Timetripping: Dave Likes Art

Since we're talking about Jemaine and his love to claymation, I think I should add one more video to complete the collection.

This stopmotion animation is from 2003. It was written by Jemaine Clement who also provides the voice for Phil (other characters are voiced by Bret McKenzie - Steward and David Fane - Dave). This short film was created for ClemengerBBDO (Wellington NZ) for Land Transport and it took them one year to produce.

The video was for cinema and was promoting safe driving. "It's not apparent that it's an anti-speeding ad until the end — and even the hedgehogs are surprised. The ad is longer than usual at four and a half minutes, it's in a claymation format (Wallace & Gromit style) and there's no LTSA or Police logos. But what you won't miss is the same hard-hitting message — the faster you go, the bigger the mess — which comes in right at the end." (more under this video)

What I'm mostly proud of and happy for Jemaine is that Dave Likes Art won three awards at Axis that year - Animation, Direction and Best cinema campaign.

Life on Ben

We already know that Jemaine loves clay-animations. It occurs that he's keen on giving his voice to not only sheep but some strange creatures in a TV series which title reminds me one of David Bowie's songs, Life on Mars. This series has something to do with hygiene, not travelling in space, though.

"TV series featuring the voices of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi. Jemaine is the green guy and Taika is the purple guy. They come from Ben's butt but are taken from their home violently and planted at the base of Ben's nose when he gets an itch down there and then picks his nose. The series follows the two symbiotic creatures on their quest to get back to Ben's butt making contact with a surreal zoo of creatures that call Ben home. Created and directed by Luke Nola. Television Spacaman Ltd. Producer Neil Stichbury, Animator Any Elworthy, Simon Good, Models Shalom Watkins, Set - Adrian Bennet."

UPDATE

Life on Ben is from 2003-2004 and the whole series of 10 episodes is available on DVD in New Zealand. It may appear on eBay, if you're interested in buying it.

You can watch three more episodes on-line:

Waste Snot Want Snot

On The Blink

Ben Hurt

The Pen: new episodes are coming

About 3 years ago, Jemaine together with Guy Capper did a couple of short films called The Pen. The characters, sheep made of clay, Sheepy (voiced by Guy) and Robert (Jemaine), were talking about different philosophical issues that concern sheep, like if there's life after death or how to baa. 

This year Guy and Jemaine united their talents to create some more episodes for a comedy tv show Radiradirah (featuring such comedians as Rhys Darby, Taika Waititi or Naked Samoans). The show was running on New Zealand TV3 every Friday from May till July and soon will be released on DVD. Let's hope we'll be able to see it as well. In the meantime, we can watch The Pen new episodes on ThePenNZ. Keep an eye on this youtube channel, because a new episode is going to be uploaded every week.

Here's the first one:

Robert and Sheepy have also their Facebook page.