Quay Animation Studios News and Updates

Camphor | Friendly Fire Recordings

I’m currently working on an animated music video for the track “The Sweetest Tooth” taken from the album “Drawn to Dust” by New York based indie band Camphor. The group is based around the songwriting of Max Avery Lichtenstein. If Max’s name rings a bell, you may recognize him from his unconventional instrumental music for critically-acclaimed independent movies including Tarnation (written and directed by Jonathan Caouette. Exec. Producer, Gus Van Sant) Jesus’ Son (starring Billy Crudup and Samantha Morton) and The King (starring Gael García Bernal) Max also wrote the score for “The Winged Man’ written by Academy Award Nominee José Rivera (The Motorcycle Diaries)

The narrative for the animation takes place during the 1930’s American Depression in a dust bowl settlement. It deals with themes of consumerism and greed amongst desperate poverty.  The style of the animation mixes CG with a stop motion feel and an assortment of steam punk-esque gadgetry.  The music video is scheduled for completion in the next couple of months.

Below is a test animation from pre-production.

Camphor - The Sweetest Tooth from Mark Jobe on Vimeo.

Karoshi Bros | Woodville Records

At the beginning of 2008 we finished work on the animated promo ‘Love the World’ for the Karoshi Bros.  It doesn’t take too much reading between the lines when you first hear the track that basically it’s a bit of a rant at well, pretty much everything.  We decided to focus on the idea of what would happen if the emotion of the rant took physical form…I think.  It was a while ago.  Long story short we took photographs of anything we could find in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK that looked like it was falling down or was in the process of being pulled down (moment of silence for the Newcastle Brewery)

We used several animation techniques because we could and the client was open to every idea we put forward.  In there you’ll find stop motion animation, 2D digital animation and 3D environments created from bits of all the photography we shot.  Check out the hand-made frame we made in some production still below (MacGyver would be proud)

The music video has been shown at two film festivals in the UK so far, made it onto MTV and has accumulated over 60,000 hits on youtube to date.  Full credits can be found over on the main site.