Channel Frederator Blog

Self taught animator and soon-to-be DJ Michael A Chico tells us a little about himself and his film for Ratatat’s song “Seventeen Years”.

Channel Frederator: Where did you study animation?

Michael Chico: In my room with a bunch of books, most notable of which, was The Flash MX Bible. This video was literally my second animation (my first one had a running time of 30 seconds). Furthermore, I was/am not a very good artist, so it took me awhile to do all the drawings inside of the program, which I later came to find out was a bad idea. I was studying film in college at the time and I appreciated the challenge of being able to tell a short story starting from scratch. This fueled my motivation to learn the animation process and the program itself.

CF: Who or what has influenced your work the most?

MC: The majority of my past projects in film/video are basically music videos, and it tends to be the accompanying music that will give me the strongest bits of creativity. If the time is right and the song is good, I can get a good mental picture of visual elements that I think should go along with it.

CF: What gave you the idea for this film?

MC: To be completely honest, I never once thought about the environmentalist undertones or that it would send such a strong message about green living. Once I released it on YouTube, it did not take long before I started receiving the occasional snarky comment that I was a tree-hugger, hippie or some kind of hypocrite. My creative thought process went as follows:

Q. What does the song make me think of? A. Robotic movements
Q. What is something I like? A. Robots
Q. What is something that is funny? A. Fuzzy Animals

CONCLUSION: Robots vs. Fuzzy Animals for control of the world.

Clearly Frederator understands the majesty of the gigantic robot. The rest was history. The storyline developed out of suggestions and scribbly drawings from a number of close colleagues. All in all though, I would say the song provided me with the most initial inspiration, but I am happy for the earth-friendly sentiments that it has come to evoke in some viewers.

CF: Can you talk about any upcoming projects?

MC: Unfortunately, since its release, this video has basically been my last Flash animation project. Due to the occasional encouragement from comments on YouTube, lately I have been trying to motivate myself to create another. So, hopefully something will be in the works soon enough.

Non-Animation Related: I have been busying myself with a friend of mine in a burgeoning DJ career in New York. Please let me know if Channel Frederator would like to attend. I will put you on the list.

CF: Totally. It will look something like this:

CF: What is the most environmentally friendly thing you do on a regular basis?

MC: I could not say that I excel in any particular area of environmentally friendly living. I think, like most people, I do a variety of different little things when I am able, and that works for me.

However, not on a regular basis, I assisted in the organization and management of some serious recycling efforts within my work life, so that helps balance out any ungreen faults I might have - that’s what I say, anyway.

Thanks, Michael!

You can check out his music video for Ratatat “Seventeen Years” right here on Channel Frederator!

-Bailee DesRocher