Cartoon Brew did an interview with me about the overall film and the 5 year process behind making it.

Animation Obsessive asked me for a short paragraph about the light in the film and I ended up writing a whole article instead. So much research went into that part, trying to understand how older cel animation and film handled glow, bloom, halation, diffusion, grain, and why the light in those films feels like it’s actually inside the image.

A longer interview with Matthew Trask gets more into the behind the scenes side of it. I talk a lot about creating the texture of the world, the animatic process, and even tracking down the same paper Studio Ghibli uses for backgrounds and scanning it in to process the background art with.

I also did a 20 minute talk with legendary animator John Pomeroy (The Land Before Time, Fantasia 2000, Atlantis: The Lost Empire) about the video.

It’s been amazing seeing people’s reaction to the video. If you haven’t seen it, you can check it out below.

You can read the pieces here: Cartoon Brew, Animation Obsessive, and Matthew Trask.

This music video took 5 years to make. Back when the world shut down I decided to try writing and directing an animated music video even though I couldn’t draw whatsoever AND make it feel authentically cel animated…how hard could it be?

Very very very hard is how hard.

But we got there in the end thanks to an absolute wonderful team.

Painstaking detail went into researching the effects of film on animation, from grain, halation, bloom, and color shifts, to how traditional optical effects were achieved and how subtle movements in cel photography gave the image additional texture. The goal wasn't just to mimic a style, but to capture that feeling you have when you watch old animation.

We couldn’t be more proud of how it came out.

Enjoy!

On January 1, 2020 I finished an album I had spent 3 years making. During that process, I built a series of tools born out of the frustration I had trying to get the sounds I wanted. The world and music industry were in flux, so I decided to wait on releasing any music and focus on the software instead. I never thought anyone would actually want any of the tools I made, but hoped a few people might.

I’m glad I was wrong. The enthusiasm you’ve all shown for Noir Labs over the last few years has genuinely changed my life.

Today I’m launching the label side of Noir Labs with its first release, Spirit Jumper.

While mixing it, I used to manually measure gain before and after every plugin and thought there had to be an easier way to do this. This track is the reason Volume Buddy exists. Without the album, there would be no plugins.

I’m hoping you’ll follow me along into this next chapter.

spktra