Yes, I was a big fan of HoJo in the early-mid 80s. He was my second concert, after Corey Hart! This video has some pretty stellar video effects for the age. The song was on the Better Off Dead soundtrack, when they're fixing the Camaro. Oh, I love that movie!

Labels: Flashback Friday, Music Video, Retro

Do you remember these? I do! CGTalk just featured these a couple of weeks ago and it seemed a perfect topic for the Flashback Friday feature, which we haven't done in a while. I think you will find this to be very interesting. Thanks to Thom Birks for the link.

Labels: Flashback Friday, Retro

Funny stuff. He was so cutting edge at one time. Artificial intelligence!

This is interesting, from Wikipedia:

Not withstanding the publicity for the character, the real image of Max was not computer generated. Computing technology in the mid-1980s was not sufficiently advanced for a full-motion, voice-synced human head to be practical for a television series. Max's image was actually that of actor Matt Frewer in latex and foam prosthetic makeup with a fiberglass suit created by Peter Litten and John Humphreys of Coast to Coast Productions in the UK. This was then superimposed over a moving geometric background. Even the background was not actual computer graphics at first; it was hand-drawn cel animation like the "computer-generated" animations in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series. Later in the U.S. version they were actually generated by a Commodore Amiga computer.

Labels: Flashback Friday, Retro, Television

Yeah, yeah, its not Friday, but I didn't want to wait to put this one up! Its just too much fun.

Todd Kopriva, After Effects documentation lead at Adobe, put the video up on YouTube for you all to enjoy. The animation... not to bad. That was 16 years ago! Pretty amazing, really (but the music... wow, that saxophone music makes me want to run out of the room! My advice, watch muted.)


(Via John Nack)

Labels: 2D, Flashback Friday, Retro

I heard this song at the DJ booth at Lollapalooza a couple of years ago, before the iPhone and Shazam and I couldn't figure out the musician for the life of me! I loved the psychedelic-electronic sound. Since then, it has been my quest in life to find out the band. A lot of my friends think Pearl Jam is the greatest band ever, so they're no help on music questions like this. I couldn't even google it because I didn't know the title. I was just playing a Pharrell Mix (Sunny Fall Mix) and it was there, on my iPod all along. Shazam to the rescue! (I know, you probably knew the song all along!)

The band is Midnight Juggernauts, a Melbourne, Australia-based band, and now that I have that information, I can finally sleep at night. I need to check out their full catalog.

I checked out the video, directed by Krozm, and it has some crazy futuristic Tron thing going on in a small piece, making it worthy of a post. I love the prismatic shapes coming from the instrument. Krozm has also done vids for some of my other favorites: Cut Copy, Architecture in Helsinki, Van She.

Labels: Flashback Friday, Music Video

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."

Labels: Bizarre, Experimental, Film Short, Flashback Friday, Music Video, Technology

I just watched Guy Maddin's 1992 film, Careful, on Netflix. The film is about people in the village of Tolzbad, high up in the mountains, who fear making a noise and causing an avalanche. The people live a very silent and even cut the vocal chords on their animals to keep them quiet. They are also repressed and have a lot of secrets. What makes this film great is that it is done in a German Impressionist style. Being 1992, they didn't have Magic Bullet Looks at their disposal, but I LOVE the look of the film. The tint is constantly changing, as are the lenses, the audio purposely goes bad, the make-up is harsh and the acting is straight out of 1922
(but with sound!). The soundtrack is also fantastic. Now, I'm sure this film is an acquired taste, but if you like the bizarre, you'll probably enjoy this. Check it out on Netflix.





Guy Maddin talks about his editing style and piracy (he pirates his own work?!).



Guy Maddin also directed Sparklehorse's video for It's a Wonderful Life.

Labels: Film, Flashback Friday

This is a very whimsical, doodley video for a tune that has been sampled so many times by the likes Grand Master Flash, Tupak Shakur, Ziggy Marley, Busta Rhymes, PM Dawn and most notably Mariah Carey, the lady with the most talented team of Photoshop airbrush artists in the world. :-)

The video was produced by Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, using the animated work of James Rizzi, American pop artist. Rizzi also did the cover of the album for Tom Tom Club.

Labels: Flashback Friday

Okay, so I guess this is pretty innovative for it's time but what is this?! Sean Connery? Those are some crazy insane effects. The font in the beginning though... I just love it. Anyone know what font it could be?

Labels: Flashback Friday, Movie Trailer

elrobles just Twittered this video and I don't think I've ever put it up at Toolfarm. I know its not that old of a video, but it has been around for a couple of years. It was directed by Dom & Nic (Nick Goffey and Dominic Hawley). They've done a lot of videos for the Chemical Brothers and Supergrass, and even one for Smashing Pumpkins (Ava Adore). Good stuff.


