Not all days can be awe­some. Not all videos can be PG.
When­ever I got a big steam­ing pile of…quandries, I bust out this Reg­gie Watts anthem. It’s so sim­ple it’s dan­ger­ous.

Reg­gie is always awesome.

Loverly stop-mo by Rhi­an­non Evans for your Vday celebrations.

Sorry for the long away, I’ve been head’s down on this crazy fun project for the last month. But here’s a sneak peak of what we’ve been cook­ing up for BAMMO: A new super-channel on YouTube.

Spe­cial thanks to my super-talented collabo-amigos: Carl Son­drol, Ange­line Gra­gasin, and Jeff Katz! And super spe­cial thanks to Stephanie Bel­sky at Big Frame!!

Search­ing for some ref­er­ence clips on vimeo and found this treat:

Cour­tesy of Craig Shi­mala

Wow, these dudes just released the best aca­d­e­mic retrospective/explanation of our form, in our form. Gives the heart a lit­tle pitter-patter if you know what I mean.

Excerpt from JOHN PAVLUS of Fast­CoDe­sign:
“For instance, the his­tory of motion graph­ics goes back waaaaay fur­ther than Adobe After­Ef­fects. Accord­ing to Motion + Design, motion graph­ics are, well, any kind of graph­ics that move–which means that the pre­his­tory of the art form goes all the back to that of cin­ema itself. The film splits hairs a bit when mak­ing its dis­tinc­tion between motion design and animation–apparently, if “ani­mated char­ac­ters express them­selves directly” in a story, it’s ani­ma­tion, and oth­er­wise, it’s motion graphics–but the con­nec­tions it draws between the work of mid­cen­tury film artists like Nor­man McLaren and Saul Bass and the quiv­er­ing con­tem­po­rary cre­ations of Kyle Cooper and Imag­i­nary Forces are actu­ally quite illuminating.”

I have trav­eled to the City of Ange­les, and so far every­thing and every­one has fallen per­fectly into place. My new office is the most inspir­ing and focused work­space I can imag­ine. I’m meet­ing (and lov­ing) Mid­west­ern expa­tri­ates every­where I go. Even to the end that my house­mate loaned me his BMW for the month to tra­verse these streets.

I came here with the idea that cars were a nec­es­sary evil in a place like LA. But I have decided I don’t believe that.

I don’t want to par­tic­i­pate in the trap­pings of own­ing a car. The car pay­ments. Insur­ance. Gas. Park­ing: find­ing it, pay­ing for it, try­ing not to vio­late all the rules. Car washes. Main­te­nence. Also, car deal­er­ships are gross. Way gross.

So I got a park­ing ticket the other morn­ing in my new neigh­bor­hood (a block away because I cir­cled in front of my house 3 times and couldn’t find a space). Turns out it was street clean­ing for 2 min­utes of the 45 min­utes I had parked there. And I closed the book, drove back up to Lau­rel Canyon, and handed over the keys.

Call me a hip­pie, but I’m really excited to take on this city with two wheels and a Metro card. Get­ting my Chi-roadbike tuned up this week­end. Already took a long walk through the Fash­ion Dis­trict on my way to the office and noticed about 20 things I hadn’t noticed while pass­ing in the car. Includ­ing a cute cafe that I’ve been dying to eat at, but never has park­ing out front. It just feels more prac­ti­cal to me. So, I’m doing with­out the steel cage and I’m quite sure my own armor will be strong enough.

The video above is a lovely time-lapse piece by Ross Ching. My sen­ti­ments, exactly.

A cou­ple years ago, I was work­ing a fam­ily cam­pout in Jack­son Park’s Japan­ese Gar­den. (For those of you who don’t know–aside from being a graph­ics geek, I worked with kid­dos and fam­i­lies with the Chicago Park Dis­trict for 7 summers+falls.) I don’t know if I’m a worka­holic to labor on my birth­day, but “work­ing” these events rarely seemed like work. Build­ing a camp­fire, roast­ing marsh­mal­lows, tak­ing night hikes, and going fishing…arguably the best “job” you could ask for.

My buddy Julia on the tran­quil shores of Jack­son Park’s Japan­ese Gar­den. See the half moon bridge and the Museum of Sci­ence and Indus­try back there?

If you know me, I’m not really one to make a spec­ta­cle of my birth­day. But through the course of the evening one of my co-workers sub­tlety men­tioned that tomor­row was my birth­day. So the next morn­ing, as I was behind the skil­let cook­ing a monster-batch of pan­cakes, one of the fam­i­lies came rush­ing over singing “Happy Birth­day” and the lit­tle boys gifted me with some cool, found “nature stuff” that they scav­enged on their morn­ing hike. It was pretty adorable. Really, really adorable.

After fish­ing in the lagoon and all pan­cakes were devoured, every­one rolled up their sleep­ing bags, packed up the tents and made their way back to their urban lives. But that one fam­ily lin­gered a lit­tle longer than every­one else. And even­tu­ally the Mom came over to thank me for host­ing the event, which was not uncom­mon, but what she said I’ll never forget.

With tears in her eyes, she said, “I didn’t want to say any­thing, but my hus­band just got laid off on Fri­day. And [the cam­pout] was so fun and excit­ing for the boys, that even my hus­band and I were dis­tracted from that awful news and able to just be a nor­mal happy fam­ily for the week­end. I can’t thank you enough.”

Me being all wishy washy, I started to tear up as well–but in a happy way. Some of my favorite mem­o­ries are with loved ones and friends spent out in nature. I love the city and my hus­tle, but being out­doors with the ones you love is the best feel­ing in the world. To all my camp­ing bud­dies near and far, I’m think­ing of you today.

Nature hands you many oppor­tu­ni­ties, like a con­ver­sa­tion about the birds and the bees. Or the grasshop­per and the grasshopper.

Gath­er­ing some imagery for the titles of Direc­tor Holly De Ruyter’s doc­u­men­tary on Wis­con­sin Sup­per Clubs ‘Old Fash­ioned.’ There’s a lot of gems in this ‘Guide to Won­der­ful Wis­con­sin’ from 1967, but here’s my favorite…I bet you wish we were grab­bing a cold one on this Fri­day eve next to these “spec­i­mens” at Arcadia’s Sportsman’s Bar…

“Such freaks as a hybrid dog-fox…or albino catfish!”

Sorry if the blog has been slow this sum­mer, we’re in the midst of tak­ing this thing to Los Ange­les. Sit­ting in the future offices of PRQ at the moment and the view is magnificent.

I love the CHI, but she’s got a wicked win­ter punch. So it is with fond­ness that I bid adieu. I haven’t decided whether we’re renam­ing the blog just yet, but stay tuned for the FUTURE. (Speak­ing of which, has any­one seen the new Miranda July film yet?? I love her so.)

This is a mighty adorable spot fresh out of Blacklist’s bag of tricks. Opens with a touch of info­graphitry, but the stats are por­trayed by the cutest class of 8 yr olds in all of Canada.
Fur­ther­more, REDSHIRTARMALPHABET! Hoo-rah.