BATFA & Goya Award-qualifying programming elevates the craft of short films. It's an honor to participate this year with my latest offering. Please check out the rest of my peers on the #shortfest2022 YouTube playlist to hear all about their wonderful work.

Animating memories with Charlotte Arene

Charlotte Arene is a filmmaker & animator specializing in stop motion and After Effects. Having long been a fan of her intricate work visualizing memoirs, monologues and dreams, I commissioned her to direct the music video for “I Miss the Old You.” Our collaborative process took place over email and international Zoom calls, each of us exchanging reflections on the song’s themes of loss and regret. My aim as a producer was to build a sandbox with enough fertile ground to support Charlotte’s process with the trust that’s essential for a creative partnership. She describes her instincts creating something that resonates with the lyrics & melody just as strongly as with her philosophy as an artist: 

La mer à boire (2020) by Charlotte Arene.

“Five months prior to Sean offering me the visualizer for ‘I Miss the Old You,’ I’d taken a deep dive into the huge boxes of photographs and negatives stored in my parent’s basement. I was looking for childhood pictures of my older sister to animate them into a short film. It was to be my wedding gift for her and her fiancé.”

“As an animator, the experience was exhilarating. As a sister, it was extremely moving. What I felt as I went through these hundreds of photographs was surprisingly akin to sorrow, and it was still lingering at the back of my mind when I first listened to Sean’s song and imagined how I could respond to it.”

Concept art & animation notes by Charlotte Arene. (Photo courtesy of the artist.)

Sean’s sister flies a kite at a family picnic, circa 1990. (Photo courtesy of Christensen family archive.)

“I knew I wanted to work with photographs again, and Sean was very open and generous when I asked if I could work with some of his childhood pictures. We exchanged via email, made a selection, and discussed how I could stage them. Early on, I was fixated on the idea of a force of some kind, pulling those photographs away from a desk or a wall…a physical representation of that tug I felt when I listened to the song. It started off as a gravitational pull, then evolved into a surfing motion. Finally, it settled on a strong wind. It’s funny, in retrospect, how the idea got lighter.”

“The minute this image took root, I saw something in three pictures of his sister I hadn’t noticed before: she was holding onto a string, so fine I had missed it at first. The string led to something upwards and out of frame. Then it hit me. She was holding a kite. The image just fell into place and I knew this would be the perfect photograph to animate. I’m glad it resonated with Sean and I’m very grateful to him and his sister for allowing me to use it.”

"Growing" by Jamie Griffiths

A beautiful pencil animation from Jamie Griffiths - of CalArts School of Film/Video | Experimental Animation program.

Yusuf/Cat Stevens "On The Road To Find Out" (Director's Cut)

“A man and his boulder…a journey through time.” So begins director Kimberly Stuckwisch’s description to her director’s cut (with Melora Donoghue) for “On The Road To Find Out,” an allegorical interpretation of the song by Yusuf/Cat Stevens. Re-recorded by Stevens for the 50th anniversary re-release of his classic album Tea for the Tillerman, Stuckwisch filmed the music video for this new take on the song in her trademark style, blending stunning locations with ingenious practical effects to create a singular vision.

Filmed on the coastal sand dunes of Pismo Beach in California, a boulder amalgamated from household appliances and other manmade scrap gradually grows in size as a man (Viet Dang) drags it across figurative “sands of time.” Grimacing as the ever-increasing weight slows his gait to a crawl, objects from centuries past fly through the desert and cling to this rock, a burden he has chosen to carry.

Viet Dang drags the burden of man’s progress behind him in Yusuf/Cat Stevens “On The Road To Find Out” (Director’s Cut) by Kimberly Stuckwisch & Melora Donoghue

“The video is an allegory for humanity’s journey for self-discovery and the historical events, art, and music that have influenced life and culture,” says Stuckwisch. “Through the video, we follow a man pulling a boulder that increasingly grows to represent these influences. It’s a story of our ability to break free from these burdens and our will to find inner peace.”

