I Got Somethin' to Tell Ya Premier

The premier of "I Got Somethin' to Tell Ya" was last weekend at Tribeca.  I got to walk down the red carpet and meet everyone who worked on the film, including Whoopi.  No matter how many projects you work on for TV,  there is still nothing cooler than seeing your animation play on the big screen.  This picture (from www.zimbio.com) was taken at the premier party afterwords.

Back row: Justin Simonich-animator, Rudy Valdez-East Coast DP, Tom Leonardis-Producer, Whoopi Goldberg-Director, Billy Mitchell-Apollo Theater Historian, Nikon Kwantu-Animation Producer
Front row: Prue Arndt-Archival Producer, Geeta Gandbhir-Supervising Editor, Creative Producer

I hope to be able to post some designs and/or animation soon.

I got somethin' to tell ya

I recently had the opportunity to animate about 5 min of footage for a documentary on Moms Mabley, directed by Whoopi Goldberg. Moms was one of the most successful entertainers in the 20s and 30s on the Chitlin' circuit and only later became known as "Moms" in the 50s and 60s as she was a motherly figure to many comedians during those decades. I handled the animation directing, and design on this one too. On stage she dressed as a disheveled, toothless woman in a brightly patterned house dress with a floppy hat which gave me a lot to pull from. It was fun getting to animate a "real" person and draw from her mannerisms and quirks in order to instill that into her animated version.

The film premiers this Saturday at the Tribecca film festival. Catch it if you can and enjoy the animation.

I finally got my chance to star in a Sesame video "Share It Maybe," that went viral. To be fair, it also has Cookie Monster, as well as a bunch of other Sesame employees in it. My contribution can be seen from 1:15 to about 1:17, two whole seconds of the back of my head has been seen by 6 million people to date!

ASIFA Auction

It is the ASIFA Auction time again. This is the holiday card slash auction postcard for 2011.

Christmas card

Here is the Holiday card I did for Sesame English last year.

Jim Flora inspiration

I have gotten a lot of compliments on the postcard I designed for ASIFA last month. Volunteering once every month to put together the cards, I sometimes forget just how many people see those cards. Some months are more work than others, and I don’t do it alone, but it has been nice to receive so many compliments this past month. To give credit where credit is due I was inspired by the work of Jim Flora. He is probably best known for his 1940s-50s Columbia Records album covers. His album cover art and music-themed works were put together in a great book The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora.One of my favorite pieces was the album cover below.

As soon as I saw it I just had to pay homage to Jim by incorporating his 3 headed character into a design somehow. ASIFA-East’s postcard for March was that design. Thanks to everyone who enjoyed the card and thanks to Jim for inspiring me.

Jack Beers Story

Another of my recent favorite films is Holes in my Shoes, directed by David Wachs. The documentary tells the story of Jack Beers, a boy raised on the Lower East Side at the start of last century who led the life of 10 ordinary men. At a young age he was known as “New York City’s Strongest Boy,” he went on to help build Radio City Music Hall and erect the spire of the Empire State Building after teaching himself engineering by reading books on the subject at the NYC Public Library. He them moved south to work on a project for the US government during WW2. These accomplishments alone would have been enough for anyone else, but not for Jack. He started a new career in film and ended up acting in over 200 films, all while overcoming a terminal illness, raising championship dogs, and mowing the lawn. The only down side of this film is that watching it may make you feel as though you need to get off you butt and start doing something.