Music development for VeeFriends with Gary Vee

The first three episodes of VeeFriends are out now! Produced by Moonbug Entertainment, the characters from the NFT project by Gary Vee are here reimagined into a series of animated short stories for 6-11 year old kids. Here’s the official blurb:

VeeFriends dives into the everyday challenges kids face and shows how to tackle them with confidence. Each episode follows characters as they identify obstacles and work through them, offering valuable lessons that children can apply in their own lives.

We were so stoked to be contracted to develop the music for the series and co-write the theme song with Gary himself. Back when we started Future Vega almost ten years ago we read Gary’s book “Crush It” which talks about personal branding and turning your passion into a business… so we felt right at home adapting these themes into a family format.

The team was looking to develop a sound of show - for the VeeWorld and VeeDome - and palettes for some of the 268 characters that make up the VeeFriends. Inspirations included classic theme songs from the 80s & 90s like Pokemon, Power Rangers, and Voltron in the style of modern popular music. Each of the characters is associated with a human trait that Gary believes “will lead to happiness and success, both personally and professionally” and our goal was to translate these traits into music genres. These sounds can be heard in the score for each character, and eventually, character theme songs that will serve as their walkout songs as they battle in the VeeDome.

Here’s our original pitch:

And the final episodes are below! You can see some of the ideas in the pitch deck come to life and hear a little snippet of the theme song over the main title animation. Full release of the theme song is coming soon!

Watch all the shorts on the VeeFriends YouTube channel here.

CREDITS!! A big thank you to Kathryn Power from Moonbug Entertainment for bringing us onto the show and introducing us to the Vayner team. Kathy was our executive at DreamWorks for many years and it’s awesome to be reunited again. Some of the other talented execs we get to work with include EP Stuart Evans, Creative Exec Lucas Garbera, Producer Michelle Rodda, and Production Coordinator Sarah Gibney from Moonbug, in addition to the VeeFriends team Gary Vee, Andy Krainak, Kerry Kastin and DJ Coffman.

Get Up And Get It (VeeFriends Theme Song) was written over Zoom by Gary Vee, Ryan Lofty and Courtney Lofty
Produced by Ryan Lofty & Courtney Lofty
Vocals performed by Satomaa & Ryan Lofty

Series music by us!

Pics from the VeeFriends preview at VeeCon 2024.

Fairly OddParents: A New Wish and All-New Original Songs

Fairly OddParents: A New Wish is out now!! Our first song “New Yorkity York” is in episode seven and it's a live Broadway Big Band-style musical number!

If you grew up in the early 2000s you may be familiar with the original Nickelodeon series. Fairly OddParents features a kid with fairy godparents (or in this case FAIRLY ODDPARENTS: specifically Cosmo and Wanda) who have the ability to use magic and grant wishes. However, the wishes are often poorly stated or misconstrued - and this leads to hijinks. In this episode, Hazel wishes for 15 minutes of fame and ends up with 1500 minutes of fame. Which is way too much fame. So to burn through the minutes, she turns them into New York Minutes - in the style of a broadway musical.

Click below to watch!

I was a Nick Kid. The OG series was one of my fave shows and OG songs like “Icky Vicky” and “Shiny Teeth” still intrusively enter my brain (also “Log Song” from Ren & Stimpy (which is a re-lyric of the slinky theme song (but that’s another story))). So going into this we knew we wanted to pay respect to some of the tenets of the OG show - namely the big band palette set up by composer Guy Moon, include a list like is featured in the theme song, and also write parts for Cosmo and Wanda who weren’t originally scripted to sing. Some other inspos were this John Oliver NY street musical, particularly how it changes tempo often, and this song that also talks about mysterious street gasses.

After the v1 demo New Yorkity York didn’t change too much! The biggest change was the lyric “bodega cat and pizza rat”became “bodega rat and pizza cat”. Did you know pizza rat is trademarked?

