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"ANALOG is Ebbëto's 2nd short film. His first, Lagartija Nika, can be seen online at Tokyo's CON-CAN Film Festival site. ANALOG is a 27 min, black and white, Science Fiction film made in 2009. This short extract features the music of OIL 10 "Passagen", by the French electronic music composer, Gilles Rossire.
The film tells the tale of a machine traveling in deep-space which has as a primary function the preservation of a living organism: a man. Strange events with biblical analogies begin, disturbing the machine and making it rethink it's priorities."
Dark and surreal mixed with stop motion, kinda reminds me a bit of Jan Svankmajer's work with some serious mograph underpinnings! Check out Nando's 2010 reel as well, some very nice pieces.
Wow, this video is mesmerizing in a creepy way. "The films were created during 5 days in February 2010 with students at The Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark." Directed by Max Hattler.
OK so no visual effects here (if there were it would ruin the whole effect!), but this is too fun not to post to inspirations. This insanely huge and complicated Rube Goldberg-esque device was built by the band over the course of several months. One camera take! I wonder how many times they had to go through this to get it to work flawlessly.
Gorillaz have gone full CG and continue to break ground on new video "Stylo"- a compositing and vfx masterpiece. New album "Plastic Beach" will be out March 8/9th US.
A slightly disgruntled dog gives his take on the "blue hippy cats" in Avatar.
Nicely done, apparently the CG artist has yet to reveal themselves. Rumored to be created with XSI and Lightwave with motion capture. One word- aaawesome!
"In this installation YesYesNo teamed up with The Church, Inside Out Productions and Electric Canvas to turn the Auckland Ferry Building into an interactive playground. Our job was to create an installation that would go beyond merely projection on buildings and allow viewers to become performers, by taking their body movements and amplifying them 5 stories tall."
A new music video from the N.A.S.A project: "Spacious Thoughts," featuring a most-interesting combination of Tom Waits and Kool Keith, directed by Fluorescent Hill. Excellent animation.
An interesting juxtaposition of different styles and concepts/content! "Duelity is a split-screen animation that tells both sides of the story of Earths origins in a dizzying and provocative journey through the history and language that marks human thought." Visit Duelity.net for more information.
Director: Alasdair Brotherston and Jock Mooney Producer: Richard Barnett Production company:Trunk Animation Compositing: Andy Hague, Alasdair Brotherston Animation: 2D: Anna Benner, Timothy McCourt, Alasdair Brotherston 3D: Patrick Krafft
"A two-minute animated voyage through nature's life cycle, following the trials and tribulations of a humble apple seed.
The film was kindly funded by Adobe, made using their CS4 range of software. It was produced at Nexus Productions and features a soundtrack by Jape. It was made using a mixture of stop motion papercraft and 2D drawn animation."
Via Wired Magazine: "One of the nice things about the demise of the music business,” says Moby, sipping tea at a sidewalk cafe in downtown Manhattan, "is that a big production doesn't matter any more. Like in 1998, it seemed the criteria for determining the worth of a music video was how big the production was. Now the only thing that matters is the idea." -Moby
"Antonia is a 12 year old girl. She often has daydreams, in which she wanders of in to a magical far away forest, were she hides from the problems of the real world. One day, however, her father takes drastic measures and she has to face a decision."
This is a bizarre but awesome history of video games from Pong to Pac-Man to Super Mario and to a bunch of games that came out after I stopped playing. It's pretty funny stuff and very well done. The Pong sequence is too long, in my opinion, but stick it out. It really picks up at the end of Pac-Man. Musclebeaver says:
Every game character in this prologue was reinterpreted, redrawn (...one pixel at a time), and animated frame by frame. First I drew every animation step of all characters with the smallest sized (1x1) pen in Photoshop at 72 dpi. (without bicubic interpolation). Then I composed everything in AfterFX. There were a lot of issues I had to cope with to keep the detailed REAL pixel look/ratio.(e.g . scaling, camera and motion blurs...)
NSFW! Scene of Mario humping Lara Crofts leg and she's enjoying it!
NuFormer, a Dutch multimedia agency, created these amazing 3D video projections on transparent screens. Very impressive, especially the shattering effect that make the buildings look as though they are crumbling apart.
Video installation art created by Crush with artist/director Marco Brambilla for the elevators Standard Hotel in NYC. Reminds me of a Bosch painting! Made up of over 400 video clips, it takes visitors either up to heaven or down to hell depending on which way they are going in the elevator. Pictures and Q&A with Brambilla and Crush.
If you have a "computer graveyard" in your post house or studio where your old equipment goes to die, this may be of some inspiration to you. I'm looking at mine now, expecting them to wake up suddenly and start playing Symphony No. 9. It's a bit disturbing actually.
