Goobees is a fantastic and twisted short film made by four grad students at Texas A&M. In order to not be a spoiler for the story I wont go into much detail, but the basic plot is a dark twist on the core idea behind an already existing ad, yet in no way does this take away from the film. As for style, the 3d renders can be viewed as a bit plastic, but it works for this type of story. I personally had some feelings of nostalgia with the Candyland look they created for the environments which in my opinion bring the dark undertones of this piece to another level. There is something about cute characters getting mangled that really touches my heart.

Credits:

Seth Freeman-Lead Character TD

Michael Losure-Lead Layout TD and Shading TD

Patrick O’Brien-Lead Lighting and Rendering TD

P. Antonio Piedra-Set Designer, Matte Painter and Assistant Character TD

This film was co-directed and co-produced by all four of them.

Also, there is a great making of section to check out.

Thanks to Meredith Miller for the tip!

Now and again we get a submission here at motionographer mansions that makes me smile from ear to ear and scream for everyone to come check out what I’m watching. The latest culprit is the new video by French directorial collective The Holograms for NY producer / electronic ensemble kap10kurt and their track Dangerseekers.

The synopsis for the video amusingly reads: “In a world full of danger, where music is banned by an evil militia, Kap10Kurt, an easy-going hero, helped by his sexy mate Leah, will blow up this Machiavellian conspiracy….â€? Cerebral stuff indeed!

The clip was created over 3 months at mathematic, the motion design studio partner of Les Télécreateurs who rep The Holograms. 3D was mainly done in Maya with some 3DS Max for FX design. Comping was done solely in After Effects.

Now, I know the eighties revival thingy has been done and done, and according to my mate Vince, French animators do lean towards Manga style work a bit too much. But I just absolutely love this. The narrative and animation are super-punchy with all those ‘Battle of the Planets’ moments I loved as a kid. And the shoulder keyboard transformers bit at the end had me punching the air like a teenager (Which was only a few years ago!?).

I did however have a sneaking suspicion that a video like this had to come from the fantasies of a geeky ‘Tom & Ed Chemical’ style producer collective, who look more like lab techs then 80’s rock vamps. How WRONG I was…

Somehow, againstallodds made disembodied tongues, eyeballs, fingers and brains likable—almost cute. Solid writing and voice acting are brought to life by againstallodd’s superb character animation.

The spots were for Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam through Passion, with Derek Picken as creative director and Niklas Rissler art directing. I’m working on getting complete credits.

All four spots can be found on Passion’s site. (Thanks, Marc.) againstallodds is repped by Passion in Europe and Blacklist in the US.

UPDATE: Full credits

Nervo has created a series of lushly detailed online promos for Let Us Kiss, a new online e-card-kind-of-thing fueled by a love of visual beauty.

Each animation is a blend of surrealism and cuteness, with music and sound design from Nervo’s in-house Music Director. (The water-balloon breasts imagery will stick with me for some time, I’m afraid.)

Stills and other imagery from the project can be found on Flickr.

We originally posted Oh, Hello as a Quickie, but I just had to upgrade it to a full post. The reel intro alone is worth your time.

A little back story: Oh, Hello was founded by Digital Kitchen ex-patriates Dan Brown, Thai Tran and Nathan Barr, who’s also worked at Superfad. Dan and Thai are both creative directors, with Nathan wearing the executive producer hat.

Their portfolio is off to a great start and (at the moment) features a healthy proportion of non-commercial/strange work. (Is that Cody Cobb in the Maiden of Death trailer?) Can’t wait to see where they go from here…

The talented guys and gals over at Barcelona based, Dvein created these wonderful titles for the recent TOCA ME design conference.

The TOCA ME crew contacted us to make the opening titles for this year’s event. The theme was “Beyond Surface”, and they wanted to go beyond each of the artists invited to the conference, to know their processes and thoughts. Opening title’s are very type based and we used type to represent each of the artists and go “beyond” them.

Alex Trochut designed a monogram for each of the speakers in the conference and we created a journey going from inside out revealing the monograms as characters of the whole piece.

Check out these behind the scenes shots of the making of; here, here & here

UPDATE: Motionographer is now mirroring this video. The video is also available on Dvein’s site.

This is the most elaborate way possible of showing how simple the Gmail interface is (in Russian). I’m not even sure I like it, but I think the commitment it took to pull this off is astounding.

Thanks to Seth Gantman for the tip!

“And ooh, that stupid rainbow hit me in the eye!” That moment pretty much made this spot for me. Roger must have had a blast with this one, smashing together dozens of illustrative styles and slipping in clever details wherever they could.

Full credits | Check out the boards

This week’s After Effects NY meeting looks like it’ll fun. To celebrate their first year as a successful user group, AENY is hosting Tronic and Digital Kitchen. They also have some sweet door prizes lined up.

I’m going to try to be there. If you go, say hi. I’ll be the guy with the silly grin on his face.

When: Thursday, Feb 28th 6:30-9:00
Where: Pratt Manhattan
144 West 14th Street (b/w 6th and 7th Ave)
Room 213

Full info here