Hollow Earth

MTV International / Mad Drummer from Universal Everything on Vimeo.

If I allow myself to be appear so graceful and unconcerned in the field of Music and Music Journalism it's only because I am consumed with petty jealousy and bitter rancor when it comes to the field of Animation and Motion Graphics. I've been in touch with this guy Matt Pyke at Universal Everything in the past, pretty much as a groupie. We exchanged a few texts and emails, him (still) like who is this loser? But a nice guy f'shure and with a vision that extends beyond the boundaries of his field.

Matt (always an appropriate name if you're working in TV graphics) left The Designer's Republic to concentrate on his own thing a long time ago. Although I take no pleasure whatsoever in their going bust a few months back, I never liked The Designer's Republic stuff at any point in time. All their work through the 90's I loathed, and now it seems terribly dated. Looking back I think I only ever dug the sleeves they did for Krush's "House Arrest" and Nightmares on Wax's "A Word of Science" which were both in a similar vein. But as for the rest of the work, forget it. I never understood what all the hype was about.....

However Pyke's stuff has been consistently excellent. I mean though, what a jammy dodger! He seems to get all these great jobs! You've got to be generous though, as much as that strains the very core of one's humanity, he's a talented dude. Universal Everything's latest project has been for MTV. Now I've done work for MTV Flux, MTV 2 and MTV Source but in quite a small capacity. This was really a different kettle of fish - a total brand overhaul. I like what they've done to the logo, a kind of sanctification, sticking it on a white square- that's nice. Also the kit of parts, all the menus and banners and lower thirds (deep tech speak) are beautiful too. I also really like the Mad Drummer Video (see above) - I *myself* keep wanting to have the opportunity to do Character Design and Animation in a purely graphical context, but sadly (yes reader, here it comes, like rain on a parched field, the schadenfreude) the other MTV Idents are a bit preset-tastic, short on real ideas and a little bit meh.

posted by Matthew Ingram  # 00:31