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| The MK12. Front row, l to r: Matt Fraction, Maiko Kuzunishi, John Baker, Chad Perry, Jed Carter, Shaun Hamontree; back row, l to r: Tim Fisher, Ben Radatz, John Dretzka |
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| Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America: Many people’s first memory of MK12. |
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| The very early work: RES 2001. Watercolors, calligraphic lines, toon-shaded shapes: Have we come full-circle or are people just now discovering it? |
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| From their Secret HQ in rural America they came, saw and conquered the motion graphics world. Your undercover mograph reporters managed to secure a meeting with MK12 operative Matt Fraction. For your eyes only, the report... So to drop right into it, what are MK12 going to be when they grow up? What's the long-term plan? There's no longterm plan; it's all been moment to moment so far. It seems like it's not the best industry in the world to try and map a business plan onto anyway, you know? Ideally, we want to balance our client work with in-house work more regularly than we are now. With in house work, is that limited to doing animated shorts? Do you see yourself doing longer length projects? Other media? No; there's all kinds of work going on. We're pretty multidisciplinary. Printed matter, drawn/painted stuff, music, live action shorts, etc. HISTORY OF AMERICA is gonna be around 20 minutes, I bet. What kind of outlets are you thinking about? Skip ahead past the part that has you nose-down in the middle of working on them and not thinking about where you're going to show it, and tell me what you want out of something like History of America? How cliche is it to say that the work itself is what we want out of it? The rest is pure promotion. It's cool sending it to festivals and places where we can meet smart people and learn from them and be inspired by them, but these things are really just playgrounds where the, ah, journey is the destination, as Dan Eldon's book would say. Every chance to improve our craft and test our ideas and take creative risks is a chance worth taking, regardless of outcome. Of course, the other 8 people here would probably say something different. Has your storytelling style changed over the years? Matured, grown broader, gotten more efficient, to the point, etc? I'm not sure that's for us to decide? It's become, like everything else, a tool we've continued to use and refine, a technique and style we've executed again. Every time I feel like we understand one part of it, three more parts show themselves. How do you guys deal with having representation (by the Ebeling Group? How did you get used to it? Everyone else here will have a different answer. My answer is: we are extraordinary pains in the ass. Seriously. You know how, like, some people adopt dogs that were beaten badly as puppies and now, like, run away every time they hear a loud noise, or growl at people that wear boots? |