Could you tell us the origin or source of you domain name, "mk12"?
Matt Fraction: It was a typo.
In one interview, mk12's co-founder, Mr. Matt Fraction has mentioned the difficulty of managing both creative and business aspect in design industry. Being the top roster of The Ebelling Group, do you still feel that letting business pros take care of that side of it allows you to concentrate on artistic issues thus allowing you to create better artwork? Or do some problems still persist, such as restricted creativity?
Matt Fraction: Both are true to certain extents. TEG handles many of the nuts and bolts business and production issues we encounter, and beyond the sheer volume of stress that reduces, it frees up more time for our work. Problems with business will always persist, and it can't help to spill over and affect us. That said, TEG does a fantastic job in protecting us as much as possible.
What sort of things do you receive inspirations from and how do you visualize it? Do you find that you are more inspired by artistic things such as music and movies than minor small everyday things? Also are you sometimes inspired by world politics etc?
Matt Fraction: We're inspired by everything; there's very little rhyme or reason behind it. We can be as inspired by a film or a filmmaker as we can be by a catalogue or a chair-- it all depends on what kind of film, what kind of chair. World politics? Probably not so much.
We thought the fusion of real shot and animation was so amazing in the music video that you created for Canadian Band, Hot Hot Heat. Do you have any particular musicians that you would love to create music video for in the future?
Matt Fraction: Thank you! We could generate a wishlist a mile long for musicians we'd like to work with. Beyond that, though, is just a fondness for the music video form. We'd like the opportunity to do more for whomever would have us, if it meant we could continue to explore things the way we did with Hot Hot Heat.
Currently, how many staffs are working at mk12? We assume that it probably varies from a project to another, but for example, in order to complete one motion video project, which is at very high quality level as all of your projects are, how many staffs are in a production team? If they are not confidential matters, could you tell us how long it takes on average etc?
Matt Fraction: There's a core team of 9, and it fluctuates depending on the jobs. Production teams vary, but usually there's three or more folks on a gig at any given time. Job completion depends on the client, mostly. Hot Hot Heat took six weeks, from initial call to delivery; Adidas took about a month; DiK took a week. It varies.
Music/Sound used in all of your projects are just perfect as well. Do you create all of the music yourself too?
Matt Fraction: We do our own audio whenever we can. Our sound person is named Shaun.
We see that your website will be renewed soon. We are very excited to see if your version 5 will have more of mk12's signature motion graphics and animation techniques throughout or just be simple and easy to navigate just like version 4.5 was. Do you have anything in particular that you are very cautious about when you are creating websites, compared to motion graphics production? Also are you planning to do more websites in the future?
Matt Fraction: Actually, we kind of hate websites. We are very bad at making them, and it's very frustrating and stupid. Also, we're not very good at it. The next website, if i had to guess, will be fairly simple. it's always just an excuse to showcase our work anyway. it will be about cowboys and astronauts.
"Ultra Love Ninja" was very much interesting for us Japanese. Does Japanese culture or style interests you?
Matt Fraction: There's an energy and mania to Japanese pop-culture that appeals to us visually, from text to iconography to design. The colors, the intensity, the juxtapositioning of cute and strange-- we love it all. Not necessarily just ninjas.
Do you have favourite Japanese site or is there any Japanese site that has inspired you?
Matt Fraction: Do you know Matusmoto Taiyo? His work was a big inspiration to the Hot Hot Heat video. So was Junko Mizuno.
Thank you for wanting to talk to us!