"What you see is what you hear (does that even make sense?) Atari 800XL was used for the lead piano/organ sound, Texas Instruments TI-99/4a as lead guitar, 8 Inch Floppy Disk as Bass, 3.5 inch Harddrive as the gong, HP ScanJet 3C was used for all vocals."
Video by David Lynch, music by Moby. So yeah, it’s going to be weird, but how interesting is that combination??? Creepy hand-drawn animations with disembodied heads to a track from Moby’s upcoming album, "Wait For Me".
Motomichi is Tokyo-born artist and VJ now working in Brooklyn. From his site: "the trailer was made to promote "Japan Cuts" film festival by Japan Society. The festival is subtitled as "a film festival that cuts directly into the current Japanese films and brings a slice of Japan to New York City". Check out his work here.
This video is a bit hard to look at depending on your state of mind, but it's a crazy awesome technique by OneInThree- a phenomenon known as the "Droste Effect"; based on the math behind a lithograph created by M.C. Escher.
This one starts out a bit slow but at about 3 minutes in, the effects are amazing. Vince Ream is the director:
I used After Effects for all the animation and compositing. I used Adobe Premiere for all the editing. The most important part was time, and making sure everything I did was what I wanted before moving on.
There's a section with hologram CD covers that rotate around this girl and she touches them and they play. The album and paper effects remind me of the HP ads that were out about a year ago. The giant head effect is trippy too. The tracking and compositing are so well done in this video. Wow. That's all I can say.... wow. So much eye candy, I'm on overload.
Based on Madonna's ever changing look in the 80s, filmmaker/painter Rowena True uses stop motion, an old TV and Madonna videos to create a piece of art/fun. I'd love to see this a bit longer with the Madonna of the past 20 years also. Definitely need some 90s cone boobs and slicked back pony tail... wouldn't that be hilarious on a Barbie!? Okay, maybe it's just me.
Wow. This is a very intense, super-freaky student project. Here's a short blurb:
"SMILE is an impressive 2005 student film by Yuval Markovich and Noam Abta produced at Bezalel Academy of Arts & Design in Jerusalem. Horror films are all too rare in animation, and this short does a solid job of building the tension and creating a mood of paranoia and uncertainty. Technically, it looks like the film was shot in live-action, with over sized CG heads placed on the live bodies. It's a surprisingly effective technique that adds to the film's uneasy mood."
This mesmerizing video was created by giraffentoast for Michael Fakesch. They took a simple costumed character and built a mountain of effects and distortions around them- it's a really unique look.
Designed and directed by Dave McKean, Mirrormask is stunning and chock-full of visual effects. Dave McKean is one of my favorite artists, and I was excited to see the film retained much of the look and feel of his work.
The inspiration came from the integration of several creative practices at this year's festival, which focuses on motion design, sound design and motion programming.
Production, costuming, and makeup were done at Foundation Post and the piece was edited by Matthew Glover.
Adobe After Effects was used for almost all the animating and compositing. The final edit was done in Final Cut Pro and the audio composition was created in Ableton Live.
The final piece will play before a live audience at each of the 4 motion graphics screenings at the festival: Stash's Commercial Art screening, Lumen Eclipse's Video Art screening, the Art in Motion screening, and the Conscious Motion screening.
"It was wonderful to have the opportunity to collaborate with other motivated and talented artists. I really do not think this project would have been possible with out each individuals passion and dedication to do what they love. And that love is responsible for the drive to follow through on the never ending quest for perfection to create a positive final product." from Jeffrey Acciaioli (The Great Mundane, Composer/Sound Designer)
Real stories about first loves animated by hand and spoken by ponies and sharks. It's very cute. This was created by Julia Pott for her final film project at Kingston University. The music and sound design was done by Christopher Frost. It's just wonderful.
Here's an interesting site, with some of the more freakish films that messed me up in my college art history and film courses- all in one convenient location!
Cyriak sounds like the name of a magician to me, and he is.... a magician with Photoshop and After Effects! Cyriak is a freelance animator in Brighton, UK. His website bio is very funny:" Hello, I am Cyriak from 100 years into the future, where I have been exhumed and sent backwards in time via cyberspace in order to welcome you to the unabridged contents of my brain-damaged imagination." He's unbelivably creative. Jim G. passed his stuff on to me. Jim is in the know.
Check out two of his amazing animations.
Moo!
The cow DNA is mindblowing! A screen shot just doesn't do it justice.
Beggin' - Frankie Valli video re-mix
This is just cleverl The mutant head in the vortex.... wow. This is just disturbing and oh, so fun to watch.
I never thought Frankie Valli sounded like the guy from Maroon 5 until now.
