A short stylized animation I created at Artistic Image using fully-rotoscoped footage that I shot using a Canon 7D. I match-moved the scenes and used Trapcode Particular to create the chaos that trails behind the skateboarders. Rowbyte Plexus was used in the first clip as well. This project was an immense undertaking, consuming nearly two full-weeks of rotoscoping alone.I’ve had this vision in my head for well over a year, and it is really awesome to finally see it all come to fruition!
2012 Motion Picture Reel from Andy Sapp on Vimeo.
Where do I even start? This is a project that I have been wanting to do for years. On the surface, it is merely a 3-year montage of footage I have shot using my Canon 7D since diving head-first into the realm of DSLR videography. But I feel strongly, that it is impossible to view this video from the surface. In fact, this video pulls you into the very depths of my heart and soul in ways I never thought possible. I stand strong in my conviction that I have never created anything in my life up to this point that harnesses and exposes that very same unfiltered heart and soul. Simply stated… this is the most powerful work I have ever created. Read more
Put on some sort of seatbelt before you watch this. Maybe even a helmet and any other protective gear you can find. Trust me.
Apparently this film is from 2009… but was perhaps never released? I can’t find it anywhere, but I spy a certain pack of wolfs..
Our German DriftMechanik counterparts, Axel and Martin, made their way over to the US for a visit… and hung out for about a week. To celebrate, we made a mad-dash to fix my broken diff, get the car prepped, truck packed and get to Nashville Superspeedway for TND’s Driftoberfest.As we left, I stopped to make sure the trailer tires were filled proper. When we got the gas station, we found one tire was totally flat. So I put air in it, and as I did, a nail shot out of in from the pressure build… leaving a perfect hole in the tire. With my patch kit at home, I bought one from the gas station. It looked like a stick of bubble-gum would have worked better, but alas – I plugged it with a vow to recheck in a few miles to make sure it was holding. We didn’t even get 5 miles down the highway and I noticed sparks shooting from the rear of the trailer. Then came the vibrations and some minor sway. Just like that – I had my first trailer-tire blowout EVER.
I had a spare, but it was a 14″ passenger tire… which wouldn’t make it through Monteagle. All the other tires on the trailer are 15″. We called every place we could with zero luck getting a spare tire at 1:30am. The one place we did find only carried 16″ tires. Lucky for us, Sammy from Tiger Racing hadn’t left for the event yet, and had a spare for us. We limped the truck/trailer to his shop just a few miles away, where he pretty much saved our lives! We drove straight through to the track, and arrived at 7am before the gates opened. I was exhausted, and still had to break in the new diff clutch plates. Got that taken care of, and it was track time.
After my first run, the diff was already clunking. I decided that I had too much invested in fixing the car/making the trip so we all could drive – so I made the executive decision to drive it anyway. Axel and I drove the car all day. I had a blast watching Axel drive my car. I had never had the chance to see my car in action like that. He got a TON of seat time! It looked like he had a blast.Marlow’s Corolla was knocking, so at the end of the day we put his car on my trailer, and I decided to drive the BMW on the street back to his place. Bad idea. By this time, the rear end of the car was making horrible clunking noises. Alex was shooting video out of the passenger-side of his truck, and I floored it for the shot. BAD idea. The car dogwalked to the left, right towards his truck. I thought I was going to hit him… hence the ‘oops’ face.
Unlucky for me, after that… everyone took off and I couldn’t drive over 40mph. Equally as unlucky – my cell was in my truck, so I had no way to call anyone, and they all took off at a normal pace. No GPS, no phone, malfunctioning car, and no idea where to go. Eventually, Tony Schulz realized something was up, and rallied the troops. They had to box me in, and we all went 40mph for about an hour back to Marlow’s. It was CRAZY.The next day, we hit the Import Alliance carshow for a moment, and then hit the Wave Country skatepark.
