Kako | Comic Artwork For New Mayday Parade Music Video “Oh Well, Oh Well” Premieres & Gets 34,000 Hits Over The Weekend!

October 13, 2011    Kako

Levy Creative Management artist KAKO creates a stunning new video with his comics for Mayday Parade’s new song “Oh Well, Oh Well.” The song premiered on Friday on MTV and received 34,000 hits over the weekend on YouTube. This project goes down as one of our favorite projects of the year and likely beyond, not only because of the end product but because of the collaboration of all the parties we worked with. Kako as an artist was actually allowed to have artistic input and felt like he wasn’t just a pencil put to paper. This thank you letter from the film production company we worked with speaks volumes of how the project started, how it unfolded and the appreciation of what it was like to collaborate with all parties. It was a true home run on all fronts and we hope that the video is as good as a success. Thank you letters from people that we work with rarely come around, if ever, one of this capacity is worth the shout-out. Enjoy it and soon Kako will be doing some blog posts of the different phases of this video assignment. We’d like to thank all our team members and new friends at Thunder Down Country Productions, Spacejunk and Gil Tokio (Kako’s assistant). To say that we can’t wait to work with you again soon is an understatement. We wish Mayday Parade and everyone that worked on this project the very best of luck with this song and music video.

The fabulous Thank You letter!

We just wanted to take this opportunity to extend our thanks to everyone who worked so hard on this project. This is an incredible music video. We are so proud of it, its ridiculous. From the time we were offered this video there was so much uncertainty of how we could possibly tackle this story. For 1.5 months we tried to figure out a way to film this thing. There were just so many locations, and so many variables. We eventually realized it was impossible. We basically reached a dead end and it looked like the video just wasn’t going to happen. We even came up with a completely new treatment, but the band told us they really wanted to do the original treatment. They managed to get us some additional time, but even with more time there wasn’t even close to enough money to film this practically.

Out of necessity the idea to animate the video was born, and the possibilities came alive again.

In early August I called David at Spacejunk Media. We had been into the studio once before during a previous project that we had hoped to calibrate on, but it didn’t work out. It felt like it might be a long shot, but we also had remembered from our previous interactions with the people at Spacejunk that it really seemed like a creative environment. We knew it would cost good money to get done what we were proposing, but we also knew that we were probably dealing with like minded people who had a strong artistic passion.

From the get go we felt very much on the same page with everyone. The only concern now was finding an artist to draw our story. There wasn’t a lot of feedback or interest in the project, but there was one person who did seem interested. Through all initial correspondences he seemed enthusiastic and full of energy. We decided to offer him the job, the last step was getting him on a conference call via Skype. Within 10 seconds of the call we found out that Kako wasn’t wearing any clothes, and as such he wouldn’t be joining us on webcam. At this point we knew this was our guy. During the same call when asking Kako about concerns over the tight schedule and having enough time, his responses included “I can sleep when I’m dead”, and ” Don’t worry I will just clone myself.”

In a way, Kako did clone himself, and we came out with a Gil.

Kako and Gil, thank you so much for your hard work and professionalism on this project. You guys also offered a touch of humor every step of the way through, and perhaps if you are only sleeping an hour a night (as the legend has grown around here) such as Kako was, humor is the only thing to pull you through. Everyone did their part in this story, but certainly your guys collaborated efforts went above and beyond what was required. We can’t thank you enough and your hand in this music video is as strong as anyone elses, and we hope you can always take pride in this project and in seeing your images come to life. You provided the spirit of the video.

After we had all of our drawings, Spacejunk went to work right away. They immediately delivered above and beyond what we expected and worked really hard. We even heard through the grapevine that Big Daddy David Ball got his hands dirty on some animation work, while simultaneously having a wife who was expecting to have a baby any day.

Ultimately, I think we all knew that there was absolutely no way that baby was going to be a good little child and wait until after this project was finished to arrive. So in Davids absence, Andrew took over full time duties on this project and he took care of everything every single step of the way.

Spacejunk Crew,
Animators, we would like to sincerely thank all of you. With the hours you worked, we are not so sure that located beneath the confines of Spacejunk media doesn’t exist a sweatshop full of starving Chinese animators and FX specialist. Thanks to all of you this project was able to come to fruition.

Jeff the Boddy, thank you for all of your creative ideas and thoughts. It was a pleasure to work with someone with so much creative enthusiasm. Even up until the last day when we had 2 hours left to animate and color you were still coming up with new ideas when you knew we didn’t really have enough time to implement them. You also did an amazing job with the color work, and again, like everyone else, you went above and beyond your responsibilities.

Andrew, thank you for your hard work on this project and for stepping up when David was out. Communication was always clear, you quickly got back to us on basecamp, and always took our calls. And most importantly you made sure our video met its delivery dates.

Nelson Mandela, AKA the Oven( because he will bake you alive in his scorching hot office with his duel threat heating techniques and simultaneous Candycorn/pretzel open fire roasting). Thank you for always having time even when you didn’t have time to meet with me. Anytime I gave you direction you took detailed notes and promptly passed them on to the rest of the crew. Also I appreciate your patience when we would go over timing issues and making sure certain segments happened at the exact right time down to the frame. On our last day working together we spent an hour on timing alone, going through the whole video and timing it out properly, thank you for your patience and hard work.

David, thank you for being so handsome. And for somehow convincing all of your minions at Spacejunk to agree to take on this project.

In all seriousness, I hope it is obvious that we are extremely grateful to everyone who helped make this video possible for us. In most cases our newest piece of work is our favorite, as is this video right now, but this is going to be one that is always up there as our favorite. Not just because it came out so beautifully, but also because of the journey, memories, and people we had the privilege of working with during the making of this video.

Thank you all again. We hope to work with both you Kako and Spacejunk again. Who knows, maybe there will be a sequel to this video?

Thank you.
-Brad and Kevin, Thunder Down Country”

Some images from the video below: There are one too many images to upload but you will see the phases of Kako’s process soon enough on upcoming blog posts that Kako will be providing us with.