The fully COVID-compliant production was filmed in the summer of 2020 with a crew of ten, using all-natural light with no generators or electricity. Ensuring the music video’s carbon footprint was as small as possible, all the props used to create the boulder were donated for recycling after the production wrapped.

Discover & share this Animation GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

Kimberly commissioned me to create hand-drawn titles & credits. Having collaborated with her before on videos for Broken Bells, Jeremy Ivey & Margo Price, we had developed an ease to envisioning what these sequences would look like in the final cut – almost before I would even put pen to paper!

End credits for “On The Road To Find Out” (Director’s Cut); Chisel-tip pen on paper.

Discover & share this Animation GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

Suggesting we add an additional layer of artistry to embellish the titles’ design, I recommended award-winning animator Cassie Shao, who often collaborates with my band, Maggie Dave. Her illustrated blowing sands revealing the names created a storybook-like beauty to the fantastical world that Stuckwisch imagined with her cast & crew.

2020 Sundance Film Festival - Short Film Tour

As I prepare for Sundance’s offering of world premieres next year, here’s the trailer for their Short Film Tour, a 93-minute program of 7 short films selected from their 2020 Festival:

It was great to see Thea Hollatz’s Hot Flash included in this program, an animated short that Maggie Dave had the pleasure of screening alongside of, earlier this year.

As they describe it, “Widely considered the premier American showcase for short films and the launchpad for many now-prominent independent filmmakers for more than 30 years, the Short Film Tour includes fiction, documentary and animation from around the world, giving new audiences a taste of what the Festival offers, now online.”

"Freeze Frame" by Soetkin Verstegen

An arrestingly beautiful stop-motion animated short by Soetkin Verstegen. Freeze Frame is a captivating example of meticulous craft and disquieting, harmonious textures of picture and sound.

From the artist: “Freeze frame: the most absurd technique since the invention of the moving image. Through an elaborate process of duplicating the same image over and over again, it creates the illusion of stillness. Identical figures perform the hopeless task of preserving blocks of ice. The repetitive movements reanimate the animals captured inside.”

Director, writer, animator: Soetkin Verstegen
Sound: Andrea Martignoni & Michal Krajczok

Wandaland by Richard Noble

Produced at the Royal College of Art, Wandaland by Richard Noble is an intoxicating blend of woozy sound design and rich environments rendered with exacting detail. Combining traditional hand-drawn animation with 3D models, Noble’s portrait of a reclusive (fictional) animation tycoon and his abandoned theme park relates how obsessions and compulsions can overtake an imaginative mind.

An abandoned theme park reveals the obsessions of its creator, John Wanda. [Wandaland by Richard Noble]

The animation of Richard Noble

Richard Noble is an animator and graduate of the Royal College of Art. Creator of The Sam Story (2020) and Wandaland (2019), there’s a fine layer of foreboding beneath the glassy surfaces of these films. His 2D compositions evoke the spartan visual style of such artists as Chris Ware and Nick Drnaso. So too, does Noble choose to craft his stories in a way that belies complex internal forces tugging at his characters.

Noble’s “lifelong love/hate relationship with popular culture” casts an ominous shadow in The Sam Story (2020).

Based, in part, on the converging life histories of Walt Disney and Howard Hughes, Wandaland (2019) delves into themes of “…identity, mystery [and] human psychology.”

From the artist: “The two films I have made at the RCA, Wandaland (2019) and The Sam Story (2020) converge on a few themes: identity, mystery, human psychology, and my lifelong love/hate relationship with popular culture. They're also the most ambitious projects I've ever undertaken, with each film taking almost a year to complete. They're the culmination of many technical and creative skills I've spent years developing, incorporating CGI, 2D animation, digital painting, and extensive After Effects compositing. While I've benefited from some talented collaborators, almost everything you see (as opposed to hear) in my films is my own work, from the graphic design to the character animation.” - Richard Noble

Both films can be streamed through the RCA 2020 platform on the Royal College of Art website.

