Daddy

From Empty
The production company name itself, DADDY sounds sweet but when you find out it stands for Design Animation Design Design Yay, you know a good dose of cute, cheeky humour has been injected. And after watching their music videos and commercials of eggs wrestling on the moon and two apple-halves falling in love to become a whole apple, it’s saccharine – I’m sceptical.

Mike, one half of the Dublin duo answers the phone croaky and tired to talk design and animation (yay). He and fellow DADDY Enda’s metal band Warlords of Pez played a gig celebrating the unholy date, 6/6/06. “My body is wrecked and my voice is very hoarse from doing monster noises for ages. It’s all very stupid and heavy. We play about 40 songs in 20 minutes”. Not only that but it was also Mike’s birthday. My suspicions are answered and then some – I’m on the line to the sprog of Satan.

In chatting the horror doesn’t end there. Their most notable video outside of Ireland, which has since started to generate other work, is their clip to a parody song “Do They Know It’s Halloween”, by the North American Halloween Prevention Initiative or NAHPI. The NAHPI is an Indie-rock all-star jam featuring Beck, The Unicorns, Karen O, Comedian David Cross, The Arcade Fire, Sonic Youth and many more raising money for UNICEF.

“It was loads of our favourite bands so we sent them an email asking ‘is anyone making a video for this? You really should.’ with a cheeky link saying ‘we’ll do it.” Instead of a studio full of ‘80s mullets and superstar egos like the “Christmas” one, the video DADDY produced was a Frankenstein film clip, implementing styles from sketches to 3D; a petrifying patchwork of evil worms with zipper-lips, Pac-Man ghosts, ghouls and goblins.“The whole idea was very much what we were in to,” says Mike.

So would they draw the line working for an artist they don’t like? “We’ve talked about this before. The example we used was an RnB singer named Gabrielle who’s famous in these parts. She’s really shit-like, she wears a patch over one eye – her thing is she’s a pirate. So we were thinking if we had to make a video for her it would be of what happens underneath the patch. Obviously it would be a shit song but I wouldn’t mind making that video.” It’s the occasional commercial to pay the rent that allows DADDY to do the fun stuff. And that’s the way they’d like to keep it, recently pitching on videos for Fatboy Slim and Peaches.

What started as a side-project of a side-project – making a video for The Warlords Of Pez, DADDY are getting busier and busier as enthusiasm and skill pushes them into the popular eye with a plethora of ideas from cute to dark; and a range of markets from film to children’s books yet to conquer. Then there’s the “1000 Original Jokes” joke book. Their count is currently 35, with the best being…

Q. What time does Boris Becker have breakfast?
A. Ten-nish.

Surely the son of Satan could do better than that?

Bloc Party – One Month Off by Daddy.