This is kind of a super-Quickie: In collaboration with Oscar Magnuson Spectacles, Stockholm-based Important Looking Pirates created some interesting animations for an installation. Each undersea critter is crafted from what looks like parts of glasses (an appropriate choice, given their collaborator’s business). The sound design adds a wonderful eeriness to each of the videos.
Digital Domain’s full gamut of skills are on display in their latest work for Mazda. The advert is nearly 100% CG, from the cityscape to the fluid simulation and everything in between, it’s all beautifully crafted, rendered and composited.
The only letdown, for me, were the live actors. The visibly caked make-up, twisted costume material and semi-android behavior kinda ruined the homogeneity upon which the spot relies. Splitting hairs? Sure, but when everything is so spot on, those things jump out at me.
Interestingly, Psyop showed their pitch boards for this same spot at Inspire 08. I wish they’d won they job, if only because their narrative was more compelling than the hints of animatronic domination laced throughout the DD version. Oh well, the customer’s always right. Right?
Digital Kitchen teamed up with Wexley School for Girls to create a motion graphics infused sphere that lived on NYC’s South Street Seaport, and was there to promote both the re-launch of Microsoft Windows Live as well as the 25th anniversary of Operation Smile. Visitors of the Seaport were invited to upload their faces through kiosks, which were then deployed into the animation using a custom processing applications programed by Firstborn.
This takes me all the way back to my college Survey of New Media class, and reminds me how great it is to see motion graphics in new forms of media being shared with people who wouldn’t normally have an appreciation for the kind of work we do.
Other kick-butt examples of interactive installations:
|UVA| |Graffiti Research Labs | Mikontalo Lights |
A while back we posted a Quickie about Aniboom and Radiohead hosting a video contest to promote the band’s latest album, “In Rainbows”.
The contest is now in the semi-finals, and although Flight404 (aka Robert Hodgin) didn’t make the cut, his submission for the song “Weird Fishes: Arpeggi” is one of breathtaking beauty.
The abstract underwater aesthetic flows perfectly with the song, creating a sort of subconscious storyline, hypnotizing the viewer with stunning radiating spheres (one of his trademarks), mind boggling particles, surreal tentacles, and a school of… weird fish, all perfectly linked to the audio.
The piece was created—like most of Robert’s work—with Processing (the open source programming language), this time without any post or editing work.
Robert initially did not want to submit the piece. According to his blog: “My piece just doesn’t feel Radioheadish,” but he changed his mind after receiving lots of comments asking to submit it. Hooray for democracy.
Make sure to visit Flight404/Robert Hodgin’s blog to read more about his submission and other Processing experiments. There’s some really great stuff there.
On a side note, Robert is also a part of Matt Pyke’s “Advanced Beauty” project, which premiers this Friday, May 9th at Lovebytes 2008.
Prologue’s Danny Yount channeled lo-fi 3D schematics and the guitar rock of Black Sabbath for a rollicking Iron Man end credit sequence that is easily on par with the rest of Danny and Prologue’s incredible body of work.
The jittery visuals are countered by rock solid camera moves that keep the pace up, despite the 1:27 running time. I also love the graphical detritus that floats in the background and bridges many of the scenes. It creates the subtle sense of malfunction, of plans unraveling, of the shit generally hitting the fan.
I haven’t been that excited about Iron Man until now. I’ll pay just to see this sequence on the big screen.
Credits
Title designer: Danny Yount
Design & Animation: Ilya Abulhanov, Danny Yount, Alex Hanson, DongHo Lee, Dave Rindner
Compositing & Finishing: Anthony Mabin
Head of Post Production : Seth Kleinberg
Executive Producer : Kyle Cooper
Producers : Ellen Stafford, Seth Kleinberg
I think this new :90 PSA for the people of Burma is my favorite Shilo piece to date. This collaborative effort was conceived with Carl Le Blond, Executive Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather Amsterdam, John Jackson, Director of Social Responsibility, MTV Networks and Suki Dusanj, Founder of The Burma Arts Board.
Every scene is full of beautiful details. From the modeling down to the grain pass, everything is coordinated to create a lush visual experience perfectly coordinated with the music. My favorite moment of choreography comes as the flowers catch the wind, visually echoing the piano’s accents as both the flowers and the music downward.
The closing type treatment is a tasteful finish. Letting choice words linger in each set was a subtle but powerful move.
This movie is launching today on all the major video sharing sites. It’s also apparently broadcasting on MTV’s HD Jumbotron on 44th street here in NYC, which is probably worth checking out if you’re in the area. The viral is intended to raise awareness about the plight of the people of Burma and drive traffic to noneofusarefree.org. For more in-depth political and historical background, check out The Burma Campaign.
UPDATE:Shilo’s Andre Stringer, the lead creative on this project, took time to answer some questions for us.
How and why was Shilo was chosen for this project?
We joined forces with a really great group of people to create this piece. The purpose was to raise awareness to the Burmese peoples’ ongoing peaceful protests against their military government’s notorious human rights violations.
