Neil Stephen Cicierega is an American Internet artist, comedian, actor, filmmaker, singer, musician, puppeteer, and animator. He is the creator of the genre of Flash animation known as "Animutation", created the Harry Potter puppet parody series Potter Puppet Pals, has released several albums as a musician under the name Lemon Demon, and has released a series of mashup albums under his own name that have since gained a cult following.
Early life
Cicierega was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Cicierega's father was a programmer, so Cicierega was surrounded by computers growing up. At a young age, Cicierega began using a program named Klik & Play, a simplistic game developing program. By the fourth grade, Cicierega's parents began homeschooling him along with his brother and sister. Cicierega continued making amateur games and even began creating digital music to feature in his games. Soon, Cicierega began sharing his music on the Internet through the music sharing website MP3.com under the name Trapezoid. Additionally, in his earlier years, he began composing MIDI music fragments that he has referenced in his future works, of which have been published on his personal YouTube channel.
Career
Animutation
Cicierega was first known for a series of dadaist or surrealistFlash animations he termed "Animutation". Animutations feature arbitrary, nonsensical scenes and pop culture imagery and are typically set to novelty or foreign music, often from the Japanese version of Pokémon.
''Potter Puppet Pals''
Cicierega's Potter Puppet Pals is a comedy series which parodies 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 190 million views. Cicierega has done puppetry live at Harry Potter-themed events.
Lemon Demon (2003–present)
Since 2003, Cicierega has released 9 full-length albums under his musical project Lemon Demon. In 2005, he and animator Shawn Vulliez released a Flash animated music video "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. 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. 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.
The ''Mouth'' mashup albums (2014–present)
Cicierega has also created mashup music under his own name. He released two mashup albums, Mouth Sounds and Mouth Silence, as free downloads in 2014, and a third, Mouth Moods, in 2017. Songs used in these mashups repeatedly include Smash Mouth's "All Star", Barenaked Ladies's "One Week", or in the case of Mouth Silence, Third Eye Blind's "Semi Charmed Life".
In October 2012, Cicierega created the darkly satirical "Windows 95 Tips, Tricks, and Tweaks" blog, located at . 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 disturbing 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.
Video games
On February 26, 2015, Cicierega announced his first point-and-click adventure game, Icon Architect 1.0, with themes similar to his "Windows 95 Tips, Tricks, and Tweaks".
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. In March 2019, he created "Bot Pops", a Twitter account that writes punchlines for randomly generated popsicle sticks. In April of 2019 he created "4:3", a Twitter account that randomly makes GIFs from old commercials and CGI shorts.
Personal life
On August 8, 2015, Cicierega married illustrator Ming Doyle. They currently live in Somerville, Massachusetts. On December 31, 2018, the couple announced on Twitter that they had a daughter named Darcy in March of that year. Cicierega has a younger sister named Emmy, a storyboard artist who notably worked on the Disney animated series Gravity Falls and is currently working on the DuckTales reboot.
