Jukejoint Handmedowns

The Band

Jukejoint Handmedowns, music

The “covid year” hit the band pretty hard. We were halfway through a new album, and for the most part, stopped getting together for a year or more. We’ve made some tentative steps towards getting back together, with semi-regular practices and a rethinking of our brand. One of the more exciting developments is that we’ve added a new member (after nearly ten years as a quartet), and it has recharged our batteries, and hopefully we will be back out there and gigging again in the new year. Here’s the redesign of our ‘caricature logo’.

Hippopotamus

animation, Jukejoint Handmedowns, personal

In addition to the animated ‘Craig Emcee’ segments that I created for the Wheatland Kids Hill video (see previous post), I also created this partially animated children’s song featuring my band mate Nate and his song “Hippopotamus”. I had a lot of fun with this, especially the challenges that it presented (building a four legged character and figuring out the walk sequences), not to mention the fact that it involved a deadline, which has not been an issue with my previous animation projects.

Meanwhile, I’m still working on my self promo piece from yesterday. Did a little more work into Maggie’s dress, and blocking in some more color. Need to work on the hands, the ‘noodle bucket’ and the background a bit more. I’m also thinking I’m going to set this in a rainstorm, so will need to work that and some Hong Kong back alley scenery into the left side.

Wheatland Kids Hill Animation

animation, Jukejoint Handmedowns

Since Wheatland Music Festival was cancelled for this year due to the pandemic, the board of directors decided they needed a ‘performance video’ to offer to their many fans and supporters. Kids Hill, of which we’ve been involved with building musical instrument projects for several years, was allotted an hour of video for this compilation. I provided several short animated ‘links’ featuring a cartoon version of my friend Craig to help spice up the presentation. Here’s the entire collection of ‘intros’. (I’m also working on a partially animated children’s song video about a hippopotamus which I’ll be sharing very soon)

Animation Pro Bono Work

animation, Jukejoint Handmedowns

I’m currently waiting the go-ahead on a couple of book projects, and so I’m filling my time with some more animation projects, as well as sending out some email marketing and promotional postcards.

Usually the week after labor day I attend a music festival up north called ‘Wheatland’, and like a lot of events this year, they had to cancel for the first time in their forty year history. I’m part of a team that provides a musical craft project for children at a part of the event called ‘Kids Hill’, and this year, the committee decided to produce a ‘virtual video festival’ to release around the time of the usual festival date, and they allotted an hour of the video to ‘Kids Hill’. I’m going to be building a series of short video ‘introductions’ starring a character based on my friend and bandmate Craig, who will be introducing each of the segments (screen shot pictured below), and I’m also working on some short bits for a music video for a song that my other bandmate wrote about a hippopotamus (test animation pictured above). The Hippopotamus video will be a half and half animation/live performance, so mostly I have been working on trying to perfect a ‘jaunty little walk’ for our main character. The Emcee videos will involve a bit of lip-syncing once I’ve gotten the audio tracks from Craig.