The Killjoy Trio

As well as having been in several garage bands growing up, I've been in a jazz trio for the past few years. We are the Killjoy Trio and have had the opportunity to play a lot of weddings, artsy functions and of course, ward parties around the valley. Although I'm more experienced as a guitarist (although not much of one) I got into piano and jazz music quite heavily several years ago and decided it would be fun to have a small jazz combo. Unfortunately, I play piano the same way I play guitar, untrained, by ear, and as any expert would say - the wrong way. I'm a big faker - chords in the left hand, melody in the right. I can't read music very well and I can't play hymns, but playing in a jazz trio has been a lot of fun. Because I started faking my way through some jazz tunes, I figured I could convince my lifelong friend and drummer Corey to do the same. I also successfully convinced my sister in law's husband Van to join as well. They both have done a very impressive job at learning some jazz chops on the drums and upright bass. They do a really great job at masking all of my crummy mistakes and we always have a great time playing together. We even played on a local tv show a couple of years ago, 15 Minutes - whoo hoo - here's a low-res video of one of the songs we played, The Girl from Ipanema. Here's also a pic from our latest show and some Killjoy artwork.

Sketches!

Here's some sketches for a couple of animation projects at FFFF. #1 are some character designs for a short story written by the talented Heather Dixon. #2 are some more character designs for the second season of Pig Tales.

TCB @ UBM

An article I recently illustrated for Utah Business Magazine. The idea behind it was something about PDAs overwhelming the tech-savvy business man. This was sort of a Sorcerer's Apprentice approach.

Wow, it's been a long time.

I never post anymore, I guess I've found a number of other things to occupy my time. Here's a story I illustrated for The Friend about a month ago.

Team Zissou & The Princess Aurora

Here's a post about two of my favorite films. Last week we went to Disneyland and I got a picture with my favorite princess from one of my favorite Disney films - Princess Aurora. I dunno, I think I like her animated better.... and I don't remember asking her to make that strange arm gesture.


Also, a couple of months ago, I became obsessed with finding some authentic Team Zissou shoes from my favorite Wes Anderson film, "The Life Aquatic." I quickly realized -THAT was not gonna happen and decided to make my own. Finding any Adidas ROMS at a decent price is impossible, so I settled for ITALIAS, and with very little altering, came up with my own. I made a pair for Pam for Christmas too, I think they turned out pretty good.

Righteous! Music

Here are some audio files to enjoy from the new Righteous! Game as recorded by The Bryan Beach Quartet. I arranged some jazzy numbers based on a few LDS primary tunes as well as writing some original content for the main menus of the game's DVD.

1. B.O.M. Stories

2. Nephi's Courage

3. Search & Samba

4. Bachelor Dad

Righteous!

In May of 2006 my friend/co-worker Dave Thompson and I concepted and designed a DVD board game similar to that of Scene It. Ours is an LDS themed game based on The Book of Mormon. We were able to license it to Deseret Book and a year and a half later it is finally on the store shelves. - or rather - will be on Monday Oct. 22 2007.

We're of course excited to see some fruits of our labor. The concept was basically Dave's idea that I ran with. There's an adjustable game board, game pieces, dice, cards, and of course, a DVD. The DVD has music, animation, picture puzzles, animated word puzzles, etc. etc. This was a huge undertaking for the two of us, especially considering there's no guarantee the game will sell well. But I had a lot of fun developing and creating aspects of the game.

I illustrated/designed the box, game board, characters, cards, and all of the illustrations for the DVD puzzles. I composed and recorded the theme music for the DVD, playing all instruments and arranging LDS Primary standards in a jazz combo style. And I even did a bit of character animation of the Nephi cartoon in the main menu. Animation is definitely not my forte, but it was fun to do a little of it. Here's a little Low-Res sample of the DVD menu:



Dave concepted most of the interactive DVD games as well as programmed and designed them. He did all of the effects and 3D animation. He and his wife, Natali, wrote and figured out all of the DVD questions, and he designed all of the DVD menus and how the DVD would actually work (that was a headache).

We even got Pam to record the music for the "Name that tune" section and her brother-in-law Mike Moore to write all of the questions for the cards (no easy task). They all did a really awesome and top notch job!

Anyway, the game will be on sale on Monday in any Deseret Book brick and mortar store for about $35. It has already been on sale through their website for the past month or so and think they're offering it for %15 off.

Here is some of the artwork and multimedia I did for it:





The company we formed is Peculiar People, here is the logo I designed - Yes - that's me and Dave respectively.