Syd Garon

When Syd Garon moved to LA from San Francisco four years ago, the city was exactly what he imagined it to be: high-speed chases and celebrities.

“We went for dinner once and there was a police chase that crashed in front of us. Then Edward Norton walked by on a cell phone and said, ‘That was awesome man!’” the 39-year-old animator recalls. “My wife and I had this rule when we moved here: Never turn down an invitation in LA because something great always happens.”

And something great did happen when Bob Industries EP TK Knowles introduced Garon to Sam “Squeak E. Clean” Spiegel, a DJ, music producer and huge fan of Wave Twisters, a sci-fi hip-hop Fantasia that Garon co-directed with collaborator Eric Henry.

Spiegel was starting a band called NASA (North America/South America) with DJ Zegon and asked Garon to creative direct a documentary based on the project that would intersperse 12 animated videos with footage of the duo in the studio with an exhaustive roster of guest collaborators, David Byrne, Kanye West, RZA, Tom Waits and Karen O among them.

The assignment was ideal for Garon, a self-described “animator personality” type who thrives in collaborative situations. His breakthrough was 1998’s Somebody Goofed, the first film animated using After Effects and co-directed by Miami film school friend, Rodney Ascher. He later teamed up with Henry and signed with Bob Industries as Syd and Eric. They’ve since split and Garon re-branded as Syd + 1. “I’ve been doing this for 15 years or so and it’s hard to keep partnerships going that long,” he says. “With Syd +1, I can partner with the right person for the right job.”

For NASA, Garon paired animators with fine artists to create videos for each of the 12 tracks on the band’s album, The Spirit of Apollo. Garon helmed four videos, including “Money”, for which he and Paul Griswald pored through 10-years worth of agitprop art by street artist Shepard Fairey, ultimately animating 80% of his archive alongside all-new work. He also worked with Winnipeg-based illustrator Marcel Dzama for “The People Tree”, sung by Dzama fan David Byrne. “Way Down”, co-directed by painter Sage Vaughn, features his watercolored paintings of blue jays and cardinals tattooed with Bloods and Crips gang slogans.

In the last year Garon has branched out into commercials, slightly fatigued by “massive personal projects” such as the NASA videos, each of which took three to six months to produce. He’s recently completed ads for the University of Technology Sydney and Earth Hour (also using artwork by Fairey). For UTS, he partnered with 3D animator Johannes Gamble to pitch a fable about two warring planets – one obsessed with technology, the other with creativity – and animated by Garon in 2D.

“I make sure my animation is appropriate for the art,” he says. “I don’t try to put too much of my personal stamp on it. One of the great things about collaborating is picking up new techniques. It’s important everything doesn’t look like Wave Twisters.”

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