This week’s Channel Frederator film “Distraxion” comes to us from Mike Stern, who is currently working at Dreamworks Animation and is an instructor at AnimationMentor.com and was kind enough to do a quick interview.

Channel Frederator: Where did you study animation?

Mike Stern: I went to NYU to study digital imaging and design. This is where I got my start in general 3D. Towards the end of my studies there I decided to specialize in animation. As luck would have it AnimationMentor was just opening its doors and I signed up to be part of their first class.

CF: Who are your favorite artists?

MS: Right now hanging up around my cube I’ve got some work by Hylton Warburton and Yoshitomo Nara.

CF: What gave you the idea for “Distraxion”?

MS: The idea actually came from a real life experience. Some co-workers and I went to lunch at an outdoor restaurant and we were seated right next to these speakers that were blasting lite jazz. We asked the waitress if she could turn the volume down, but apparently the management insisted that the music remain loud so that it could attract customers from the street. It immediately became the topic of our lunch conversation because it was impossible to focus on anything else. It truly felt like we were being harassed by the music.

I had been looking for ideas for my short film and the idea of a musician harassing an uninterested listener seemed like a funny concept to me. When I got back to the office I searched around on the Internet and I stumbled upon a song that was a great fit for the scenario. From there on out, it was all about finding ways one could be harassed by a soprano saxophonist.

CF: Can you tell us a little more about AnimationMentor.com and your involvement with the school?

MS: As I mentioned earlier I was a part of the very first class to go through the program. It was a pretty amazing experience. There was a huge amount of trust between the first students and the founders of the school. That trust was built on the fact that the school was so responsive to our feedback. They were really quick to make adjustments that suited the best interests of the students which is a rare quality to find in a school. Now I have gone back to the school to be on the other side. I am currently working as a mentor in the “polishing and portfolio class” and getting the next generation of animators ready for the industry.

CF: How did you start working at Dreamworks?

MS: I was actually kind of caught off guard when I was first contacted by DreamWorks. At the time, I was living in San Francisco and working for a game studio out in Emeryville. I hadn’t sent a reel in to DreamWorks since the previous years SIGGRAPH conference. It turns out that the job placement dept. at AnimationMentor had sent over a recent copy when they found out the that DreamWorks was looking to hire some cycle animators. I had to sort out some logistics because the position that they were hiring for was down in Glendale. However, the decision was pretty easy and it wasn’t long before I made my way down to LA to start on Bee Movie as a Cycle Animator. I was able to finish my cycle work on Bee Movie and move into a full animator position. After Bee Movie animation wrapped, I moved on to Kung Fu Panda, then Monsters vs. Aliens and How to Train Your Dragon.

CF: The one thing that distracts you the most?

MS: Oddly enough, music is not one of my distractions. Nothing gets me more focused than having some good music or the Yankee game on when I work. I’d have to say that the internet is my biggest distraction. I had to give myself some strict rules. When I am animating I shut all internet down. No email, no browsers, no chat windows, nothing unless it’s needed for the animation I am doing. When I am on a break I will start all that stuff up again.

CF: Are you working on anything new you can tell us about?

MS: I just wrapped on How to Train Your Dragon and I am currently on pre-production for Puss In Boots.

CF: YAY! Thank you so much for the interview, Mike! You can watch “Distraxion” right here on Channel Frederator!

-Bailee DesRocher

This weeks Cartoon Hangover joint is from Patrick and Kimberly Mallek at Mighty Fudge Studios. Because of the nature of the film, and the increasing number of children tooling around the Channel Frederator blog, I will be *ing anything that might seem… unseemly. Below is an interview with Patrick about the Schoolhouse Rock-ish “My First B*ner” Cartoon Hangover: Where did you study animation, if at all? Patrick Mallek: In a van down by the r*ver. CH: What gave you the idea for “My First B*ner”? PM: I w*ke up with it. No. Seriously. CH: “My First B*ner” is credited to you and your w*fe, Kim - is it weird working on b*ner cartoons with your spouse or is it business as usual? PM: Animated b*ners, crime solving str*ppers, talking gen*talia. Just another day’s work here at Mighty Fudge. CH: Why is the Sun $%*king a cigar? PM: I wanted him to look like a creepy pervert, but since he didn’t have legs, I couldn’t draw him without p*nts. CH: Are you working on anything new you can tell us about? PM: Well, I’m working on a theory that Pi is really zero, but you’re probably talking about animation. We’re working on three new shorts including the third installment of our Magnetic Squirrel series. We’ll be back on the festival circuit with a new batch of f*lms next year. CH: What’s your favorite swear? PM: Mighty Fudge! CH: Your favorite drink? PM: Most anything… as long as there is Rum in it. CH: Awesome. * You can watch “My First B*ner” right here on Cartoon Hangover, provided you’re an adult and don’t mind cartoon w*eners. -Bailee DesRocher

