Colorado Jul 1, 2021
Sev and I had a blast filming in Colorado for accessibility products this past week with our usual crew. We had Pete Guzzo producing the hell out of it, and John Long as our Director of Photography—and he always kills it. Hopefully we can share a cut at some point. It was the first time I've been able to direct people with visual/auditory impairments and it was such a great experience. Everyone was so helpful and accommodating.
After wrapping, we hung around for a couple of extra days to check out the Rockies. None of our Tampa crew had been above 10,000 ft but we did pretty well considering that we spend most of our time under 100 ft. The highlight was a drive up the highest road in North America—the Mount Evans Scenic Byway. It finishes at 14,130 ft and there's a climb up to 14,265. Thankfully, I had packed a hoodie which ended up keeping John alive because as we got to the end of the road, it began to get stormy. As we began the climb, we were pelted with ice and snow as clouds rushed past just slightly overhead. At the top, the winds howled. A kind couple from Kansas took our photo, and we began the descent. We had a good dinner that evening in nearby Idaho Springs.
On the next day we drove the Peak to Peak Scenic Byway. We finally saw Boulder, which had a beautiful mountainous backdrop in most directions. That was a beautiful drive. We took a quick hike, got rained on quite heavily, and dried off at Switchback Smokehouse with some excellent BBQ. We passed by Red Rocks on the way back, but unfortunately it started raining heavily and it wasn't going to let up anytime soon. It's on my bucket list to see a show there. I guess I'll have to go back!
It's been a while Jun 28, 2021
So much has happened since I last wrote on this blog. I guess the first major thing is that the lease on our old office ran out. We tried to find a new office together, but ultimately we all went our separate ways. Sev and I banded together and turned my detached garage into a studio and we've been working out of there since the middle of 2016.
I started Workbench at the end of 2015 and Sev joined shortly after. From 2016-2019 we made a tutorial a week for a grand total of 200. Through that we've met our good friend, Andrew Embury. And he, Mikey Borup, and I spoke at Keyframes in 2019. I also met one of my heroes, Aharon Rabinowitz, who was the keynote speaker—and his keynote was excellent. We still update Workbench as frequently as we can, and we continue to provide monthly files to our patrons.
Later that year we shot a mini-doc in Mallorca with a professor from my alma mater—Bogdan P. Onac. A few months after we wrapped in Mallorca, we filmed in New Mexico with him to cover the dating of the samples they obtained in Mallorca. On that trip, we shot some preliminary footage for a possible documentary on a lava tube in New Mexico—traveling with the park rangers to get to it in a remote location.
And along the way we've made tons of motion graphics pieces, and have been improving our skills as we've gone along. So now, we update our 2014 reel to feature work up to 2020 so that you can see where we are now. Thanks for following along with us, and we hope to bring you more frequent updates.
Where We've Been (Part II) Jun 22, 2015
Long time no see again. So let's get you updated. Here's a bit more on my travels this year.
In April Javier Fick, Caitlyn Corrao, and I flew out to LA and drove through the mountains to shoot in Bakersfield for Bright House. That was the first time I had been to California or even out West unless you count the airport in Phoenix. California has amazing weather. Even the desert-ish area of Bakersfield wasn't terribly hot.
We had a blast shooting in California. We also had a great time checking out the Sequoia National Forest. And we also discovered that Venice has a super-cool trendy neighborhood called Abbot Kinney that has bad ass shops like Will Leather Goods. We stayed just off the beach in Venice on our last night before flying out. In the morning I went swimming in the Pacific. It was a gnarly 64 degrees! I loved every minute of that.
In May we headed out to Detroit to shoot the 'burbs where Bright House has service. We were all wondering what kind of place we would find. You hear so much bad stuff about Detroit. It was an interesting place. We stayed in an airbnb that was on a block of houses but all around it there were just empty fields. There's still a lot going on in Detroit and still a lot of people looking to make it a better place. It was cool to see how the community was embracing that.
Of course we had to check out all of the sites in Detroit too. And I had to get that fist bump from the Joe Louis Fist statue. The trip itself started out a little rough due the the grounding of planes in Atlanta that killed our scouting day. But Javi and I at least got to catch part of the TB/Rangers game from the third airport we travelled to that day.
Thankfully, even with the loss of our scout day it all went well because we had a great crew. Cait isn't pictured because she took the photo, and we forgot to get a group photo with her and our second driver. But she was super important to getting this stuff done!
Until next time, you should probably follow us on instagram to see where we go next!
Where We've Been Feb 25, 2015
So I intended to keep up this blog pretty steadily. I really, really did. But then life intervened and I had a lot of work to crank on and I couldn't show most of it until 2014 was coming to a close. So here's a quick update to show how 2014 wrapped up and why it was a great ride.
Somewhere after my last update Severo Ojea and I started work on a few month long animation projects for Bright House. During that same time, Javier Fick and I were asked to shoot a very cool lifestyle/time lapse brand piece for Bright House's Tampa market. I bought some new equipment, and we learned some new techniques like how to hyperlapse—and how not to hyperlapse.
During the summer, Severo Ojea and I also began work on a new brand piece for Hard Rock Cafe's Times Square location in the old Paramount building. That was such a cool project to work on. At the end of the year my wife and I took a trip to NYC to check it out. I still can't believe that I can say I've got work in Times Square. It's really humbling.
