The Work That Made Me: James Murphy
James Murphy is creative director and co-founder of Hocus Pocus Studios in London. Making a break from agency owned in 2019 to set up independently has allowed James to create and develop IP projects for broadcasts as well as branded content and commercials.
LBB>The ad/music video from my childhood that stays with me…
James> Gotta be Dire Straights ‘Money for Nothing'. Spent hours trying to work out the guitar solo over a grainy VHS! Graphics looks straight out of Minecraft now but back in the 80s was incredible.
LBB> The ad/music video/game/web platform that made me want to get into the industry…
James> Coco Pops have always been a major part of my life, so as well as scoffing them like a five year old I’ve tracked the irritating monkey throughout. He started off black and white in 1969, bit of a dubious colonial narrative, then the colour came and that linguistic sleight of hand that the milk wasn’t in fact ‘brown’ but ‘chocolatey.’ Of course it’s now fully CG and masquerading as granola, but of course I’d still ‘rather have a bowl of Coco Pops.’
LBB> The creative work (film/album/game/ad/album/book/poem etc) that I keep revisiting…
James> Steve Cutts’ ‘Man’ is a phenomenal animation that still looks as fresh as it did over 10 years ago when it came out. It’s beautifully simple, dark but so so funny.
LBB> My first professional project…
James> The first proper bit of animation to see the light would have to be a title sequence for ‘Myths, Monsters and Hobbits’ for Sky. Just watched it again now for the first time in years – animation is a bit ropey to be honest but the illustrations are nice which saved it!
LBB> The piece of work (ad/music video/ platform…) that made me so angry that I vowed to never make anything like *that*…
James> I have an aversion to the meerkats. It’s probably more that the pun offends me than the creative particularly, but I know it’s been phenomenally successful so I’ll shut up.
LBB> The piece of work (ad/music video/ platform…) that still makes me jealous…
James> I think FX Goby / Nexus Studios really smashed it with ‘Welcome to the City of Love’ Paris Olympics promo this year. The art direction, the colours and textures, the butter smooth transitions… so good, zero notes, only powerful jealousy.
LBB> The creative project that changed my career…
James> Definitely working with Nikki Saunders to create 'Ready, Eddie GO!' A preschool animation series for Sky Kids. Doing 26 x 7min episodes is a massive undertaking, the hardest thing we’ve ever done, by far. But in some ways probably the only piece of work that truly shows what we are as a studio, in that we’re not just trying to help someone flog something.
LBB> The work that I’m proudest of…
James> That would be Eddie again, for sure.
LBB> I was involved in this and it makes me cringe…
James> Somehow we got talked into doing an animation for a sketchy crypto start-up whenever that was a thing. Luckily they went bust before the ads got inflicted on the world but it wasn’t our finest hour. We’re normally very choosy about who we work for so that was a moment of madness! No, I won’t tell you the name in case it’s on YouTube somewhere.
LBB> The recent project I was involved in that excited me the most…
James> ‘Thread of Hope’ for UNHCR. It was collaboration with mixed media King Troy Browne that took us the best part of a year to get off the ground but is a really special project, very distinctive and unusual style.