"Dani" by Lizzy Hogenson - Vimeo Staff Pick

This ingenious animated film weaves intricate stop-motion together with documentary storytelling – a feat that becomes more captivating after every screening. Winner of the Jury Award for Best Animated Short at Palm Springs ShortFest, along with being shortlisted for the “Best Animated Short Film” Oscar at the 2019 Academy Awards, Dani by Lizzy Hogenson is a marvel of craft and imagination. Special thanks to Meghan Oretsky of the Ladies With Lenses Vimeo channel, supporters of this, and the best short films on the Internet written and/or directed by women.

Dani

Created by Lizzy Hogenson

Sound & Music - Ricky Lee Berger

Editor - Robert Panico

Scientific Advisor - Stephanie Shishido

"Maggie Dave - I'm Not Ready" at LINOLEUM Contemporary Animation and Media Art Festival & Nevada City Film Festival

Cassie Shao’s brilliant music video for “I’m Not Ready” (music video for Maggie Dave) was announced on two lauded festival lineups this week. At the LINOLEUM Contemporary Animation and Media Art Festival, Shao’s film will make its Ukrainian premiere alongside 26 other international offerings in the “Commissioned Film Competition.” At the “Sundance of the Sierra,” the Nevada City Film Festival will host the music video at their innovative outdoor drive-in cinema under the stars of Grass Valley, California.

Drive-in Cinema at Nevada City Film Festival

Directed & Animated by Cassie Shao Produced by Sean David Christensen “I'm Not Ready” written by Maggie Dave Vocals & keyboard: Sean David Christensen Synthesizers: Mark Christopher & Ricky Berger Vocals engineered by Ricky Berger Mixed by Ricky Berger & Mark Christopher Mastering by Trevor Case https://www.karasucassie.com/ https://www.maggiedave.com/ --Official Screenings-- 2020 Athens International Film + Video Festival 2019 Flux Screening Series Fall edition at the Hammer Museum 2019 Music Video & Shorts Night #3 at the Gold Diggers

Broken Bells - Good Luck

Light emanates through cut-out silhouettes of people extracted from the real world in this eerily beautiful music video for Broken Bells. “Good Luck,” directed by Kimberly Stuckwisch and Nelson de Castro, was envisioned with the help of a creative team I had such a pleasure to be a part of.

A ghostly figure hitches a ride in “Broken Bells - Good Luck,” directed Kimberly Stuckwisch and Nelson de Castro

Stuckwish shares the intricacies of pulling off this stunning analog effect: “We laser cut over 4000 frames [of film] and used a practical stop motion light ray effect achieved by mixing old school animation techniques and practical smoke and haze over live-action footage, to create an eerily atmospheric new dimension.”

“Ryan Ross (Visual Effects), Mark Nicholas (Special Effects Supervisor), and Ian Blair (Producer) locked themselves in separate rooms for weeks rotoscoping, with Ryan animating, and Mark laser cutting card stock for each frame. Nelson [de Castro, co-director] then took the laser cut frames and put them over a light box, shooting haze & light through.”

“All of the light and haze permeating from the characters was done practically - giving it the texture you see in the video. I’m pretty sure Nelson’s house is coated in oil forever from the hazer he had going for weeks filming all the light box stop motion still frames during the quarantine! Ryan then overlaid the light and haze back in for each frame over the original image…Every shot called for it’s own unique post workflow and my brain still hurts from trying to figure this all out.”

Flynn Zanco portrays a young boy disintegrating into this “atmospheric new dimension.”

A one-of-a-kind experience, it further reminded me that great things can be achieved through perseverance and teamwork. See the entire film on Tidal, and stick around to see what I was able to contribute to this extraordinary world. No spoilers!