“Bodega Rat”

“Pizza Cat”

Some credits! “New Yorkity York” was written and produced by Ryan Lofty & Courtney Lofty, performed by Ashleigh Crystal Hairston (Hazel), Daran Norris (Cosmo), Susanne Blakeslee (Wanda) and Ryan Lofty (BGVs/Harmonies). Musicians: Jeremy Lappitt (Saxophone), Isamu McGregor (Piano), Craig Akin (Bass), Dennis Holt (Drums), and Ryan Lofty (Trumpets/Trombone). The cast was engineered by Ryan Greene at Nickelodeon Studios. Music Supervision by Ellie Vainshtok and Hannah Bredberg. You can hear composers Caleb Chan & Brian Chan’s lush score on the way into the clip. Advantage Audio did the mix!

Our exec team on the show included EPs Ashleigh Crystal Hairston, Lindsay Katai, and Dave Stone; and Line Producer Vandana Pulijaal.

Aaand some happy snaps live from Nickelodeon Studios:

Catch new episodes on Nickelodeon all summer long 🧚🧚‍♀️

2024 ASCAP Musical Theatre Fest

This year’s ASCAP Foundation Musical Theatre Fest is all about animation! Catch us at the Creator’s Roundtable Thursday May 16 at 2pm.

The panel is hosted by Michelle Lewis (The Loud House, Doc McStuffins) with industry colleagues Jeannie Lurie (Mira, Royal Detective, Mickey Mornings, Cleopatra in Space), Layla Minoui (Vampirina, Ridley Jones), Vidjay Beerepoot (Superkitties, Minnie’s Bow-Toons), and Raye Zaragoza (Spirit Rangers).

The sessions are presented with support from the Gary Geld Musical Theatre Foundation and free to attend with RSVP - register here!

2023 ASCAP Foundation Joe Raposo Children's Music Award

Well this has certainly been an exciting season of life! Tonight we received the 2023 ASCAP Foundation Joe Raposo Children’s Music Award for our song “Stickin’ With You”. The award is from the family of the late great Joe Raposo, who was one of the co-creators of Sesame Street and an acclaimed musician, songwriter, music director, and performing artist. Like many kids, we grew up listening to Joe’s music on Sesame Street and it’s an incredible honor to receive recognition in his name.

“Stickin’ With You” is special as it is one of the first original songs we wrote for DreamWorks Gabby’s Dollhouse after spending the last few years adapting existing music from the show (into remixes, meditation tracks, and this dance party at Universal Studios Florida). We vibe with Gabby because she’s all about the growth mindset and embodies learnings from Carol Dweck’s book of the same name. In-short, the thesis of the book is that the most successful people are energized by challenges and persist in the face of setbacks. In-long, you can listen to Carol’s TED Talk “Developing a Growth Mindset” here.

Thank you forever Alexandra Nickson, Viv de Aguiar Buff and Lauren Vogel from DreamWorks Animation, and Amanda Shoffner from ASCAP Film & TV. We’re big believers in the “power of yet!”

Going to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with Baby Shark

We wrote one of the songs for this year’s Baby Shark float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade! “Welcome Home to Carnivore Cove” was one of three songs selected for the float, which was manned by K-Pop group ENHYPEN in celebration of the Baby Shark Movie. When we got this email we were very, very pumped.

The song was released on a compilation album, and can be streamed on YouTube or Spotify.

Thank you so much to Ellie Vainshtok and the team at Nickelodeon for having us!

Shape Island's 🎶 Musical 🎶 Halloween Special

We worked with the team at AppleTV+ on an original song for the Shape Island Halloween Special! Check out “King of Halloween” out now on episode 10 “Creepy Cave Crawl.” Search it on AppleTV+ or you can just click here.

The song is the big musical number of the episode and narrative turning point for Triangle. Prior to this performance, Triangle got a little too into the “trick” part of Halloween and drove away his friends. Now he’s deep in this creepy cave with these chaos creatures who love Halloween even more than he does. MUCH more... more... more…

Some credits!

”King of Halloween” was written and produced by Ryan Lofty & Courtney Lofty
Vocals performed by Scott Adsit as Triangle, and Maria Bamford, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, and Ryan Lofty as the monsters
Shape Island EPs: Mac Barnett, Jon Klassen, Ryan Pequin
AppleTV+ music execs: Frank Garcia, Brian Jefferson
Stop motion animation by BixPix

Also, series composer Andrew Carroll did a remix for the end credits and it rocks!