Chemical brothers - the salmon dance from riko fx on Vimeo.

Labels: Flashback Friday, Music Video

"You Might Think", directed by Alex Weil. won Video of the Year at the very first MTV Video Music Awards. At the time, it was one of the first videos to use computer graphics and was considered to be pretty freakin' groundbreaking at the time. I remember when this came out. It was on heavy rotation on MTV when I was 11.

Labels: Flashback Friday, Music Video

A little low-budget music video cheese for the holidays... an overload of greenscreen and wacky effects. Genius.

Labels: Flashback Friday, Music Video

This captivating video won the 2002 MTV Europe Award for best music video and the song was also was used in the Geico caveman commercials. An awesome video which is just infographics the whole way through, was directed by Ludovic Houplan & Herve de Crecy of the French motion studio H5.

And if you're wondering, Royksopp is from Norway.


Remind Me from Röyksopp on Vimeo.

Labels: Flashback Friday, Music Video

What would any child dream of? A Ren and Stimpy Classic. I put the original Slinky commercial up as well just for grins. It's better than bad, it's good!





Under a buck!

Labels: Character Animation, Flashback Friday

A tribute song to Easy E, wgi makes a posthumous appearance at the end. The video is basically about Death taking souls and has some pretty nice effects. The face in the side of the building is pretty cool.



If you have any good suggestions for Flashback Friday, email michele [at] Toolfarm.com.

Labels: Flashback Friday, Music Video

Ken Broomfield mentioned this on the AE-List earlier in November and I thought it would be a perfect submission for Flashback Friday.

This animated short features two intertwined soundtracks, produced by Tony Schwartz. In one, Frank reads is autobiography and in the second, he lists words beginning with the letter "f." The visuals include an animated collage of photos that Frank had cut from magazines and arranged by theme. I was born the year this came out, but the soundtrack reminds me of Radiohead's "Fitter Happier".

From Wikipedia: ."The movie won the 1974 Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Animated Films. In 1996, Frank Film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant'."

Labels: Experimental, Film Short, Flashback Friday

I loved Clash of the Titans as a kid. I love the non-CGI Pegasus, the mechanical owl, and the Kraken monster. Harry Hamlin was looking pretty good as Perseus too (his eyebrows hadn't come in all the way yet, I guess!)

As the final work of effects legend Ray Harryhausen, the Medusa head is especially fantastic, with it's intricate clay snakes and glowing eyes in this clip. The full film is on YouTube and I consider it a must-see film. I hear that there's a remake in the works. Not surprised. I'm sure they'll make the film with Attack of the Clones style CGI.

Labels: Flashback Friday, Stop Motion

We had HBO growing up and I remember how exciting it was when this animation played... the movie was starting! Of course, I was probably watching Grease 2 for the 22nd time, or Poltergeist, which I saw over and over again, but those little Mr. Roger's Neighborhood cars and street scene and that 3D logo still trigger some excitement!

Labels: Flashback Friday

This Steve Barron directed video was the one of the first music videos to use CGI and was considered groundbreaking at the time. According to Wikipedia "Ian Pearson and Gavin Blair created the animation, using a Bosch FGS-4000 CGI system. The animators went on to found computer animation studio Mainframe Entertainment (today Rainmaker Animation), and referenced the "Money for Nothing" video in an episode of their ReBoot series. The video also included stage footage of Dire Straits performing, with partially rotoscoped-animation in bright neon colors, as seen on the record sleeve."

It's been a very long time since I've seen this video. It's nostalgic, to say the least. This was the 1996 "Video of the Year" at the MTV Video Music Awards.

Labels: Flashback Friday, Music Video

A new feature on Toolfarm Inspirations is Flash Back Friday, where we'll show you some of the best videos, commercials and films of the 70s, 80s and 90s (and maybe even older!) These videos will feature interesting visual effects that will either stand the test of time or will look dated as the day they were made. Either way, we promise to post some interesting stuff.

If you have any good suggestions for Flash Back Friday, email michele [at] Toolfarm.com.

First up, the TRON trailer from 1982. Let me first say that I've never seen TRON. It was always a boy thing when I was growing up, so I never saw it. After watching the trailer, I MUST see it! Wow, look at those graphics! I remember how cool they were supposed to be when the film first came out. Look at those motorcycles! They look like an old video game - of course, that's probably the idea. Some of the effects haven't held up too well, but other effects are very stylish and look pretty cool. I'm digging the suits and the logo animation kicks ass.

Labels: Flashback Friday