The Doorpost Film Festival

My film, ESCAPE, was accepted into the Doorpost Film Festival!!!

If selected as one of the top ten, the Doorpost gives $30k to each director to produce another short film before the middle of August this year. So get voting!!!

You must register to vote. It takes less than 60 seconds. -> http://www.thedoorpost.com/register/

You can check out a higher resolution version here: http://www.thedoorpost.com/freedom/film/Escape

or this smaller one below:

SUMMER/WINTER WORK PT.2

More summer/winter '08 work below...

HOW STUFF WORKS
http://www.howstuffworks.com/

These 30 second commercial spots were created to promote the Discovery Channel's new show - How Stuff Works. HSW originally began as a website, it was then bought by Discovery, and now it's a show!

Here are two of the four spots I animated:

LASIK:

MACHINE GUN:

ANIMATION BLOCK PARTY
http://www.animationblock.com/

The Animation Block Party is a huge animation festival in Brooklyn, NY. This spot was played before the screening of the festival's different films. Dave Schlafman was approached to produce this spot and he asked me if I wanted to work on it. He gave me all the characters and I took care of the rest. I love short projects like these...

*Apple's text speak was used for some of the voices

GIVE SOMETHING BACK
http://www.givesomethingback.com/

I was approached by a friend to create a short promotional video for his long time buddy's company: Give Something Back. This is a project that made me feel great to work on. GSB is a business supply company, like Staples, except that they began with an unusual business model: they give all of their after tax profits to charity, just like Newman's Own. How cool is that? I'm always inspired to hear about businesses that are concerned with more than just the bottom line. Check out the video and find out how they operate.

Jen Blicharz created the fantastic office and warehouse workers and Dan Flynn did the cool little paper animation you see at the beginning and end. I had a ton of fun on this project...

Summer/Winter Work Part1 - Between The Lions

This is Part 1 of my look back at the work i've been doing since going freelance in June of '08.

The reason I want to do this is because there have been so many cool things I've had the chance to work on and I haven't posted a single thing about them yet.

So here are 2 of about 10 books I animated for WGBH's Between The Lions this summer. BTL is an amazing literacy show on PBS. I love these books that are real short and sweet. Its always fun to animate with all the different illustration styles.

As for the process, I cut everything out in Photoshop and then animate in After Effects..

(*IGNORE THE BLACK OR WHITE AT THE BEGINNING OF THESE - that's where the book cover goes when broadcasted...

Catch Up Blog

Ok - wow. Somehow it's been 8 months since i last updated this thing. And a lot of stuff has happened in those 8 months...

Here's a recap:

MAY
I asked Avril to marry me.... She said yes!
So we quickly set a date(before she could change her mind):I couldn't really afford a proper ring. So my grandmother offered her's - which was her engagement ring, and before that, her grandmother's... the sentimental value of it is so cool. The jeweler estimated the ring was probably made somewhere around 1900-1920...

Grandmom:
The ring:

JUNE
I left Soup2Nuts after working as Director Of Post Production for about 5 years. It was hard to leave, but i was ready to move on and take a shot at free lancing.

JULY
Let's see.. Then we had a big Fourth of July party. Joe Pleiman and his buddies played. I think everyone had a good time. My buddies Drew, Ben, Tanner, and Eugene were all in from out of town...
Then some other stuff happened. A lot of wedding planning occured, and then we got married!

SEPTEMBER


Then Av and I were off for a short weekend get-away (honeymoon still to come). But we realized the place we were staying was where the Shinning was shot(no joke):
And besides, the staff there was horrible. The dinning room required dress shoes, but even though it was the day after our wedding and we had just driven 2.5 hours up, not to mention paying to be there, they didn't allow us down. So we took off the next day after a night of room service. Never go to Bretton Woods (Mount Washington Resort) in NH - unless you like a lot of pomp and ridiculous prices... bah.

OCTOBER
Halloween came. Av was Amy Weinhouse and I was Edward Scissor Hands:
NOVEMBER
Obama won! We were all psyched as the whole family were Obama supporters, even Rufus.

Now its the end of November, Thanksgiving is over, and the new year is coming up soon. So sweet, that's it! I'm up to date. My next blogo will be all about the work that i have done since my last post. There's been some pretty fun stuff. Its kind of cool to look back like this. It really has been an awesome/crazy year....

Speaking of old movies

Wow. So i was backing up some old stuff from my hard drive and I found this gem...

This is a movie i made in senior year of highschool i think. I can't remember exactly, but i know i was interning at In Visible Inc, a post production house in Nashville. That's where i made all the 3D elements.

But that skinny kid you see on screen 1st is me. And that black beauty was my old car. Seeing this again really makes me miss it. It had a break light out, the heat and AC didn't work, and the horn honked when you turned the wheel...it was perfect. It was a 1982 Cressida. Someone at school nicknamed it the Croissant, hence the title of the movie. Oh, and for some reason i was real into Nick Drake for a period and thought Pink Moon would make a cool name for a production company. It kind of does actually...

So check it out - Croissant Power - The Movie... The cast is me and my buddy Drew. The beautiful '69 Firebird was his brother's car.

...man i'm such a dork.

My First Movie - 8mm Memories

For my grandmother's birthday last year, which is right on Christmas, i decided to get my whole family a gift. Chanukah was also right around that time, so it was a good opportunity to do one big present.

My mom and dad were given a Super 8 camera for either a wedding or anniversary gift before i was born. So we had all of these old reels of 8mm films lying around the house that hadn't been watched in forever. I was worried about their quality and it deteriorating... so i had my parents bring them up when they visited sometime last fall and i took them to Play It Again Video out in Needham, Ma.

I had something like 3,200 ft. of film transfered to MiniDV. It was insane. That is why this present hasn't really been delivered yet. Its been a crazy process to sort through and date everything. Luckily my dad is one of those guys who is either saying the date and year out loud while he films or gets someone else to. Anyway, there are some amazing memories in there. I thought it would be cool to share a few of my favorites. So, drum roll please, here is the very first "movie" i ever shot, at age 3...

I'm not sure if my dad is going to appreciate me posting this one on the internet, but here is one of my absolute favorite finds from looking through the films. This is me, again at 3 or 4 years old, dressed up like Batman(aka wearing a towel around my neck). I'm also being somewhat of a brat about the particulars of Batman as my mom introduces me... But what's funny here is the surprise cameo by another superhero about halfway through the movie...

The sprinkler is like the coolest thing when you're a little kid. At least it was for me.

And finally - my very favorite video. Its not really funny, but just a cool moment with my mom. She was teaching me to smell a flower. This was 1982, Valentine's Day. I was 1 and half years old. I didn't know yet how to use a pencil right-side up.

Hope these are funny to anyone else besides me...

WEBSITE REVAMP

Its been over a year since i've done ANYTHING with my website. I'm sick of looking at it and everything is very old and, to me, boring.

Soooo I've solicited the help of Drioux Galvan to help me get it up to date. Besides art direction and making websites, Drioux also creates some pretty bad ass music. Check it out: http://www.myspace.com/drioux

Anyway, here's a not-so rough test of what the new evansussman.com layout will look like... i think its pretty cool. Who doesn't like tacky wall paper and old picture frames?

Also, I've also been working pretty hard on a new reel. Here is what is hopefully the final version of it: Of course, there will be a much higher resolution version on the new site...