Robert Seidel “Futures”

A while back on Tween, I posted Robert Seidel’s experimental short, “_grau,” with a healthy does of praise attached. I’m happy to announce that Robert recently finished his first music video, “Futures,” a song by Zero 7 featuring José González.

futures.jpg

Like “_grau,” “Futures” uses richly textured organic imagery to create complex, ever-shifting animations that are as hypnotic as they are beautiful. One of the things I really like about Robert’s work is the way in which it forces me to slow down my normal rate of visual consumption. Each composition is full of depth and wonder, at once familiar and alien.

From a technical perspective, I can’t figure out how Robert has created this thing. He appears to be using some kind of morphing technique, but if you watch closely, the objects in some of the scenes actually seem to be growing, suggesting time-lapse photography or even CG animaiton. I’m not sure. That’s part of the fun.

Watch “Futures” (QT 7 | 25mb)
Watch “Futures” (QT 6 | 77mb)
Visit Robert’s Project Page

About the author

Justin Cone

/ justincone.com
Together with Carlos El Asmar, Justin co-founded Motionographer, F5 and The Motion Awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas with is wife, son and fluffball of a dog. Before taking on Motionographer full-time, Justin worked in various capacities at Psyop, NBC-Universal, Apple, Adobe and SCAD.

12 Comments

phyzoe

Hey wait, I thought this was the video to that song:

https://www.duckeye.co.uk/futures.html

It looks like Robert’s video is a combi of photography (obviously), displacement mapping and morphing.

Looks cool though.

justin

Two videos for the same song. Robert’s wasn’t deemed “commercial” enough so they had another one made. (That’s a compliment, if you ask me.) :-)

damir

If you look at the last shot of the clip you can see the egg breaking apart (played in reverse). I think this shot was done by squishing an egg between two pates of glass. This technique could have been applied to some of the other shots as well.

rothermel

oh cool, time-remapped screen savers.

Sir Monkey

How ever it was created, it is amazing!!! The idea of “organics” has been trying to pop it’s head out as the new trend and this is a great example of that.

Thanks Justin!

THA_DON

this reminds me of the time a friend left a gold fish out of the water lying in the sun, then he took pictures every 10 minutes of it die, then slowly dry in the sun until it was a crusty, smelly shell of a poor dead gold fish….
yes, pushing the envelope of creatvity… “I am an artist”

rs3d

It’s simply morphing and displacing images I took … Nothing special I’m afraid :)

Thanks for your nice comments, Rob

rs3d

THA_DON … I would love to see the gold fish movie, is it shown somewhere? Rob

carniceria

really nice work, would love to see it project large. the texture of some of your images looks amazing! like that styrofoam peanut looking thing near the end. really great results regardless of your technique.

mate

Poor goldfish :´(

Sarah

Where did you find it? Interesting read

rauschundluxus

I would love to know more about your workflow, Rob – even if it is “nothing special” as you put it :)

Michael

Comments are closed.