It says: Surreal images in this song from Sally Cruikshank's FACE LIKE A FROG, 1987, written and performed by Danny Elfman and Oingo Boingo, under pseudonym.
Crappy compression but trippy, old school animation makes up for it.
Stash Media Stash 33 trailer came out earlier this month. Man, this is some seriously cool work. I'm too lazy to re-write the description:
Fun, in all its shades and guises, is the operative word for Stash 33.
For instance: we open the main program with complete bunny-mad chaos from Pleix and MacGuff for Groove Armada, and then trample on through Psyop’s hip-rebel-comedy for Fanta, HSI’s deadpan take on Reyka Vodka, manic pirate/bovine/bicyclist stop motion for Cravendale from Nexus, crazed MTV Asia work from JL Design in Taiwan, Wilfrid Brimo going berserk for V Energy drink, Han Huggebrooge’s unhinged vignettes for Dutch TV, Make’s extremely flammable chipmunks, very curious characters from Curious Pictures for Crunch and we cap it all with a surreal and utterly original bit of action-lunacy about courage, show business and inter-media love created at Supinfocom by Corentin Laplatte, Samuel Deroubaix and Jerome Dernoncourt,,, you get the idea – check below for the full list of contributors.
"The most amazing puppet short film by Mark Caballero & Seamus Walsh" This is so old skool. Wow. Gorgeous colors. It does seem to take forever to load though.
A beautiful, but also creepy, cg piece about a woman who grows butterfly wings through her back. This makes me think of a non-mucus spewing version The Fly, and with a lovely soundtrack. It's very pretty, but that whole bug-human thing makes me itchy.
I may have actually posted this one a while ago, but came across it again today at Axiomsum.
Yeah, this is creepy but really very impressive. "A machine with a doll face mimics images on television screen in search of a satisfactory visage. Doll Face presents a visual account of desires misplaced and identities fractured by our technological extension into the future." Created and directed by Andy Huang and starring Christina Frenzel. (Via)
Okay, not the type of thing I've posted here before but this is so mundanely interesting not to share. Justin.tv, the most aptly named site ever, is the place to watch some guy named Justin's life, 24/7. At this very moment, he's folding his laundry at a laundromat. It's really boring. He leaves the camera on when he's sleeping, in the bathroom and even on a date. That must be a bit uncomforable for the lady, I'd imagine.
Kind of like the Truman show, except without the sunrise on queue.
Strange Frame is a unique, lush computer animated film with the tagline "One musician's journey to save her lover from a killer few can survive: STARDOM"
HellHoles was posted to the AE-List this morning and was done in Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, Photoshop and Maya. This is the first episode of the AtomFilms series. It's very funny and clever, which you wouldn't know by the image to the left, but it's about a guy who buys a trailer for a buck only to find that it is a portal into another dimension.
We're looking for a few good animators, editors, students or even just fans of visual effects to contribute to this blog. Not HTML skills necessary, but a good eye for the most ground-breaking and rule-breaking techniques and styles out there. We want eye candy! Yes, we do.
Interested? Drop me an email and tell me why you should be considered. You would be expected to make one post per week, but you can post more, as long as they're quality videos. You're welcome to add your thoughts and opinions about the video, too.
The Animation Show is a travelling animation festival that features some unbelievably cool animations from traditional cell to computer animated. The one pictured to the left is Rabbit by Run Wrake. It's creative, although very violent. Collision by Max Hattler is kalidescopic and trippy Islamic patterns and American quilts mix with the colors and geometry of flags. Collision is an abstract field of reflection. City Paradise by Gaëlle Denis is a breathtaking mix of live action and 2D/3D. (Tomoko arrives to London from Japan and accidentally discovers a mysterious, secret city underground, inhabited by friendly little aliens and a beautiful blossom. After she's found it, everything changes… )
Grizzly Bear is a band that's received quite a bit of buzz on the indie music blogs. This video for Knife has got to be one of the strangest and most original and innovative music videos I've ever seen. It takes place in Death Valley and there is a crazy machines that squeezes blood from stones, a geologist that looks like a caveman from a Geico commercial and a lady made of stone that heals with gemstones. Plus, the song is delicious.
Yeah, I'm a month late on this one, but I just came across it. You probably know I'm a Halloween-mega fan, and this one is really good, so it's worth posting off season. The song is performed by Vice Recordings artists including Devendra Banhart, R.E.M.'s Joey Waronker, Beck, Chris Murphy (Sloan), Thurston Moore, Syd Butler (Les Savy Fav), Peaches, Elvira, Malcolm Mclaren, Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeah's), and others.
Lots of 2D/3D animation and effects and just lots of fun. It's way better than "Do They Know It's Christmas?" It's a charity-benefit song with all proceeds being donated to UNICEF.
ANALOG trailer by by Ebbëto
