At first glance WeTopia may look like just another online social game for facebook. Fortunately it is more than that. WeTopia is similar in gameplay to Farmville, with one major twist… you Play for Good. As you advance in WeTopia, you create real change in the real world. Helping to feed children or build schools…But how does that work?

SOJO Studios came to us to produce a short video explaining how “Gaming for Good” works. To explain how giving the in-game currency of JOY, actually affects the real world.

Here’s what we did! Enjoy.

The idea of groups of people, working together to make change was important to illustrate. As well as the line between game-world and real-world. So we decided to bring the game to “Life” by shooting all the game elements, and letting them live in the real world rather than digitally animated on the computer. So we just had fun with it! Bringing back the human element, playfully, by puppeteering everything on sticks. Andrew and I turned the office into a little arts and craft, stop-motion set.

Thanks for watching!

Ryan

CREDITS:

Client: SOJO Studios    |    Production Company: Digital Twigs    |    Creative Director, Animator: Ryan Wehner   Photographer, Awesome Maker: Andrew Tomayko    |    Sound Design: Chad Pieper    |    Script Editor: Colleen Towler    |    Thanks to: Jonas Studer and Alex Diana    |    Sandwich Artist: Mike Kasper

Here is a little piece I did with a few other talented folk at Zoic Studios. I did motion design and compositing.

I’m not sure why it is, but I often work on quick turnaround jobs. It seems as though everyone is in a hurry to get their video together, and hardly budget enough time to do so. We did the post on these spots, a :30 and :60 in 8 days. I’m mostly happy with how they turned out, although they could have used a little extra love. Then again couldn’t we all. ;)

enjoy.

Thanks for watching!

ryan

I recently completed this video, designed to help bring an end to Polio. Bobby Bailey (co-founder of Invisible Children) came to me with an incredible story that he wanted to tell through animation. We threw around tons of cool ideas, to figure out the best way to tell it, and how to go about animating it… Enjoy!

We put this piece together in 3 weeks, from start to finish, for the Global Poverty Project. I’m super happy with how it turned out! And I hope it inspires you to take action to eradicate the second human disease in history!

Director: Bobby Billy Bailey
Illustrator: Jorge Sevilla III
Animator: Ryan Wehner
Voice Artist: Howard Ellison
Sound Design & Musician: Christopher D. Walker

Last week, I created (directed by Scooter Corkle & produced by Dave Rice) a video for an iPad application that was released today! The video needed to show how simple & easy the app is to use, as well as how elegant & intelligent.

It’s a pretty smart magazine…floating words and stuff…dang…

Check it!

Cool!

Reading!!

A few months ago I created 2 videos for a new startup called Sweepme. This is one of them. Sweepme is an application for iphone and android, that allows you to enter sweepstakes happening all over north america, for free. Companies give away ridiculous prizes in sweepstakes all the time, and this app makes them easy to find and enter.

Check out the vid!

It’s actually super sweet, so you should definitely check it out! Head over to their site to get an early invite to download it! http://sweep.me

-ryan

Early last summer, I was the VFX supervisor on a very cool series called ZOMBIE ROADKILL. 

It was released exclusively on FearNet, but is now available on Hulu. If you’re a fan of horror, comedy, or (even better) horror-comedy, I strongly suggest you check it out. It was produced by Sam Raimi and many others through Ghost House pictures. So you will not be disappointed. Oh yeah, and Thomas Haden Church is in it.

Read More

WHAT:
 

WHY:  I honestly want to know if you have experienced this feeling before? I figured making a video and creating a place for us to create a word for this phenomenon, would be a fun way to answer that question.

WHO: YOU! US! I have already spoke with… (READ MORE)

A music video I animated last year is finally up. Its the first completely animated video we had ever done. EMI contacted us about doing a video for Toby’s new album…and said they were hiring a handful of other companies to do videos for almost every song on the album. So we pretty much got to pick what ever song we wanted…that wasnt already chosen. We grabbed ‘City On Our Knees’ because we had a few ideas while listening to it…plus it’s the single from the album, which doesn’t hurt.

We wanted to do an animated video, because it allowed us to keep everything in studio…and not have to rent any equipment for a shoot. Plus, we thought it would be fun to incorporate a few different mediums into one video; Stop-motion, Photography, Motion Graphics, and hand drawn characters.

Andrew Tomayko produced the video and photographed all the assets. Mike Pasley directed and created an animatic for me. Devin Roth designed all our little characters. And I put it all together. 

Hope you enjoy!

Thanks, Ryan!

Crawl Space was inspired by a conversation I had with my friends Andrew Tomayko and Ryan Falcheck, in 2004. We passed around a concept, building from it; What if, a seemingly ‘normal’ man, begins frequently experiencing BLACK OUTS. Upon awakening, he is in a secluded location, with cuts and bruises. Then; What if he had split personalities…and one was a murderer. And Finally; What if the murderer personality wanted the other personality to know what hes responsible for…how would he tell ‘himself’.

After a few years, the story re-surfaced. When we were looking for a short to shoot, as a test for our new camera setup. So we wrote a draft of the story that was possible to shoot, with no money, and in a few days. 

The result:

I hope you enjoy it. After almost 4 years, I still enjoy watching it. We had fun making it. Good things. Ryan