there's something in the water

Thanks to Jo at work for sending this cool animation round for V Water. I guess this product is new to the UK but I'm definitely used to it from my travels to the US. It is a nice product in itself but the way this is being marketed in the UK is quite interesting. They are going for that low-res hand drawn approach that is so popular these days. The cartoon style is playful, almost child-like. The story is fun. It is a good way to present V water as the product itself is basically water with a few extras thrown in. Tapping into the energy drink market would have been the easiest option but they are aiming towards a market who wants to try something new and different.

flowers feed the soul

Flowers feed the soul is a great site that definitely needs rediscovering. I was doing a little research yesterday on The FWA site (Flash Web Awards) for a project we are working on. And I stumbled across this FFTS site which I had seen before but really would just like to share it. I absolutely love the meld of stop-motion animation with flash to create this gorgeous little environment. It is really ornate and layered and rich with detail. The guy is a flower designer who wants to create flower arrangements for you based around your mood. This is a cool concept and I hope he did well with this site. I think it works. It is quirky and different and quite brave.

swim

Here's a treat. This short film by movie makers Floris Kaayk and Sil van der Woerd from the Netherlands. It is a stark realisation of a fertility clinic and the consequences of playing God for a moment. The two seem fascinated by the world of the minutae and endeavour to explore such tiny worlds. Check out their portfolio site over at Microbia.

purple and brown

The guys over at Aardman are back with their classic claymation creations here with Purple and Brown. And they are back doing what they do best after a not so great success delving into CG animation with Flushed Away. What is great about Purple and Brown is that there are no voices used, only sounds and grunts. The communication is done through gestures and expressions. It is genius. Enjoy the short and if you love it there are loads more on youtube for you to enjoy.

renaissance

Just finished watching this devastating movie: Renaissance. Shot in an intriguing way the movie makers used motion-capture to gain the actor's performance then transferred this information into a 3D modelled environment, before using a computer generated rotoscope effect leaving only a black and white 2D image. The effect is startling. A hi-tech futruristic world is created in and around Paris. Set in 2054, significant advances in the world have transformed this iconic city into a crazy world where architecture meets technology. The story is that of a more traditional detective tale and film-noir is heavily referenced and highly accentuated by this delicious style.

It is great to see new and experimental mediums being generated in this way and also wonderful that this movie came out of France instead of the more powerhouse animation studios. The movie is not for everyone and it definitely requires a second viewing. Check out the really good flash website used to promote the movie here where a good use of the movie's style is incorporated.

lo-res trailer below | hi-res version here

doll face

This movie haunts me with the gorgeous character design. A doll face attached to a spider-like contraption is trapped in a trunk yet yearns to know more about the world. A television is it's link to understanding itself and it struggles to copy the face it sees onscreen. Brilliantly animated and a great, simple story. Enjoy!

hey gringo

I've been meaning to post this site for a while as it has stuck with me in terms of it being a fairly novel interface design. The basic idea here is that each page of the site is one side of a cube. And you navigate by turning the box left, right or back onto it's head. What is great is the concept here. What is not so great is the execution. Look out for those wibbly lines as the box rotates. This is created in the way the 3D effect is generated. As you chop up your image into triangles the distortion can lead to uneven lines when you piece them back together (see this tutorial for the full explanation). What is also bad is how difficult it can be to select an area of work to look at (it seems to just fly away from your mouse interaction...never a good thing!)

Check out the work here

See how it feels

Ok I don't watch TV very often so I do end up missing out on these brilliant ad campaigns. Thank gods for youtube is all I say. BMW here with their "See how it feels" campaign. This is fracking gorgeous stuff. Watch and enjoy. Created by the guys over at Wanted Films it features a reworking of Beethoven's 9th Symphony produced by UNKLE. The gorgeous lighting effects are created Matrix style using a lighting rig mounted with time delayed cameras. The results are smart. This really is HOW to sell a car. By giving a notion of experience.

Oh and if you don't get my two Battlestar Gallactica references then you NEED to start watching this show (best thing on tele - via downloads in case you were wondering).

Patryk Rebisz

Do check out this wonderful short video shot by Patryk Rebisz. You may remember a post I did a while back featuring another film by this same film-maker entitled Between you and me. What is great about this guy is his story-telling ability in the most basic of medium. Here the polaroids tell the story as they are being burned. It is a really interesting narrative flow and the music heightens the emotion. Enjoy :)

toben seymour

I've just discovered Toben Seymour. He is a director working out of California and has spent his life as animator/puppeteer/sound engineer/director/content generator. What he loves is recreating old school film techniques and this video featured here for The Willowz is no exception. I am still trying to figure out exactly how this is done. This is NOT cgi. The technique is to use light to with an extended shutter lag to burn light images onto each frame. In this way you can paint onto the lens if you are clever enough. But what he is doing here is melding this technique with stop-motion to create an absolutely surreal effect. I'm determined to figure out how he storyboarded this.

Links to his homepage & youtube videos

flow nation

I absolutely love the fact that this game has no instructions and no scoring. It is blindingly simple and very addictive. Really smooth animation here enhances the gameplay. I won't give too much away as you will learn more by playing it. You'll only need about 3 minutes to fully absorb the game and you won't need to go back for more so don't worry about getting addicted. This is great use of how to pull users into your site and keep them there. You could use this as a pre-loader if the file size is small enough.

