American musician, comedian and filmmaker (born 1986)
Neil Cicierega
|
---|
Cicierega in September 2016
|
Born
| Neil Stephen Cicierega
(
1986-08-23
)
August 23, 1986
(age 37)
|
---|
Other names
| - Lemon Demon
- Deporitaz
- Trapezoid
- Trapezzoid
- MEGO vs. SPAGO
- Grapes and Sunshine
|
---|
Occupations
| - Comedian
- actor
- filmmaker
- singer
- musician
- songwriter
- puppeteer
- artist
- game developer
- animator
|
---|
Years active
| 1998?present
|
---|
Spouse
|
Ming Doyle
(
m.
2015)
|
---|
Children
| 1
|
---|
Musical career
|
Genres
| |
---|
Musical artist
|
Website
| neilcic
.com
|
---|
Neil Stephen Cicierega
(
SISS
-?-
REE
-g?
;
[1]
born August 23, 1986) is an American filmmaker, YouTuber, animator, and musician. He is known as the creator of
Potter Puppet Pals
, "
The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny
", and multiple music albums under the name
Lemon Demon
. He also released a series of
mashup
albums under his own name that have since gained a cult following.
[2]
Early life
[
edit
]
Neil Stephen Cicierega
[3]
was born in
Bridgewater, Massachusetts
, on August 23, 1986.
[4]
His father was a programmer, which meant he was surrounded by computers while growing up. He has a brother and two sisters. His sister, Emmy, went on to become a storyboard artist for animated series such as
Gravity Falls
,
[5]
The Owl House
, and the reboot of
DuckTales
.
[6]
At a young age, Cicierega started using a simplistic game developing program named
Klik & Play
. Beginning in the fourth grade, his parents
homeschooled
him and his siblings. He continued making amateur games, and began creating digital music to feature in them; he soon shared his music online through
MP3.com
under the name Trapezoid, which was later renamed to the anagram "Deporitaz" at the behest of another band already named
Trapezoid
. He also began composing
MIDI
music fragments that were referenced in his later works.
[1]
Career
[
edit
]
Animutation
[
edit
]
Cicierega was first known for a series of
dadaist
or
surrealist
Flash animations
he termed "
Animutation
".
[7]
Animutations feature arbitrary, nonsensical scenes and
pop culture
imagery and are typically set to novelty or foreign music, often from the Japanese version of
Pokemon
.
Potter Puppet Pals
[
edit
]
Cicierega's
Potter Puppet Pals
is a comedy series which parodies the book series
Harry Potter
. It originated as a pair of Flash animations on
Newgrounds
in 2003, and later resurfaced in the form of a series of live action
puppet shows
released onto YouTube and PotterPuppetPals.com, starting in 2006. The central characters of the
Harry Potter
series are portrayed simply by puppets. The most successful
Potter Puppet Pals
video,
The Mysterious Ticking Noise
, currently has over 204 million views (as of January 2024
[update]
).
[8]
Cicierega has done puppetry live at
Harry Potter
-themed events.
Lemon Demon
[
edit
]
Since 2003, Cicierega has released 10 full-length albums under his musical project Lemon Demon.
[9]
In 2005, he and animator Shawn Vulliez released a Flash animated music video "
The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny
" on Newgrounds. The song was later included in the 2006 album
Dinosaurchestra
. An updated recording of the song was released to the
Rock Band Network
in 2010.
[10]
In April 2009, Cicierega released his first four albums as free downloads on his site "neilcic.com"; however, they are now currently hosted on "lemondemon.com".
In January 2016, Cicierega announced
Spirit Phone
, a full-length Lemon Demon album released on February 29, 2016.
[11]
On July 10, 2018, it was announced that copies of the album on CD, cassette tape and vinyl would be sold through
Needlejuice Records
, who would later distribute remastered versions of Lemon Demon's Christmas EP
I Am Become Christmas
, as well as
Nature Tapes
,
View-Monster
,
Dinosaurchestra, Damn Skippy
, and
Hip to the Javabean
.
The
Mouth
mashup albums
[
edit
]
Cicierega has also created
mashup
music under his own name. He released two mashup albums,
Mouth Sounds
[12]
and
Mouth Silence
,
[13]
as free downloads in 2014, and a third,
Mouth Moods
, in 2017.
[14]
A fourth album,
Mouth Dreams
, was released on September 30, 2020. All four albums are linked by their usage of
Smash Mouth
's
"All Star"
, which is repeated frequently throughout
Sounds
and
Moods
, and appears through
Easter eggs
and references in
Silence
. In
Mouth Dreams
, "All Star" only makes one appearance in the track "Mouth Dreams (Extro)", where a heavily distorted edit of the lyrics can be heard.