I skated in the pool for about an hour, then we hit the road back to Atlanta.
Shortly after our return, Martin and Axel (left to right) had to catch a flight back to Germany.
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. I feel EXTREMELY lucky that this crazy motorsport has introduced me to so many amazingly rad people. Martin and Axel are two of those people. I wish I took more photos while they were here… but I was too busy having a BLAST hanging out with them! I can’t wait to meet up with these dudes again!!
While I was clearing out and backing up old files on my machine, I stumbled across this image that my buddy Carlos Richard shot back in August of 2007 for my cover-feature in S3 Magazine. I thought it might make for a cool skate deck, so I gave it a whirl. I think I know what deck I’ll be skating once I kill my current stick!
Check all the decks online in the Slide Style™ Deck Shop.
I rolled up my sleeves and got to designing some new decks that are up in the Slide Style™ Deck Store… some of which I am really proud of.Don’t forget about the BIG F’N SALE going on until the end of the week! Prices have never been so low, so get it before it is GONE.
This new MotorMavens deck and a bunch of other designs by my hand are once again available online!I can make decks in different widths, from 7.25 all the way up to 8.25, including old-skool, pool, and longboard shapes – so if you see any decks in the store that tickle your fancy, but need a different size, just let me know! I will get re-sized and up in the store for you STAT.
My new deck finally arrived. I’m pretty stoked how it turned out! I got’r all gripped up, and all the hardware bolted on… so she’s ready to thrash!I pulled all the decks off of the Slide Style™ Store… but if you’re interested in snagging on, I have a BoardPusher storefront set up. If you’re needing a wider-sized deck, let me know and I can arrange that for you!
Made a super-last-minute decision to make a pilgrimage to Englishtown for East Coast Bash.
The last time I was there was 4 years ago to shoot Slide America, and I didn’t have time to pull my car off the trailer to drive. With Will and Josh in attendance to shoot for Keep Drifting Fun… it seemed all-the-more fitting to get back there for some driving. I’ve been telling Petty I was coming back for 4 years… so it was time to make due on that.
We showed up around noon on Sunday. This track is so amazingly awesome that I was instantly bummed I wasn’t able to get there on Saturday. So many configurations… none-of-which are bad. I instantly felt at home on this track. The more I drove it, the better things felt. I had such a blast… and cannot thank Petty enough for having us up! Towards the end of the day I felt a weird vibration in the car, and decided to call it a day before I blew something up.
The next day we took the car to Roots Factory in Coatesville, PA to give it a once-over. I didn’t feel like cracking open the diff-carrier… but it seemed like something wasn’t quite working with the diff. It had more play than usual, and you could turn the wheels against themselves if you pulled hard enough. Byron noted that my car looked right at home at this shop.
My buddy Brad Hettinger had already basically stripped his down to a shell in less than a day’s time. We decided to take a funny picture for his build-thread..
The next day we saddled up, and drove about an hour and a half from Hater Dan’s house in Pennsylvania to a top-secret locale for an OG underground hoodrat sesh. What went down inside this warehouse was UN. REAL. Rob Fleming met us, as well as a few local rippers, for a crazy closed-door session that lasted several hours. UN. REAL. Will and Josh piloted the KDF van to the location to document things. They wound up with some of the craziest shots I have ever seen in drifting. MASSIVE thanks to Dan for hooking this insanity up. Keep an eye out for the Keep Drifting Fun DVD to peep what went down!
After that madness settled down, we headed back to Pennsylvania, only to re-pack and head back to Jersey for Gardella Racing’s ‘Throttle Thursday’… which brought out a bunch of FD pro-drivers… many of which (including myself for a li’l while) kicked around skateboards and braved the park on BMX bikes. This was my first time inside a skatepark since 1998… and I was REALLY scared! (more on that in a minute…) We all had a good time, including our jump-session in the foam pit (01:35 in).
