Votebot

What a better way to celebrate your extended July 4th weekend than by working exercising your hard-earned right to vote!

Ballot 1: WIZARD NEEDS VOTES BADLY

Our hibernating music video for Five Iron Frenzy has finally awakened. Channel Frederator just launched their 36th episode which includes one of the first official Ghostbot projects ever produced, "Wizard Needs Food Badly". We have a short clip of the music video available on our site but there's never been a proper forum for the whole shebang until now. Big thanks to Fred and the gang for providing a great showcase for animation that would never see the light of day otherwise. They also set it up so that you can show your support by voting and commenting on things you like (or don't like) about each short. Personally, I thrive on reading the comments. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Unless you post negative comments...then I feel cold and dead inside...

Channel Frederator also featured an episode of my other hibernating show, Joe Paradise (way back in Episode 3) which I blogged about here.

(Thanks also to Cold, Hard Flash for the cool write up!)

Ballot 2: BEAN COUNTER

Our pals, The Ciminos, are on the brink of stardom, thanks to their mini-pup, Bean. From her proud mom:

Out of 120,000 entries my little dog Bean has made it all the way to the top 6 finalists of the nationwide Old Navy Mascot contest and now it's up to you to help make her a star! From now until July 7th there is going to be online voting to decide which of the 6 lucky pups wins the grand prize and becomes the new star of all the Old Navy commercials.

You can vote once every day and be personally responsible for catapulting Bean into the affordable-and-fashionably-clothed hearts of millions! And I've made an exclusive deal with Sherrie that if Bean wins, Ghostbot will get 10% of Johnny's animation time. Since he's one of the fastest Flash animators we know, 10% of his time equals 200% more Ghostbot work!

You just can't lose, people.

Happy 4th!

Esurance’s Proof is in the pudding

“Proof” is the latest Esurance spot we’ve done for Phil Robinson at Wildbrain. This time Erin and Erik are dipped into a stylish noir world. Oh, it also has a bunch of crazy robots in it too. Those darn robots just love getting blown up!

This was the first time we did everything digitally (with our trusty Cintiqs). It was strange not drawing stuff directly on paper, but we got use to it really fast. The end result was some really polished work.

Every aspect of the production was pushed this time around. Roque is no stranger to the land of noir, with his great work on Joe Paradise and Mole in the City. He focused like a laser on the color and bg design. Brad slaved over making Erin as smoking hot as she could be, as well as designing the insane robot bar maid. I spent most of my energy on the storyboards, animating the action sequences, and explosion fx.

I’ll post up some of the drawings and some board panels soon. Til then, check out the finished spot here!