NYMUG

Production of NYMUG spanned over the course of three months, off-and-on between other Flash projects like Things BIG & small and Xmas. Perhaps the most difficult part was scheduling Heath for an interview, since he was busy juggling work, women, and competitive billiards.

We were finally able to record Heath's voiceover at Todd Haberman's home studio. The 33-minute interview was recorded at 48.8kHz directly into Emagic Logic Platinum 6, and transferred to CD-R as an AIFF. The final voiceover was edited down to 1:45 minutes using the 14-day trial version of BIAS Peak 3.1. (Great software, but I'm saving for Emagic Logic)

Heath Gill tells his story

Heath, a symbol of heroism, and a Symbol in my Flash Library!

Once I had the voiceover, I was able to begin illustrating and animating. Most of the character illustration was done in Adobe Illustrator 10, while scenery and backgrounds were illustrated directly in Macromedia Flash MX.

The "Squiggle-motion" effect for character animation was accomplished by creating each body part in Illustrator, and then applying a different Artistic Brush Strokes to each of two duplicates of those components. The set of three components was then brought into Flash and cycled as a Movie Clip. A limb, for example, consists of a looping cycle of three similar, but not identical, drawings. When playing as an endless loop, the result is "Squiggle-motion".

The entire illustration and animation process was done on my Powerbook G3 500MHz Pismo, running Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar".

During the process of animation, Todd Haberman was kind enough to compose an original soundtrack for NYMUG. Todd, who trained under the tutelage of Hollywood composer Basil Poledouris, easily picked up on the NYMUG vibe, and quickly put together a fun score for the animation. His composition was created in Mac OS 9 and Emagic Logic Platinum 6, with various MOTU hardware components. You can hear more of Todd's work on the Chappelle's Show, and in Robert Smigel's TV Funhouse animations on SNL.

Todd "Bluegrass" Haberman in his home studio

When NYMUG was completed, I had hoped that Apple might be interested in featuring it in their keynote address at Macworld CreativePro 2003 in NYC. I figured it would be the perfect theme for what could be the last Macworld Expo in New York, since, in early 2003, Apple announced they would withdraw from East Coast Macworld Expos if they were moved to Boston in 2004. In fact, Apple even threatened to bow out of attending the 2003 Macworld Expo in NYC. The whole controversy caused a stir in the Macintosh community, and Mac enthusiasts everywhere felt betrayed. What better way to kick off the final NYC show than with a pro-Mac, pro-NYC cartoon?

After speaking with a friendly Apple manager, it soon became clear that, while he enjoyed his private screening of NYMUG, it was unlikely that CEO Steve Jobs would approve the animation for Phil Schiller's scheduled keynote address. So, in the meantime, I also submitted the animation to Flashforward for their consideration in the Flash™ Film Festival NYC. Much to my surprise, the animation was nominated as a finalist in the Story category! Also, NYMUG debuted on the Big Screen at Macworld CreativePro NYC 2003 for my first seminar in Flash Cartoon Animation on July 16, 2003.