Britain’s Big Six energy companies are at the center of a political storm over ethical violations and the lack of progress in moving toward green energy. Amid leaks that company executives are earning up to £4m while an increasing number of British customers have found themselves in fuel poverty, Ecotricity —a company promising to change the way energy is made in the UK— has stepped forward with an undeniably cute, albeit thought-provoking public service announcement to promote their philosophy in supporting clean forms of power. Collapsing Cooling Towers is a call-to-action and asks the people of Britain to stop the Big Six by joining Ecotricity and vote their conscience with their electric bill.
This brilliant short film by Racecar directors – Joseph Hodgson and Franck Aubry is finally released. More information about the piece can be found here.
WINTR kicks it up for Niki and The Dove with this amazing video. Apparently done completely in CG, it does have the feel of your latest trendy DSLR-footage with CG combined hipster thingie.
WINTR is kind of new on the motion graphics playground (at least for me), which makes the quality of the piece even more impressive. There seems to be an obvious trend of classical motion graphics houses venturing into live-action, while smaller web-based studios push their techniques to easily compete with the big players. Watch, everyone, how every new technology levels the playing field. Now after all this nonsense, go ahead, enjoy the piece.
[The style frames] were produced in a couple of hours and once the look was established we began animating them digitally. Each animation frame was later printed on a separate sheet of paper using an Epson 3880 printer. The idea of printing the animation frame by frame on different sheets of paper was a first for me. With a tight schedule and no time to experiment, it was only on set that we could have a clearer feel for the final look. Over the period of two days, a stop-motion animation worked with a hand model/actor to create the sequence, which was shot on a Canon 5D using Dragon and a motion controlled rig. Everything, from beginning to end, was produced in about two weeks.
While we can’t speak for everybody, we were generally underwhelmed by the assemblage of usually impressive commercials to air during Super Bowl XLVI. Unquestionably, game day saw an onslaught of auto spots, and while we’re not here to argue the cool factor of Clint Eastwood selling us a Chrysler or Matthew Broderick dishing out another Ferris Bueller movie, what works for the slick, more agency-driven sites doesn’t always work for Motionographer. That said, we saw one spot(s) that we felt deserved a little love.
In an epic reunion of classic cartoon characters from years gone by, MetLife’s Everyone, created by Psyop and agency CP+B, hold an all-star family reunion of old-school toons. Not since Roger Rabbit have animation fans seen so many of their childhood pals together in one super-nostalgic, simply awesome homecoming. The piece trots back in time to the days of Peanuts, Warner Brothers, Filmation and Hanna-Barbera but stops short of bridging the generational gap with the Nickelodeon, WB, and the Disney Channel era of TV toons. After all, who better than He-Man — 80s hand-drawn muscleman and defender of Eternia — to ensure the financial security of every family, everywhere? And, if you’re inspired to geek out even more, then check out the mini-spots below and watch Voltron do The Robot, Snagglepuss throw a tantrum, directors search for Waldo or Yosemite Sam have a celebrity-style meltdown.
If you haven’t watched Seed by Daniel Bird and Ben Richardson yet, I recommend setting aside ten minutes to meditate on a surreal superstructure building competition between an egg and an apple (of sorts).
The two directors have been kicking ass since winning Best Animated Short at Slamdance 2010 with Seed. Daniel Bird spent a year creating short films for Greenpeace International in Amsterdam. He is now working as a commercial director, repped by Savage.
Ben Richardson just won the Excellence in Cinematography Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for his DoP work on Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. Check out the previous Richardson/Zeitlin collaboration Glory At Sea for some non-motion-graphics, but very magical-realism, filmmaking.
More background on the film can be found at Short of the Week’s excellent review.
Thank you to Ben and Daniel for sharing the concept boards below.
Cartoon Brew uncovers some unsettling news about wage disparity at Titmouse LA and Titmouse NYC. An excerpt:
The question remains, however, about why there is a nearly $700 weekly gap between starting wages for Los Angeles and New York artists working on the same show. New York has the highest cost of living in the United States (Los Angeles, by comparison, is ranked ninth), yet the studio’s starting salary for workers in New York is only $20,800. That figure ranks below New York’s average starting wages for unskilled laborers like doormen ($25,680) and sanitation workers ($27,842).
Plunk, a multidisciplinary design studio founded by Carlos Bongiovanni and Marco Girado, has been turning out an incredible series of short films. Forces, Altars and Cage inhabit a very cool intersection of animation and installation art. They all share a fantastically sly sense of humor and a wonderful eye for detail.
Toronto based illustrator W. Scott Forbes turns his gorgeous illustrations into a cinematic and carefully composed tale of adultery in the Hollywood Hills.
Stimulant has created LoopLoop, a visual musical sequencer that runs on the Sifteo cubes. LoopLoop uses an animated visual language as well as touch, motion, and placement of the cubes to create music. Very cool.
TONIGHT 7pmSee No Evil presents an evening with BAFTA nominated David Prosser & Kristian Andrews from StudioAKA. Free entry, prizes, and music provided by Hear No Evil.
John Whitney: Permutations Produced in 1966. Written in GRAF and FORTRAN, and recorded in black and white from the monitor of an IBM 360 mainframe. Color was added afterwards using an optical printer.
Straight from the AT&T vault, Saul Bass’s 26 Minute pitch video to AT&T, introducing the new look: the largest corporate identity design in American history, at the time.