In the fall Bright House sent Javi and I out to Indianapolis to shoot another lifestlye/time lapse brand piece. Working with Caitlyn Corrao and Javi to produce was awesome. That was my first time handling a shoot out of state. We had a blast shooting and learning all about Indy. What a cool city.
So that was the end to my 2014. It was a great ride, and 2015 seems to be shaping up the same way. I can't wait to see where we go this year, especially since I already know some of the cool places we're going!
You should probably follow us on instagram to see where we go!
The Teleporter Jul 30, 2014
I started work on a new personal project last week. There was a test version before this one, but this is a finished style for the main character—The Teleporter.
I see this as a series of animations that I'll put together one day (and invite others to help me with), but making them 10-15 seconds at the most will allow me to actually get them done without having to have some sort of goal of getting a 10 minute short or something out of it.
Hopefully this will also help me to update the site more frequently. I know the blog is lacking, and I'm changing around a bit of my lifestyle so that I can dedicate more time to things like this blog and this project.
Also, be on the lookout for a more liberal use of animated gifs. I'm glad they're making a comeback, especially since they're a lot better this time around.
Dont Tread On Me Feb 11, 2014
Working on another block print, and I decided it would make a cool desktop too. It is based on the Gadsden Flag, which is why there's no apostrophe on "dont."
Remember what you just learned by downloading and using the desktop! 2560x1600 version is here.
Et Dec 12, 2013
While I'm in the middle of making some elements for a new block print, I figured I'd make a desktop out of this since ampersands are so popular. In case you're wondering why I named it Et, that is because this ampersand is a ligature of 'E' and 't' after the latin word et which of course means and. So now you know why ampersands often look like this too.
Remember what you just learned by downloading and using the desktop! 2560x1600 version is here.
Winged Skull Dec 4, 2013
I've just finished building a new Mac and it was time for a desktop wallpaper upgrade so I made this. Who doesn't love skulls and wings?
Download it:
2500x1600
Updates Oct 21, 2013
Welcome to a fresh site. There's new work and new stuff up. And hopefully there should be more and more because I redesigned this thing to be quicker to update. I've ditched wordpress in favor of my own custom solution, which is geared more toward getting my work up as quickly as possible. I've switched from self-hosted Quicktimes to just using Vimeo. Hopefully that'll lead to me updating this site more frequently. Cross your fingers, I've been busy.
Here's a few screenshots of some stuff I've been working on. It'll be up here as soon as it's approved, which is the beauty of connecting things to Vimeo.
Pistons Wallpaper Feb 20, 2012
I was working on a new image for a print and since I haven't had the time to cut the block yet, I decided to make a wallpaper so that I could at least see it. I hope you enjoy it. I'm making it available in iPad and mythical iPad 3 sizes as well.
Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise Jan 17, 2012
I was listening to Matt Paxton's podcast, 5 Decisions Away—which I highly recommend—and I emailed him about something they were talking about. He replied almost immediately. Matt told me he liked my animation and he sent me a link to this video. It's amazing—so amazing in fact that I looked up a behind the scenes video and sent that over to Matt to ensure our mutual procrastination was successful. Enjoy.
If you enjoyed that, check out the Avett Brothers, and check out the rest of Jason Mitcham's work on vimeo.
Jack Daniel's - As American As Sep 8, 2011
Agency Arnold Worldwide hit it out of the park when they selected Prettybird as their production company. Director Max Malkin shot an amazing spot for that script. The guy playing the chord on the guitar after that staccato intro is just perfect. Beautiful cinematography, excellent color, awesome sound design, and brilliant copywriting all combine to dramatic effect punctuated by the iconic Jack Daniel's bottle.
In case you're wondering, that awesome track comes from an awesome musician—Gary Clark, Jr.
Check out the EP for his video:
Heineken Light - The Handlebar Mustache Sep 8, 2011
While I'm not a fan of Heineken's taste, this ad is great. It plays up all of the things that hipsters would find awesome, yet it does so without making you hate it simply because it reminds you of hipsters. The cinematography is trick and the atmosphere is great. The copy is good, and there's just enough humor. Check it out:
New Photos Mar 5, 2011
In case you wonder where this guy (me) has been, here's some photographic evidence of his travels. Yep, I went back up into the mountains again. We tried to hike up to the top of Mount LeConte twice, and we still managed to run out of time to reach the summit and return before nightfall. Actually, we ended up walking the last half mile on both trails in the dark. This picture was taken at a waterfall just before Rainbow Falls, in case you were wondering.
I also put up photos from a recent hike around Weedon Island which is in a completely different location in the country. It's also a much quicker drive from Tampa. And there's a lot less of an elevation change over the course of the hike.
AE Crib Sheet Dec 28, 2010
I recently purchased a drobo and I was moving some files around. I came across this old Illustrator file of After Effects shortcuts that I made for the office when I interned at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. It had some weird use of fonts for the style which I thought were cool at the time.
I opened it up and fixed a lot of the things that were wrong with it. I also added my own font as the headings. If you want a Carson-like crib sheet of AE keyboard shortcuts, feel free to grab the pdf below. It's formatted for 8.5x11 paper.
