Filmography of Micah Buzan

 

Pala Leda – Janzilker (2015)

A paranoid man with insomnia has intense hallucinations after being kissed for the very first time.

I started having insomnia myself during the final 9th week of working on this. Whenever I was about to fall asleep, I’d wake up in a panic thinking my blankets were huge sheets of paper, and I was just one animation drawing trapped under this enormous stack of paper. By drawing weird animation all day, I was fueling my brain with memories of drawings – so when I’d dream, I would become the drawings. This recurrent nightmare was really scary, but stopped as soon I completed this video.

 

Secret Friend – Do You? (2014)

An old blue monk meditates in a jungle.

The song is pretty abstract and sound effects heavy. There’s a lot of nature in the song, so Secret Friend wanted me to depict that visually in some way. I spent two months working 10+ hours a day to complete this animation.

The animation combines traditional and digital techniques. Unbound by the laws of physics, psychedelic imagery flows towards the screen. Scenes abruptly morph into new scenes, kind of like in a dream. Also like in a dream, the story is open for interpretation and the meaning is as meaningful as the dreamer decides it to be.

The theme of the animation is Metamorphosis. Everything that exists in nature is in a state of growth and decay. Cells die as new cells are born. Tadpoles turn into frogs. Babies turn into adults and then adults turn into really old people who are basically like babies again. Nothing is permanent. I wanted to make an animation that takes people back to the time when the baby brain was constantly trying to decode novel experiences.

 

 Micah Buzan – Mixed Up (2014)

A Shapeshifting Monk goes on an adventure with a karaoke-singing Maneki Neko!

The aesthetic was inspired  by Japanese Woodblock Prints and Anime.

The song in this animation is from my album The Tyranny Of Thoughts.

The Flaming Lips – Look… The Sun Is Rising (2013)

The winning entry for the Genero.tv Video Contest for “Look… The Sun Is Rising” by Micah Buzan.

Taking over 2,000 drawings to complete, this hand-drawn animation details the eccentric ecosystem of some planet.

Animals on this planet live trapped in orbs, which are connected to machines that use animal energy as a means of producing clouds of various colors for the sun.

This one animal controls a flying-machine that is powered by an organ. When played, this organ produces rainbow clouds. He flies through the sky without any worries – playing his organ with the belief that he is truly free – until he finally confronts the planet’s sun.

 

Behind The Scenes – The Flaming Lips

 

Micah Buzan – The Thief (2012)

I tried to create a dystopian city fueled by greed and fear. The city is controlled by a neurotic Dollar Bill and his mosquito slaves. The main character gets turned into a little dollar bill after trying to escape the grip of the giant Dollar Bill.

At the end, a bird outside the polluted city is building a nest for her offspring, but she isn’t taking more from nature than is necessary to survive happily.

This is the first animation I made to incorporate backgrounds.

Micah Buzan – Heal The Weak (2011)

I drew this animation on notecards, which were scanned individually into my computer. I used markers, pens and colored pencils to draw this.

I didn’t create a storyboard for this. I drew each picture with no intentions. This is one continuous stream of weird imagery for my song, Heal The Weak.

Micah Buzan – Word Salad (2011)

I worked on this animation for 16 months. 7:30 minutes of weird, nightmarish hand-drawn animation. I scanned the drawings onto my crappy dell computer and edited it with the the terrible program WIndows Movie Maker, which crashed constantly during the production of this video – inspiring the creation of fist-shaped holes in the wall and many loud shouts of obscene language.

The Philosophy Of Word Salad

Words are the sperms of ideas, which get fertilized in the brain as thoughts.

There is an entire ecosystem of thoughts in each brain. Some thoughts live in harmony; other thoughts are apex predators devouring the weaker thoughts that are only half-believed. People are full of contradictions. I think this is due to the chaos of billions of thoughts in the brain, all competing for the limited resource that is the mind’s attention.

The more attention a thought is given, the more likely that thought will thrive and reproduce.

The music in this animation is from my solo album WORD SALAD.

Micah Buzan – The Promise (2009)

The Promise is my first ever attempt at animation.

This is a simple story of a monster pursuing a naked man.
I drew the pictures on tiny 3X2 bits of cut up computer paper. I wanted to make something with the logic of a dream.

I animated this when I was 19. Animation has become an obsession ever since.

The music is from my album Metamorphosis.