Oct
30
Jul
26
Hey. You. Get Off of My Cloud.
CLIENT:
Noggin
Did you ever wonder about the thunder and the lightning? Well, the Nick Jr crew is here to show you what they’re all about. We created this fun mixed media rap video for the updated Noggin app. The video above is very short cutdown from the full music video. The entire piece is ONLY available on the recently redesigned Noggin App. But, shoot us an email and we can show you the whole thing.
This project brought so much joy to our studio. In terms of work we love, it checked all the boxes. It has a fun concept, a super catchy song, and allowed for quite a bit of freedom in developing the story and techniques that ultimately brought it all together.
The concept and song were inspired by the light show mother nature puts on during every thunderstorm– it’s truly a concert in the clouds.
While this video could have easily been done in one, simple animation style, our pals at Nick Jr. came to us for our skills in mixed media work. We chose papercraft environments, adding in our 2D animation hero characters in post. The main character, the “Thundercloud”, remained the only one built practically and animated in camera–aside from a quick cameo by Mr. Sun of course! One of the design challenges was figuring out a unique way to visualize the sound of thunder for our young audience. Working with the experts at Nick Jr, we devised a 2D FX animation that resembled the volume buttons on your computer to do just that.
To properly explain Lightning & Thunder, we needed to not only show the flash of light and hear the crash of sound, but depict what’s going on inside the cloud to produce both. We needed a way to differentiate the look of the macro and micro worlds. Given that the majority of the sets were papercraft, what would be a good complimentary approach? After some creative brainstorming, we decided to illustrate what happens inside the clouds at a microscopic level, through poly-fill, plasticine, and plastic gem stones. This approach still felt hand crafted, tying in well with the other scenes, but would give the kiddos a cue that we’re now at a different scale. The micro and macro worlds were all shot in house at our studio– using a tabletop setup for the papercraft clouds and our brand new, multiplane animation setup for a look inside them.
As soon each shot was ready, we turned it over to our amazing 2D animators to begin character and FX animation. Our team brought the boogie to the adorable Nick Jr. IP that drives the song throughout the storm and we haven’t looked at rain clouds the same way since.
BEHIND THE SCENES
GIFS
CREDITS
Houses in Motion
Director: John Earle
Design: John Earle
Fabrication: Taili Wu, Maxwell Sorensen, Katie Falk, Tim McDonald
Stop Motion Animation & Rigging: Maxwell Sorensen, Taili Wu
2D Animation: Andres Kwon, Katie Falk
Composite: Brad Walter, John Earle, Katie Falk, Alex Trimpe
DP: Dan Jusino
Edit: John Earle
Storyboards: Carlos Ancalmo
BTS Photos: Seth Pomerantz
Nick Jr.
Joelle Mercado-Lau
Jennifer Treuting
Kristen Williams
JungIn Yun
Chris Papa
Justin Mushnick
Myriam Wilson
Nancy Lopez
Original Music: DJ Lushlife
Jun
17
Lucky Number 7.
CLIENT:
Houses in Motion
Houses is celebrating its 7th year of business! We decided to use some spare time to celebrate this milestone– calling on the design and animation techniques we enjoy most to create a series of wacky vignettes. From 3D animation, motion graphics and stop motion, to more traditional animations and even puppets… puppets we made. We had a blast putting this together.
The fun we had creating this video was a great reminder of why we do what we do. We love it, it’s inventive, it allows us to be creative and a little bit ridiculous… what more could you want?
BEHIND THE SCENES
CREDITS
Houses in Motion
Creative Director: John Earle
Design & Animation: John Earle, Alex Trimpe, Katie Falk
Stop Motion Animation & Rigging: Katie Falk, John Earle
Puppeteers: Alex Trimpe, Katie Falk, Dan Jusino, John Earle
DP: Dan Jusino
Original Music & Sound Design: Explosion Robinson
Highway to the Dangerzone.
CLIENT:
Nick Jr.
When Nick Jr came to us for help with Top Wing’s Season 2 promos, we wanted to lean into the fun, tropical vibes of their world on Big Swirl Island. We turned to palm trees, tropical plants and a few show-specific elements to create an energetic collage of environments.
While we could have really pushed the boundaries with perspective here– enhancing the collage aspect and not establishing a true up vector– we understood that Top Wing’s audience needed something a little less complex. Tailoring the look to the young viewer, we created more traditional landscapes with just enough playful impossibilities.
PROMO GRAPHICS
EARLY DESIGNS
CREDITS
Houses in Motion
Creative Director: John Earle
Design & Animation: Geoff Keough, John Earle
Nick Jr.
Project Manager: Justin Mushnick
Character Animation: Scott Kennell
Mar
08
All’s Fair in Cake and War.
CLIENT:
Food Network
Ace of Cakes was such a fun show to watch. As designers ourselves, we appreciated the craftsmanship and artistry of those Charm City cake masters. So when Food Network brought us the opportunity to work on another Duff Property popped up– we instantly jumped on it.
With a story and edit already place, they needed our help designing a custom promo toolkit with integrated typography and visual effects. Oh… and they needed it quickly. We put our aprons on (so to speak) and got to work delivering this super fun collaboration.
CREDITS
Houses in Motion
CCO: John Earle
Design: Brad Walter, John Earle
Animation & Composite: Brad Walter, Seth Pomerantz, Alex Trimpe, Jin Lee
Dropping Science to Keep You Smiling.
