First time animators get 75,000 people watching their film (Featuring Chogzoo)

Are you a creative person with an ambition to have the world see your work? if so, read about two young film makers called Chogzoo who got 75,000 people to watch their animation in their first year…

Self portrait by Andrew Jolly and Kyle Webster

But first a visual music review. Chogzoo vs “Mexicolas”

I was so impressed with the animation by Andrew and Kyle (who are the talent behind Chog Zoo), that I invited them to visually review Mexicolas album “X” in their cartoon style.

Chog Zoo – ‘X’ is the debut album from Mexicolas, and straight from the word go we’re painted an impression of what to expect from these guys over the next 13 tracks.

Hailing from Birmingham, Mexicolas manage to succeed where so few have before them. They’ve captured two of the most important ingredients of being a great rock band: A raw edge, and an ability to write great songs.

The combination of these two elements don’t always blend together very well. It’s difficult to write catchy songs whilst retaining a heavy streak at the same time. When we heard the CD, our immediate impression was of something beautiful disguised in a controversial coating. This inspired our entire set of images based on this band. Through first impressions, we conjured up the image of a girl, strikingly beautiful to look at, being portrayed in a way not normally befitting somebody of her nature. This subversion of ideas shines through in the music. You’re not supposed to like it, but you do.

The sound of Mexicolas is hard to describe. There’s definitely a Mexican influence in there, although from the name of the band that’s sure to be obvious. Some of the heavier tunes scream of ‘Queens Of The Stone Age’, but that’s not to say that Mexicolas are a one trick pony. They throw the listener back and forth between ballads and anthems with apparent ease, all the while still clinging on to their signature sound, that of Southern American rock n’ roll.

With this in mind, we pictured gambling, or more specifically dice and cards, something not normally associated with the image of a beautiful young girl. We combined the two to create our interpretation of the message hidden within Mexicolas; A radio friendly pop band that has taken its own genre, bent it over, and kicked its ass”.

Buy Chogzoo’s designs in the SUBvert Tee-store today, don’t delay

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We then asked Andrew and Kyle what lessons they have learned about selling their work and how did they get 75,000 people to watch their animation…

Tell us about the first time you sold a piece of work, what was it and how did it feel?

Andrew: It was a shirt for the band Failsafe.

Kyle: Oh yeah. It felt amazing. I was extremely proud of knowing that we’d satisfied a customer.

Andrew: And knowing that people wanted to buy it just made it even better.

How did you decide what to charge?

Kyle: Well the first time we sold a piece we were pretty naive about it. We ended up waiting nearly 6 months for somebody to pay us a fraction of what we should have been charging in the first place.

Andrew: So we checked out a website called The Association Of Illustrators on the recommendation of our manager, and they had examples of what other artists were charging, so we went with that.

What’s the most important decision you have had to make regarding your creative career so far?

Kyle: It didn’t really feel that big of a deal at the time, but the day we got an e-mail inviting us to attend a business course was the day that we officially headed down the road of becoming a real business. Here we are, 9 months later and things are looking up for us. So that was probably the catalyst.

How did you developed your style?

Andrew: I’ve always really loved Eastern animation, Anime and such. Especially the works of Ghibli.

Kyle: I’m inspired mainly by Western animation, particularly comedic stuff, so I’m less focused on the style of the animation, and more focused on what’s funny about the style. We developed our style by taking these two different inspirations and finding the middle ground.

Andrew: Now we pretty much do everything with some similarity. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell which of us has done which part of an animation. We’ve only been working together for around a year, so I guess that’s how long it’s taken to develop our style.

Have you ever had to compromise when working for someone else?

Kyle: Yeah the job we just completed meant we had to compromise our vision quite a bit.

Andrew: But they were our highest paying clients to date, and you’ve got to deliver a satisfying product if you want to get paid.

How do you keep yourself motivated to produce new creative work?

Kyle: You’ve got to be a little insane to even want to try and do the stuff that we do. Long days, even longer nights, slaving away over a computer, working towards something that people might not even appreciate in the end. I guess the motivation comes from actually getting the formula right, and finding that you’ve made something that people care about, and ultimately wanting to do it again.

Andrew: Seeing your ideas come to life is the greatest motivation.

Has you work practice changed from when you first started?

Kyle: When we were creating for ourselves we had very few limitations, one of the main ones being time. We had all the time in the world because we had nobody to answer to, so the concept of the ‘deadline’ was a big change for us.

Andrew: It’s good though. We work well under pressure, and I’d be lying if I said that we aren’t constantly improving because of it.

What has been your greatest creative achievement to date?

Andrew: Probably having 75,000 people watching something that I worked on for nearly a year, and then having the backing of a globally influential company as a result of it.

Define what success is to you?

Andrew: Probably just getting the job done on time, with a happy client that we know is going to come back to us in the future.

Kyle: The secondary function of each piece that we do is to make somebody else want our services, so if we deliver a decent product once, there’s a greater chance that we’ll get future business. That is success to me. Got to keep the wheels turning.

How do you deal with negative criticism?

Andrew: We don’t get any.

Kyle: Ha ha, lies.

Andrew: If we’ve had any negative criticism in the past, it can be difficult at first, and then we just remember that we make art for ourselves and everybody else’s criticisms take second precedence to our own

Kyle: If it’s a client, the criticism usually comes before the final product is delivered, so it’s actually beneficial to getting the thing done.

For more information about Chogzoo check out the following link

www.myspace.com/chogzoo