The advent of the foam pit was definitely after ‘my time’ in skating. I had never been in one, so I didn’t really know what to expect. I will say this much – they aren’t exactly as soft as you think. Whatever you do… DO NOT open your mouth, or else you get tiny bits of gross sweaty foam in it. UGH. Once I got up on that railing to jump… it was a good bit higher than I originally thought. Either way, I had to get in on a front-flip to complete the night.
Next up was Formula Drift New Jersey. The folks at NOS Energy were awesome enough to let us spring an impromptu booth-space in front of their bunker so we could help sell Will and Josh’s tees. Josh looks asleep in this picture.
Tony brought by some of the new DA American Steel Tees that I designed. They turned out SICKKKKK. These are available in the Slide Style™ store now!.
Alex caught me red-handed in this photo. After my shattered collar-bone in September of 2007… I swore I would never step foot on a skateboard ever again. I was actually banned by friends and family. After nearly three years, I finally caved. I totally understand how people who try to quit smoking feel. For three years I’ve been getting the ‘urge’ to skate like a smoker’s spiral into a nicotine-fit. I have to say… it feels good to ride again – even if I am riding like an old man scared for his life..
A couple funny jump-shots that my buddy Larry Chen snapped while I was wearing Lihnberg’s wig. If you haven’t been to Larry’s site, DriftFotos – CHECK. IT. OUT. Dude is a madman behind the lens – an amazing photographer for SURE. Plus he likes jump shots, which is RAD.
After FD, we headed south to Baltimore to meet up with the Drift Alliance crew to go see Hall and Oates in concert.
I never thought I would go see Hall and Oates… but we had a blast. It’s so smooth! SO SMOOTH.
After Baltimore, we made a quick stop in Philadelphia to get some proper cheesesteaks & pretzels with Will, Josh, and Andy Laputka. On the way back to Atlanta we made a minor detour to Manhattan. After an all-night drive back down the East Coast, we made it back home. What an astounding trip, and an incredible few weeks up North.
SUPER HUGE THANKS to my buddy Dan Bailey for letting us crash at his place for so long, and for the amazing hospitality.
If you didn’t know… this Hobo ain’t your average hobo. He ith a cultivator of fine beards, exquisite cinematography, and wondrous colour grades. Joshua “Hobo” Herron just dropped his ’09 demo reel on the world… and no, he didn’t upload it from a freeway off-ramp holding a sign that says “Why lie? I need a beer”.Bask in the omnipresent talent exuded in this three-minute sampling of work. Then, when you are done… hire this man so I can enjoy more visuals of this caliber.
After many many years of collecting skateboard decks, I finally got around to getting them up on the wall. This was not an easy task… even with single-deck floating displays from Sk8tology. The problem hanging this many decks is that they all variate in size (width, specifically).
To make things easier, I took a wall measurement and created a document in Illustrator to scale. I laid out all the decks how I wanted them arranged, and measured them individually – creating a corresponding rectangle in Illustrator (also to scale). Once this was all done, I distributed spacing horizontally using the align palette. This gave me a precise figure to which I used a micrometer to translate spacing between decks as I hung them. Why go through all that trouble? Feng shui is important – especially when I spend over 90% of the time in my office. Besides, a peril of being a designer is such that if they weren’t perfectly spaced, it would drive me nuts. I still have about 12-15 more decks to hang on the opposing wall… so stay tuned for more!
I teamed up with Southeast Drift to produce some more ‘Trophy Decks’ for the end-of-the-season “South East Drift Challenge”. Taking cues from BH Design’s killer bear motif… and following my idea from the last set of SEDC Trophy Decks, I made the decks piece together to form a giant image of a bear. Overall I’m very pleased with these.
Listening to “Beware the Circling Fin” by Early Man… I just unpacked the shipment of short-run Slide Style™ Trophy Decks for this weekend’s double-header at Turner.Don’t swim ashore just yet… this shark bite won’t hurt too bad