Gravity Falls
[
edit
]
Cicierega was commissioned to make a number of songs for the TV series
Gravity Falls
: a musical number for the character
Bill Cipher
titled "It's Gonna Get Weird", which was scrapped. Another song was "Goat and a Pig" (a parody of
Natalie Cole
's "
This Will Be
"), which appeared in the end credits for the episode ‘The Love God’.
[15]
He also created two separate theme songs, one with vocals and one without, both of which were unused. Cicierega reused these songs in his album '
Spirit Phone
', one of them being named 'Gravitron' with no alterations, and another being remixed into a different song called 'Moon's Request'.
Other works
[
edit
]
On October 3, 2002, Cicierega launched his first
point-and-click adventure
game,
Satan Quest
.
[16]
In October 2012, Cicierega created the darkly satirical "Windows 95 Tips, Tricks, and Tweaks" blog, located at windows95tips.com. In the blog's telling,
Windows 95
is a brooding, evil presence bent on dominating humanity. Most of the posts are faked error messages, with messages like "Windows needs a lock of your hair to continue," but presented in the exact graphical style of Windows 95. The blog has received favorable press attention.
[17]
[18]
[19]
On February 26, 2015, he announced another game,
Icon Architect 1.0
, with themes similar to his "Windows 95 Tips, Tricks, and Tweaks" blog. On February 5, 2018, he released
Monster Breeder,
which is a
text-sim game
centered around collecting monsters and breeding them into amalgamations of each other to sell.
[20]
In February 2019, Cicierega created Endless Jeopardy, a Twitter account that automatically posts a bot-generated
Jeopardy!
prompt every hour and awards points to the most-liked responses within 15 minutes.
[21]
In March 2019, he created "Bot Pops" (@BotPops), a Twitter account that writes setups for jokes on popsicle sticks, then finishes them with a punchline from the replies.
[22]
In April 2019 he created "4:3" (@FullscreenDream), a Twitter account that randomly makes GIFs from old commercials and CGI shorts.
[23]
Personal life
[
edit
]
On August 8, 2015, Cicierega married illustrator and comic artist Ming Doyle, with whom he lives in
Somerville, Massachusetts
.
[
citation needed
]
Their daughter was born in March 2018.
[24]
Discography
[
edit
]
As Deporitaz/Trapezoid
[
edit
]
- Outsmart
(2000)
- Microwave This CD
(2001)
- OC ReMix: Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge "Monkey Brain Soup for the Soul"
(2002)
[25]
[26]
- Dimes
(2002)
- Circa 2000
(2007)
- The Count Censored
(2007)
[27]
Lemon Demon
[
edit
]
- Clown Circus
(2003)
- Live from the Haunted Candle Shop
(2003)
- Hip to the Javabean
(2004)
- Damn Skippy
(2005)
- Dinosaurchestra
(2006)
- View-Monster
(2008)
- Almanac 2009
(2009)
- Live (Only Not)
(2011)
- I Am Become Christmas
(2012)
- Nature Tapes
(2014)
- Spirit Phone
(2016)
Neil Cicierega
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
"Neil Cicierega, Internet Person ? XOXO Festival (2016)"
.
YouTube
. XOXO Festival. November 17, 2016.
Archived
from the original on February 6, 2017
. Retrieved
January 27,
2017
.
- ^
Romano, Aja (March 7, 2017).
"This '90s kid turned his love of the decade into the internet's best mashup albums - Vox"
.
Archived
from the original on November 3, 2019
. Retrieved
March 24,
2020
.
- ^
Jarboe, Greg (October 7, 2011).
YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day
. John Wiley & Sons. p. 139.
ISBN
9781118203811
.
Archived
from the original on June 27, 2014
. Retrieved
October 19,
2016
.
- ^
Cicieregawrote, Neil; trapezzoid, Neil Cicierega.
"oh a survey how fascinating"
.
trapezzoid.livejournal.com
. Retrieved
January 9,
2024
.
- ^
"Soos and the Real Girl marks my first episode storyboarding for Gravity Falls!"
.
Gravi-Team Falls
. tumblr. September 21, 2014.
Archived
from the original on May 29, 2017
. Retrieved
May 17,
2017
.
- ^
"Emmy Cicierega (@EmmyCic)"
.
Twitter
.
Archived
from the original on May 24, 2019
. Retrieved
April 8,
2020
.
- ^
Mieszkowski, Katharine; Standen, Amy (April 26, 2001).
"All hail Neil Cicierega"
.
Salon
. Archived from
the original
on July 4, 2018
. Retrieved
March 3,
2019
.
- ^
Cicierega, Neil (March 23, 2007).