Play the game here

dark scannerly

Ok so A Scanner Darkly is a movie that is right up there on my list of movies to see. Directed by the wonderful Richard Linklater (think Tape, Before Sunset/Sunrise, and Dazed and Confused). But it was with Waking Life in 2001 when he really distinguished himself with what was essentially a new way to craft a film. Basically what he did was to film a very cerebral film essentially about the meaning of life. Shot in digital he then got a team of animators to rotoscope each frame. This technique has been used before but in the past the cells were painted by hand. This was the first attempt to my knowledge where it was done digitally. The effect is extremely unnerving and was used again in Scanner Darkly to what I'm sure will be dramatic effect.

And then I stumbled across this article about how to achieve this effect yourself. Here is the link. I am very tempted to try something in Flash and see how it turns out. It would be really time intensive but I think the effect of animating people in this way creates a mesmerising animation. I will keep you posted on this...

miniscule

I just had to post this awesome animated short. Genius character design and a great script although let down a little by a weak ending (yes Ben you were right). A tale of a plucky lady bird/bug who fears no foe. Brilliantly fusing real video footage with strong 3D characters. Poor old spider gets a real raw deal though. Check it out and tell me what you think...

Between you and me

This movie was filmed in what is in my mind a new medium. Stop motion burst photography. So by using a digital camera's burst mode you can fire off a series of images one after the other. By piecing these images together you create a stop-motion effect. I think this achieves a rather unique look and would be great to use in a viral ad campaign.

Between you and me has won loads of awards including the SeNef Mobile Grand Prix at Seoul Film Festival, Best Experimental Film at the Tiburon International Film Festival, Best Cinematography at the Gotham City International Film Festival, Best Short Film at the Vilnius Independent Film & Video Festival and in the Experimental Film category at Big Apple Film Festival. It was written and directed by Patryk Rebisz.

What really happened after the death star blew up

This video is genius. And for those of us who wondered what really happened after the Death Star was blown up here is your answer. With quality science fiction like Battlestar Gallactica these days what can you do but laugh at how ridiculous the Star Wars franchise has become. Enjoy my young padawans.

iamstudio

iam-studios presents this FWA site of the day here. Using some really cool 3D character design with an animated robot dog with what looks like a speaker for a head. Drawing heavily on Pixar animation style here most notably their Luxo Jr lamp toon and also the imac g4 ad. But this goes a bit further and uses the dog's animation as you navigate through the site. Once you enter you need to use the blue pebbles to navigate through the site and each pebble has a different dog animation. Oh did I mention they are funny too. A nice clean design style with great use of white space. Simple, elegant navigation is the key here. But did they draw on our studios mantra at Good Technology (where I work) namely we are good technology (only he is i am studio, i am work etc) see the comparison here.

catch me if you can can

Nexus Productions of London created this classic title sequence for the movie Catch Me If You Can back in 2002. It is a retro look back at 60's design emulating the look of movies like the Pink Panther and other caper movies. It is highly stylized and follows a narrative as the animation takes us through the main plot line of the movie. This is monochromatic gorgeousness at it's best.

silent knife

The Knife here with their incredible track Silent Shout. And with it comes this hypnotic nightmare of a music video. Done in the best tradition of youtube inspired stop-motion trickery. It starts out as a pulsating animation and then seems to pan out of its locale on a monitor to reveal a desk with marching figures and in the distance a shadowy reflection. Done in the best Lynch/Cronenberg mash-up style this really is a nightmare of a video. But ever so suited to this song. Huge fore-headed creatures sing to us as the horror continues. Low-fi visual eccentricity. Love it.

tron mode

I just found this great mash up of clips from Tron mixed with Depeche Mode singing Suffer Well. It is a lovely little trip down 80's memory lane. This movie had a huge impact on me when I first saw it. It was around that time that Disney was experimenting with new ideas and darker plots: they were branching out into new forms of animation. Tron (1982) was the first film to feature computer generated animation and this truly was a landmark in the movie making world. They used a technique whereby all the live action was filmed in black and white and colorized later using photographic and rotoscopic techniques thus giving it a distinct look and feel. Snubbed at the oscars for a visual effects award: the reason being that it supposedly cheated by using computers. It wasn't until 7 years later with the release of The Abyss that the academy finally recongnised this emerging technology.

The word TRON comes from a BASIC command short for 'trace on' which is a debugging tool used to trace a program line and weed out the bugs (the opposite of TROFF or trace off) although it is also said that TRON comes from the word electronic.

joseph barbera dies

The death of a legend today as Joseph Barbera, one half of the legendary Hanna Barbera duo, who made such classics as Tom & Jerry, Scooby Doo and the Flintstones, dies aged 95. Growing up in the 80's you were sure to hear this little snippet (see movie clip below) several times a week, ingrained in my memory as it is. It was always apparant to me that these toons were a little darker and more subservient than the Disney stable and thus more enjoyable. Here's a run down of some of some of my highlights: The Jetsons The Banana Splits Dastardly and Mutley Josie and the Pussycats Charlotte's Webb Hong Kong Phooey Captain Caveman Godzilla Black Beauty Popeye The Smurfs and The Powerpuff Girls.