The Father is a new short film by Sticky Monster Lab, a collective of three artists from Seoul, South Korea. Presented in a split-screen format as if it is the pages of a book, it simultaneously tells the story of a father and son growing up and getting older, struggling with the pressure to succeed. The Father project also takes the shape of an actual book, poster, and vinyl figures of the main characters. Sticky Monster’s ongoing characters, The Monsters, also populate more of their work – including an epic sci-fi short The Monsters and The Runners for a little shoe company from Oregon.
Tronic just finished up this beautiful personal spot, I AM, which aims to bring the voice of the animals back on to the human radar. As Tronic co-founder Vivian Rosenthal says in the attached interview, “they are becoming almost like walking ghosts that are just drifting through a manufactured landscape”.
The simplicity and technical slickness allow for the message to take the front seat, while still providing us with something beautiful and eye-catching to look at.
Sebeastien Agneessens recently sat down with Vivian Rosenthal and talked with a her about the conceptual side of the piece, which you can read here.
Saying so much by doing so little, Un tour de Manège gets it right. It’s tactile: full of tonal and shading effects, chalky, and sprinkled in baby-powder. It’s innocent: tapping into the existential dramas of childhood, and like many works from the Gobelins school, crystallizing emotions like fear and loneliness in graphical simplicity. These moments are brief, but define a coming of age for the character, and help to humanize the inherent flaw by providing an escape from reality. Liberation by imagination.
The narrative is simple, buttressed by the fundamentals of good storytelling, and follows the same three-act structure documented at the turn of the 19th century. Much is left unexplained. The audience is left to fill in the blanks, without papering over the poetic nuance.
UPDATED with process imagery and making-of details.
It warms my heart to bring you even more darkness for the main page as we near Halloween. Directing duo, WeWereMonkeys (Mihai Wilson and Davide Di Saro), construct a dreamlike landscape inhabited by Amazonian Queen, Antiope, for Land of Talk’s “It’s Okay.”
Abstract, yet immersive; this piece evokes. It’s refreshing to see this trend of subtlety and nuance permeating animation/mixed-media work. We’ve got all the tools, but let’s worry about telling the story first. Well done Monkeys.
Nitro Circus is produced by the creators of ‘Jackass’, and features daring stunts performed by Travis Pastrana. According to the Amautalab, the plasticine material was a perfect match to reflect the resilient nature of stunt performers: ‘even while suffering these kinds of painful blows, he gets up and continues as if nothing had happened‘.
Beautiful and darkly humorous, they’re the perfect treat for your mid-week slump. They make me want to run out there and buy a dirt bike, helmet and life insurance against everything under the sun (and sea)!
Also check out the rest of their work here, especially the range of their quirky love-projects (under ‘Broadcast Independent’ category). However, be warned, the first three are NSFW.
While many cinematic title sequences suffer from a sense of auto-pilot, the main title for Cirque du Freak keeps you guessing. Taking on the thrust of a children’s nightmare, the resulting aesthetic is innocent but deftly tuned with motifs of fear—a surefire way to take the edge off the sweetness.
Borrowed from themes developed by the film’s director, Paul Weitz, the typography serves a dual purpose in providing information, while also being extensions of the puppets themselves. By redrawing original woodcut lettering, the typeface takes inspiration from lithographic circus banners, and as a narrative device, leads the children along an ominous journey. Cracked from the vault of graphic design, inspiration for the letterforms where drawn from the stylistic sentiments of Dada, shadow puppetry and German Expressionism.
The result is decorative but highly engaging, with an undercurrent of darkness and grit à la Tim Burton. Even so, similar themes are vested in the main-on-end titles for Lemony Snickets A Series of Unfortunate Events, and in this piece, a renewed bond between Hollywood horror and the big, fat orchestral score. Through a string of slick transitions, the entire sequence strides forward with a sense of athletic perseverance resolving in moments of compositional clarity.
HunterGatherer is the latest artist to be commissioned by Fuel TV for one of their award-winning Signature Series IDs. The new stop-motion spot is inspired by the idea of synthesia, with music transformed directly into the spare and graphic visual style of Todd St. John. Bright, stimulating and very impressive.
Good Monday morning Motionographer readers. Maybe you are confused as to why we are starting this week out by posting a trailer for some big budget sci-fi movie. Would it make you more interested to know that this trailer for a short film was produced entirely by a single person?
Matthew Santoro, a Senior VFX artist who has worked on large scale productions such as “300″ and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”, is the sole talent behind this epic sci-fi piece. Santoro draws upon his vfx background to make guerrilla style filming look like a highly polished Hollywood flick, yet due to this being his own creation there is a unique life to his aesthetics and effects. In his own words, “I directed, edit, animated, composed, built costumes/ props and bled over this thing for almost 2 years”. Santoro has the creative versatility and drive most wistfully desire, a combination of skills that leads us to expect big thing from him in the future. First and foremost will be the opportunity this short has opened for him, which is to create a feature length film based in the same world.
I got a chance to ask the man himself a few questions about this project and his plans for the future.
I’m guessing that this started as a one man production and has since grown. How many others are now involved in this production?
Well the trailer that you just watched was basically a one-man production. I had to put the thing together from the ground up. Of course with a little help from my friends. Which meant anyone willing to deal with the consequences of possible getting busted for sneaking onto rooftops in the middle of the night. There were parts of this project that I literally filmed in my apartment using cardboard boxes, cheap hardware store lights, and a half-broken fog machine. I built the costumes using model parts and superglue. Most of the time my actors where doubling as crew even my dad (Charlie Santoro) who was playing that scary guy with the silver hair.
With Corin Hardy’s recent jump and jive piece for Paolo Nutini, it appears he has taken a turn toward the lighter side. A comical, life-sized clay version (created by some of the animators who worked on ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’) of Paolo dances with a live band. However, the piece makes a u-turn when the properties of this character become the source of his demise.
“My aim with this video was to set up a situation where a clay Paolo would live in a real world and behave just like a real person. Once the viewer has accepted that, I then wanted to break the rules I had devised for myself and see what goes on when a clay Paolo just pushes it a bit too far.
Christian Borstlap recently finished these deliciously simple animated illustrations for Dutch children’s charity, Kinderpostzegels. Paul Postma did a great job of bringing Christian’s colourful illustrations to life, complimenting them with a playfully restrained animation style to really let their personalities shine.
Call for Entries: TDC INTRO, The First Annual Competition and Showcase of Title Design by the Type Directors Club. (Chaired by Jakob Trollbäck and judged by Kyle Cooper, Garson Yu and others)
Superfad created this title sequence for an online interactive drama that was once called “Thirteen.” That title eventually changed, making this animation obsolete for public use. It’s still nice to look at, though.
In My Turn, director Tomek Ducki summons a hoard of dancing bears in this new music video from Basement Jaxx, featuring vocals from Dev ‘Lightspeed Champion’ Hynes.
With essay and explanation by Justin Hilden, take an insightful look into color design for the animated classic, It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