CAST & CREW

Directed by Kimberly Stuckwisch and Nelson de Castro

Produced by Ian Blair

Cinematography by Andrew Droz Palermo

Production Design by Jade Spiers

VFX Supervision by Ryan Ross

Special Effects Supervision by Mark Nicholas

Edited by Nour Oubeid

Costume Design by Kimberly Stuckwisch

Starring: Flynn Zanco, James Forbis, Chad Carr, Linda Michaels, Kathy Gorlick, Teddy Williams, Codey Huckins, Brice Owen, Steve Zanco and C. Jobe

1st AD: Jeff Cobb

PM: Christina Jobe

1st AC: Ryan Sax

2nd AC: Caitlyn Brown

Gaffer/2nd Unit DP: Justin Moore

Best Boy Electric: Monty Sloan

Swing: Khoi Nguyen

Art Director: Steele O’Neal

2nd Unit Camera PA: Haley Meyers

Color: Alastor Arnold

Animation: Nelson De Castro

Additional Special Effects: Spencer Hall and Nicolas Putnam

Titles: Sean David Christensen

PA’s: Eric Weed, Isaias Rojano, Ted Morissette

Shot on Kodak film and processed by FotoKem in Los Angeles.

João Gonzalez

João Gonzalez is an animator and musician based in Portugal. Nestor, his thesis from the Royal College of Art in London, vividly constructs the life of a man with several obsessive-compulsive behaviors - living in an unstable houseboat which never stops oscillating.

Nestor (2019) by João Gonzalez

Nestor (2019) by João Gonzalez

"La mer à boire" by Charlotte Arene

Stunning stop-motion piece from artist & animation director Charlotte Arene. I can’t get over how beautifully the sound of the waves sweep back and forth in perfect time with the motion of the objects.

From the artist, interviewed by Filmnosis: “I think it encapsulates the anguish and playfulness that are both present in the film; on one hand there’s this light and funny aspect of turning household elements into a kind of seaside scenery and playing with that metaphor, but on the other hand there’s the storm and the heavy sleeping… which all tug at a darkest side of the imagination.”

Thom Yorke - Last I Heard (…He Was Circling The Drain)

Beautiful hand-drawn textures washed over computer rendered models; A wonderful example of digital and analog mediums swimming together in nervous waves.

CREDITS

Made at Art Camp

Directed by: Art Camp & Saad Moosajee

Technical Director: James Bartolozzi

Design: Saad Moosajee & Zuheng Yin

Art Direction: Jenny Mascia

3D Animation: Saad Moosajee, Zuheng Yin, Chanyu Chen

Simulation and Effects: James Bartolozzi

Supporting Design: Chanyu Chen, Andrew Finley

Cel Animation: Jenny Mascia, Britton Korbel, Mac Ross, Jeremy Higgins, Danae Gosset

Production Manager: Matthew Kagen

Production Coordinator: John James Russo

Stop Motion Photographer: Jared Pershad

Storyboards: Mac Ross, Jenny Mascia

Cel Animation Consultant: Danae Gosset

16MM Film Consultant: Oliver Lanzenberg

"MY MOTHER'S EYES" by Jenny Wright

“A story about motherhood and loss in an abstracted world of childhood memory.” Understated, devastating visual storytelling from animator Jenny Wright - an elegant example of the power and impact of a single line on the page.

CREDITS

Animated by Jenny Wright

Composer: Matt Huxley

Sound Designer: Ben Goodall

Maggie Dave "I'm Not Ready" by Cassie Shao

Cassie Shao is a visionary talent in animation. I had the great pleasure of meeting her through USC’s John C. Hench Division of Animation & Digital Arts after a screening of her breathtaking thesis film, There Were Four of Us:

A dizzying blend of claustrophobic environments that fold backwards with vivid bursts of color and hand-painted debris, Shao’s work traces the jagged edges of dreams with startling clarity. Shortly after getting to know her and learn more about her work, I invited her to visualize “I’m Not Ready,” a debut single from Maggie Dave (my band, with artist Mark Christopher). I was humbled and honored by her expressive and delicate exploration of the song, one that now sounds brand new each time I watch her video.

Maggie Dave - I’m Not Ready arrives October 23rd. Watch this space!