CLIENT:
Yale University
via Edelman
Three Yale professors have discovered the role that psychological habits play in our happiness. They’ve created the most popular course in the university’s history around their findings and decided to share their learnings with the thought leaders at Davos. Our friends at Edelman enlisted our help in doing just that.
We created this animated teaser for Yale University’s presentation at The World Economic Forum in Davos by designing a visual narrative based on simple, geometric shapes and iconography. Our goal was to make these complex ideas easy to understand, but also charming enough to engage and entertain each viewer.
CREDITS
Houses in Motion
Director/Designer: John Earle
Animation: Alex Trimpe
Edelman
Agency
Explosion Robinson
Sound Design & Mix
Thanks. Thanks a Lot.
CLIENT:
Food Network
We were thrilled to tackle Food Network’s Thanksgiving branding package once again! For 2018 we like the idea of keeping things au naturale and allow the food to do the heavy lifting. To created some added interest to our modern food and prop styling we ran with the idea of creating Cinemagaphs for each scene… you know, those animated gifs where everything in the scene is basically static aside from a few key endlessly looping areas of interest?!
Working with our veteran Food Stylist and the Food Network team we concocted over a dozen different setups to film over 3 days. We had dripping turkeys, bubbling berries, and even lit the pie on fire! It was a blast to create and everything looked beautiful on screen.
We are so thankful for everyone who came together to make this happen.
CINEMAGRAPHS
BEHIND THE SCENES
CREDITS
Houses in Motion
Director/Producer: John Earle
Design: John Earle, Alex Trimpe
Animation & Composite: Brad Walter, Alex Trimpe
Storyboards: Carlos Ancalmo
DP: Oliver Jevremov
AC: Dan Jusino
Gaffer: Rome Petersson
DIT: Angela Abel
Food Stylist: Laura Rege
Prop Stylist: Sophie Strangio
Asst. Food Stylists: Jessica Palace, Kristen Stangl
Asst. Prop Stylists: Charlotte Havelange
Intern: Alice Langlois
PA: Max Pavlechenko
Cooking Stage: Summit 68
Oct
23
Welcome to Our Block Party.
CLIENT:
Yieldstreet
via Launch Content
This one ticked all the boxes for us. We were able to combine many of our favorite elements all in one spot; stop motion, CGI, 2D animation, and motion graphics. We love it when that happens! Our long time collaborator, Tim Whitney, hit us up to produce this spot for Yieldstreet, a new investment platform. Their investments are tied to real world assets, so our idea was to create an explainer built from real objects too.
We designed, built, and animated all assets in house. Simple wooden cubes were chosen to represent the instability of the stock market, while the adorable wood and paper Bloomberg Terminal and laptop are analogues to high-end and consumer level trading. In order to save some fabrication time, we built the industry icons in 3D CGI. They all came together seamlessly in the final composite. 2D animation breathes some life into the static shots while the VO plays out.
BEHIND THE SCENES
CREDITS
Houses in Motion
Director/Producer: John Earle
Design: John Earle, Alex Trimpe
Art Dept: Junko Shimizu, Alice Langlois
Animation & Composite: Brad Walter, Alex Trimpe, Alice Langlois
Stop Motion Animation & Rigging: Maxwell Sorensen
DP: Dan Jusino
Launch Content
EP: Tim Whitney
Producer: Jamie Rasmusen
It’s Time for the Percolator.
CLIENT:
Nick Jr.
DJ Rubble’s Dance Party is a programming block hosted by none other than Paw Patrol’s Rubble, on the 1s and 2s. We wanted to create a graphics package along the lines of a dance club meets pre-school! There’s a doggy dj, dancing chicken, and neon lit elements throughout.
We had a blast creating this graphics toolkit! From hand-drawn custom logos to 3D neon elements, we were really able to bring the funk, in a kid friendly way.
DJ RUBBLE – :15
CREDITS
Houses in Motion
Director/Producer: John Earle
Design: John Earle, Adam Koon
Animation & Composite: Brad Walter, Alex Trimpe
Oct
22
A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words.
CLIENT:
Oxygen
We do a lot of cute things here. This isn’t one of them! We’re happy to go dark when the opportunities arise. Our pals at Oxygen needed a teaser promo for their 2-hour special on Jeffery Dahmer, and came to us for our thoughtful and tactile approaches. We were a little freaked out by the content. Dahmer was a bad dude with a strange diet. Not only that, we learned he also liked to take photos of his victims and process. We needed to incorporate that into the teaser. Freaky!
Oxygen provided actual photos from Dahmer’s apartment and mug shots. We chose to design a collage of polaroids to create a portrait of the killer. We wanted these polaroids to feel like they were just picked from Dahmer’s bedroom floor. For that we got real film, grunged it up with dirt, burns, and fake blood. We even exposed the polaroids to get the classic imperfections you often see around the edges. From there, we shot 1° rotations of over a dozen blank photos. These could then be composited into the scene with the archival photos tracked in. Results were great, but we didn’t sleep well for a week!
POLAROID ROTATIONS
BEHIND THE SCENES
CREDITS
Houses in Motion
Director/Producer: John Earle
Design: John Earle
Art Dept: Dalane Mason
Animation & Composite: Brad Walter, Peter Fink
Stop Motion Animation & Rigging: Maxwell Sorensen
DP: Dan Jusino