"Potter Puppet Pals: The Mysterious Ticking Noise"
.
Archived
from the original on January 10, 2019
. Retrieved
January 11,
2019
– via YouTube.
- ^
Sweeney, Emily (June 22, 2006).
"He's a hit with Internet set"
.
Boston Globe
.
Archived
from the original on March 4, 2016
. Retrieved
July 21,
2006
.
- ^
"Lemon Demon on Rock Band Network"
. Archived from
the original
on July 15, 2011
. Retrieved
May 12,
2011
.
- ^
"New Lemon Demon Album "Spirit Phone"
"
.
Neil Cicierega Tumblr
. January 20, 2016.
Archived
from the original on June 14, 2019
. Retrieved
January 21,
2016
.
- ^
Rife, Katie (April 29, 2014).
"
"Mouth Sounds" is the punishing '90s nostalgia mixtape the world deserves"
.
The A.V. Club
.
Archived
from the original on November 6, 2014
. Retrieved
November 5,
2014
.
- ^
Rife, Katie (July 22, 2014).
"The sequel to 'Mouth Sounds' is here, and it's laugh out loud horrifying"
.
The A.V. Club
.
Archived
from the original on February 2, 2017
. Retrieved
January 24,
2017
.
- ^
Minor, Jordan (January 26, 2017).
"Game of the Year: DJ Hero/Mouth Moods"
.
Geek.com
. Archived from
the original
on July 1, 2019
. Retrieved
March 24,
2020
.
- ^
"[holding back tears] The final song I wrote for Gravity Falls. It didn't get used, but use your imagination!"
.
Neil Cicierega Tumblr
. April 17, 2016.
Archived
from the original on October 21, 2020
. Retrieved
October 20,
2020
.
- ^
"Satan Quest"
.
Adventure Game Studio
. October 3, 2002.
Archived
from the original on September 23, 2022
. Retrieved
September 23,
2022
.
- ^
Trendacosta, Katharine (July 30, 2014).
"Messages From Your Old Abandoned Computer, Which Has Achieved AI"
.
Gizmodo
.
Archived
from the original on January 6, 2019
. Retrieved
January 6,
2019
.
- ^
Fletcher, Tony (November 14, 2012).
"Windows 95 Tips, Tricks, and Tweaks ? a lovely parody of system messages"
.
wirefresh
.
Archived
from the original on January 7, 2019
. Retrieved
January 6,
2019
.
- ^
Varias, Lambert (November 19, 2012).
"I Don't Remember Windows 95 Being This Terrifying"
.
Technabob
.
Archived
from the original on January 6, 2019
. Retrieved
January 6,
2019
.
- ^
"Monster Breeder"
.
Neil Cicierega Tumblr
. February 5, 2018.
Archived
from the original on December 19, 2018
. Retrieved
December 20,
2018
.
- ^
Carman, Ashley (February 18, 2019).
"The best new Twitter bot is an endless game of Jeopardy where the winners are good at puns"
.
The Verge
. Retrieved
August 24,
2020
.
- ^
Cicierega, Neil (March 30, 2019).
"Please check out my new twitter bot/game @BotPops, write punchlines for randomly generated popsicle sticks!"
.
Twitter
.
Archived
from the original on April 21, 2021
. Retrieved
July 27,
2020
.
- ^
Cicierega, Neil (April 6, 2020).
"Last year I messed around making a bot that randomly makes GIFs from old commercials and CGI shorts and posts them every two hours. I forgot about it, and it's been running this whole time. enjoy?"
.
Twitter
.
Archived
from the original on April 6, 2020
. Retrieved
July 27,
2020
.
- ^
Doyle, Ming [@mingdoyle] (December 31, 2018).
"Meet Darcy, the best part of our 2018. We had her back in March and she's lit up our whole year. Wishing you all a 2019 filled with good things! ??"
(
Tweet
).
Archived
from the original on July 13, 2021
. Retrieved
July 13,
2021
– via
Twitter
.
- ^
"OCR00799: Monkey Island 2 Monkey Brain Soup for the Soul OC ReMix"
.
YouTube
. OverClocked ReMix: Video Game Music Community. May 23, 2009.
Archived
from the original on March 7, 2020
. Retrieved
October 5,
2019
.
- ^
"Artist: Trapezzoid"
.
OverClocked ReMix
.
Archived
from the original on January 29, 2019
. Retrieved
January 28,
2019
.
- ^
"The Song of the Count"
.
LiveJournal
. November 18, 2007.
Archived
from the original on August 10, 2022
. Retrieved
August 10,
2022
.
- ^
Not for Resale (2019) - IMDb
- ^
Amazon.com
External links
[
edit
]