August J. Pollak - Animation Work

Hanuman Dance was completed in Spring of 2003 for John's Senior film at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Based on a true story, the 4-minute film depicts the events surrounding the killing of a monkey in a village in India, where the animals are held sacred. The surprising story is drawn in an abstract style very different from what you see in John's cartoon strips, and is accentuated by the masterful scoring work of Jihwan Kim.

Hanuman Dance screened on April 23, 2004 at NYU's First Run Film Festival. Later, it ran as part of a special program, Tunes, Toons & Trikfilms: a collection of silent films accompanied by live, original orchestral music.

Jihwan Kim is currently working as an adjunct professor for the NYU Graduate Music Department.

"Problems" was originally created for MoveOn.org's "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest. As the title implies, the piece is a 30-second animated spot about the "real problems" in the George W. Bush administration. Due to bandwidth issues the film is currently unavailable online; if you're interested in hosting the film on your site, let John know. As per MoveOn's rules the film was created under a Creative Commons License, as such any online site wishing to host it for non-profit reasons and with proper attribution are welcome to ask.

Additional Projects

John is an avid fan of Flash and Flash-based animation; in addition to the little doodads spread across this site, Flash experiments that managed to find their way online include the short animated piece The Dennis Kucinich Rally for Victory.