Help Axe Cop get married! / Last Call with Carson Daly

Congratulations to my friend and collaborator Ethan Nicolle, who recently announced that he will be marrying a wonderful woman named Jessica!

Ethan is a freelance comic artist (as I’ve mentioned many a time on this blog, he created Axe Cop with his little brother, Malachai). As you might imagine, it’s tricky to pay the bills making webcomics.. especially really BIG bills. But, Ethan’s come up with a great & creative idea to help finance his wedding: a Kickstarter-like fundraiser where you can get all kinds of rewards (such as personalized art) in exchange for helping him out with the bill.

If you love Axe Cop (or his other webcomic Bearmaggedon) as much as I do, consider kicking in a few bucks and getting some great art by visiting this site: http://axecopwedding.com

Also, I’ve been meaning to post this for a while:

Last Call with Carson Daly did an excellent piece on Axe Cop- one I feel does a great job capturing both the awesomeness and sincerity with which it’s made. And several of the motion comics I scored & sound designed are featured!

As Carson will tell you, Axe Cop is currently being turned into an animated series on FOX. Huge congrats to co-creators Ethan & Malachai! This ridiculously creative series continues to expand into many forms of media :)

Jeff and Kate: Wedding Song

Two of my favorite people got married last weekend: Jeff & Kate Becker! As a surprise wedding gift, I made a song (warning: 5min) for them and played it as a ‘toast’ during the reception (click link to download):

Jeff and Kate

It of course contains a few inside jokes, but these facts might help you make sense of it:

• Jeff and Kate live together in Madison.
• They have a dog named Barkitron 3000 (see his blog here), who was pretty old when they adopted him.  Jeff once explained he envisions himself as running a “retirement home for dogs”.  Bkt3k rarely barks.. but when he does it is deep and earth-shaking.
• Jeff proposed to Kate in a treehouse. (awesome)

This turned into quite the epic scale project when I decided to involve as many of our mutual friends as possible, and even some of Jeff’s family members..

Spoken Parts:

• I managed to get Jeff’s mom and one of his brothers (Matt) on the phone to narrate during the verses - I basically just interviewed them for 5 minutes each and edited it down later.  I had no idea what to expect but I think having family members handle the 'verse’ narration was a great route.
• For the bridge section I decided to make a “life advice” section full of half-serious/half-ridiculous thoughts by all the other friends I could manage to either get in front of a mic here in Chicago or over the phone: Mike Sudmeier, Rich Kirkendall, Max Crowe, Mark Quiner, Paul Skinner, Alex May, and Nick Thompson.

Musicians:

• Hawk Colman (vocals, some narration) is a great friend and one of the most talented singers I know.  He’s actually never met Jeff & Kate.. but was up for helping out.  I’ve had him in mind since I came up with the initial idea a year ago… thanks again so much for the session, Hawk!
• Nick Thompson (tenor & bari sax) lives here in Chicago, and stopped by to knock out the parts one afternoon.
• Kestrel Wright (french horn) now lives in Seattle but just happened to be in town for a few days.  I hadn’t seen him in years and the first thing we did was have a recording session… after that we went to a Thai restaurant to catch up.
• Will Roseliep (cello) is in Boston and recorded remotely with a flash recorder, playing along to a rough mp3.  Will’s pretty hi-tech.

p.s. dear other friends: I wish I could do something like this every time someone gets married, but holy moly did I ever underestimate the amount of work it would take… so I’ll probably have to go a more traditional route for future weddings to stay healthy & sane.  Take my word that I love you equally!