AXE COP 4... plus a little something special

It’s time once again to unveil a brand new episode of the

Axe Cop

motion comic! Per usual, my role was (very dense) music and sound design.

For those of you new to

Axe Cop

- it’s a popular webcomic written by a 5 year-old and illustrated by his 29 year-old brother (they’re now ~1.5 years older). I’m a big fan as I’ve never seen anything so perfectly capture the imagination of a child…

This one is special for a few reasons.. (

SPOILERS

below- I’d suggest watching the episode before reading)

1) It’s our first episode with DRAMA!

The

previous

episodes

I’ve worked on have been wall-to-wall intense action. Ethan Nicolle (the elder brother and artist) and I chatted on the phone before I started to make sure we were on the same page re: how the music’s tone should change through the course of the episode. Thus, you’ll get to hear some heartfelt drama cues and even a bit of my excellent EastWest Symphonic Choir samples for Uni-Avacado Soldier’s first wish.

2) “Axe!”

That music you hear in the end credits is indeed very closely inspired by Isaac Hayes’ classic “Shaft!”. Ethan had the idea of the giving Ralph Wrinkles a wonderfully deep/low voice and therefore asked if I could do something Shaft-ish for the walking-with-sunglasses scene. I quickly knew exactly who to call:

Will Wheaton

, a great singer I worked with on an

internet love song

somewhat recently. As I’ve mentioned before, Will was the guy that Southpark called in to voice “Chef” when Isaac Hayes was out sick. So obviously… he hit it out of the park.

Friend/collaborator

Angeline Gragasin

and I handled background vocals (mostly Angeline.. my falsetto only serves to help fill it out a bit, hehe). Session favorite Max Crowe provided porno guitars, Chris Murphy played trombone and I dusted off my trumpet to play a few stabs as well.

This project was a lotttttt of work/fun. (same thing, right??)

Lastly, Webby Update: Looks like we couldn’t beat Galifianakis & Bieber for “Best Comedy Short”. But as our video had no celebs I think we held our own pretty nicely. Thank you everyone who voted!

AXE COP 3 + writing process + testimonial

I just finished scoring & sound designing another episode of the AXE COP motion comic! There’s actually a video of Malachai (age 5) writing the story for this episode.. so if you haven’t seen that, watch it first. That’s his brother Ethan (who illustrates the comics, age 29) interviewing him:

And here’s the new episode. I did all music & sound except the opening/closing credits… it’s a real WHOOSH-BOOM-stravaganza. In addition to the usual crack team of people who work on these we are joined by Maurice LaMarche as the voice of Avacado Soldier. You might know him as “The Brain” from Pinky and the Brain or from any other cartoon in the past few decades. Pretty awesome of him to help out.

Finally, Ethan wrote me a nice testimonial which I’ve posted at sondrolmusic.com.

AXE COP score + sound design

Every once in a while, the internet calls our attention to something truly amazing and unique. One of my favorite examples is the webcomic AXE COP which is written by a 5 year-old (Malachai Nicolle) and illustrated by his 29 year-old brother (Ethan Nicolle). It’s a pretty wonderful thing to see Malachai’s wild imagination fully-realized in comic form by a professional comic artist. I’ve been a huge fan ever since it came out.

I am very proud to say I scored and sound designed the above motion comic version last week- easily one of the most fun projects I’ve ever worked on. I worked hard to make the action music as ridiculously OVER-THE-TOP as possible, and have the sound design continuously punch you in the face! I’ve been listening to the Die Hard 2 soundtrack a lot over the past few weeks to get in the right mindset :)

Anyway… enjoy!

I’d like to give a shoutout to Tony, Glenn, and Donald of Promo Scape in Australia who did an amazing job animating and producing.

I was completely blown away by the voiceover work, which features Bob Souer (narration), David DeAndrea (Axe Cop), Lee Gordon (Flute Cop), and Marcus Irvine (Telescope Gun Cop).

Last but not least, kudos to Step Dad for an axe-tastic theme song.