This week’s Cartoon Hangover ‘toon “Vegeterrible” by Henrik Sonniksen and Benjamin Neilsen is about good food… gone bad. Am I right? Get it? HA! Here, Henrik speaks on behalf the creative team and lets us know a little more about the film. Cartoon Hangover: Where did you guys study animation? Henrik Sonniksen: We studied animation at The Animation Workshop in Viborg. We started school back in 2006 and graduated with “Vegeterrible” in January this year. CH: Who are your favorite artists/animators? HS: For Vegeterrible we looked at a lot of artwork form French students at Gobelins and at some of the amazing movies from the Japanese animation studio; Studio 4C, who made films like Tekkonkinkreet and Mind Game. CH: What gave you the idea for “Vegeterrible”? HS: Benjamin and his brother got the idea from looking into a rotten refrigerator, and we started thinking about what was happening during this molding process. CH: What was your favorite part of the film to work on? HS: This is the first film for both of us, so there was a lot of exiting stuff to work with. Since we were only two people who had to do the film in a relatively short period of time, we got to be involved with every aspect of making it. CH: Any cool production stories, mishaps, or other craziness? HS: There were a lot of mishaps, a bit of craziness, but mostly work :) CH: What freaks you out the most? Aside from avocado monsters, of course. HS: I saw “Paranormal Activity” the other day, and it actually freaked me out a little bit, so I would have to say evil ghosts :) CH: Are you working on anything new you can tell us about? HS: We are currently working on a music video. We don’t have much time for it, but we hope is going to turn out well. CH: Thanks for the interview! We’ll keep our eyes peeled for more vegeterrifying stuff from you guys! Check out “Vegeterrible” right here on Cartoon Hangover!

So you’re staring at a timelapse of decaying food, like you do, when suddenly BAM! Fuzzy old raspberries turn into a fuzzy little person… and then things go bonkers from there. That’s how “Homunculus” a short film by Humble TV’s Sam Stephens and Chris Mauch starts out. Here they tell us how the film was made, and how to get rid of that bloated pheasant carcass smell. Channel Frederator: Where did you study animation? Sam Stephens: NYU. Tisch. Chris Mauch: Went to School of Visual Arts, and Came out of their Excellent Computer Art Dept. One of my most crucial teachers/Advisors was Animator Jefferey Lerer. CF: Who are your favorite artists? SS: Brunuel, Svankmeyer, Chris Cunningham, Gondry, Doug Aitken, Bill Viola, Odd Nerdrum. CM: Oh, boy haha, Frank Frazetta, Stanley Kubrick, Simon Bisley, Yoshitaka Amano, Moebius, Brad Bird, Mike Mignola, Frank Miller, Peter Chung, N.C.Wyeth. That’s pretty fun putting ‘em all in a row like that. CF: Ha! Right? What gave you the idea for “Humonculus”? SS: I was reading some article in the Times… and it used the word Humonculous, which was vaguely familiar, but unknown enough to warrant some wiki time. Got totally engrossed in the entry and the seed of the idea really just came from thinking about how all the different definitions of the word, from ancient alchemists to Carl Jung would work if they got all mashed together. In the meantime, Chris and I had been really wanting to do some character based animation work… and it all just grew from there. CM: All Sam Stephens, and his explorations on Wikipedia. I really got into figuring out how these “little humans” looked. where my main goal was to mash up a the idea of a little adorable dude, who can transform into a running set of ferocious teeth, at the drop of a dime. CF: Was it difficult to incorporate the CG characters into the decaying food setting? How did you do that?! And also, ew. SS: Getting the shaders right and the fur, took a while. Found a nice combination of a modified velvet shader patched over a subsurface shader that ended up feeling pretty biological. Luckily the lighting in the Vermeer-style paintings we took the look from is almost always a very directional side window… we’d shot an hdri on set, but ended up just using the mental ray sun and final gather bounce… which was cleaner than the IBL. And yes, ew. The stuff was all in a plexi-cube for twelve days. We showed up the day after Halloween to clean it up, a bit worse for wear. We came out of the elevator and found the entire floor smelling like death. That pheasant had grown in size, full of some strange decomposing gasses. There’s a pretty funny, profane behind the scenes video of us cleaning it up. All of us wearing garbage bags, painters masks, and double fisting air freshener cans. CF: Ahahaha - gross squared. CM: Hell yeah, it was difficult… After sorting through the right background plate for the shot. and deciding on the action in the scene. We dropped an empty plate (plain video of the decaying still life) into a Maya scene. Starting by laying down a ground plane that lines up with the ground plane in the video. It takes some time and fudging and maybe some playing with the focal length of the camera. You then build up from there. Import rigged up little dudes, add cheese plate, sculpt apple, etc. Do some lighting checks to make sure your shadows are landing where they are supposed to whether on the ground or onto a loaf of bread. After you’ve finished animating and lit the scene, you begin rendering in passes and “break-out” every aspect of the image. You separate each element of your 3D image. For example, one image of the Homunculi, has a Beauty Pass (basically the subject looking good with light and texture), an Occlusion Pass (the real dark shadows that hide in crevasses), a shadow and and then a fur pass… they all sit on top of each other and hopefully look like they are sitting on a real table next to your moldy asparagus. CF: Wow. Thanks for explaining so much of that process. That might have exploded my brain a little. In an educational way. Are you working on anything new you can tell us about? CM: I just started working with a great animation director, Alan Poon, on a project with the National Film Board of Canada and Sam just came back from directing a kick-ass music video for Wolfmother and is in New York putting it all together. In the meantime we are slowly boiling a new concoction. SS: This was the first in a series of in house art projects our studio humble is planning to do. We’re still in the concept phases of the next one… but I can say it will be dealing with very very small things. CF: *please be germs, please be germs, please be germs* Thanks for the interview, guys! You can check out “Homunculus” right here on Channel Frederator! -Bailee DesRocher