OK Go “End Love” – Masters of the One Take Music Video, by Gunther and Lieberman

I think at this point, it’s fair to say that OK Go has yet to disappoint us with their videos. The last one for “This too shall pass” proved just how painstakingly involved the band works with artists and directors alike. For such high demand concepts, it’s really amazing that they have yet to fail.

We caught up with Directors/Choreographers Eric Gunther & Jeff Lieberman for their newest stop motion / timelapse video for the track End Love. Eric was in Switzerland and Jeff in Berlin, both setting up installations. But they were kind enough to share some insight on the music video.

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Typeface by Justine Nagan – a documentary on the history of wood type printing

Typeface by Justine Nagan – a documentary on the history of wood type printing. The film’s own site is here.

MAKE: PSISF Opener “Palm Springs”

Several days ago, we received the latest from MAKE: a knock down, drag out homage to film noir style crime dramas of old Hollywood, called Palm Springs. The piece was created for the Palm Springs International ShortFest, which runs from June 22nd – June 28th. Rather than opining on the merits of the work, we asked MAKE’s Director and Lead Animator for the opener, Andrew Chesworth, to summarize how the team of artists executed the piece, in detail:

“Palm Springs was created using primarily traditional animation drawn directly into Photoshop with Wacom Cintiq tablets.  The idea was to achieve the aesthetic of classical animation but to do it in a completely paperless fashion.   The creative workflow was near identical to that of traditional analog animation – starting with rough layouts buried in construction lines, and gradually working toward more finished scenes through a layering process of drawing.   In several scenes, assistants in-betweened and touched up the drawings of key animators, and finished animation was passed on to the colorists who painted each frame of animation with the dry-brush styling.

3D animation was employed for a handful of inorganic subjects, such as the vehicles in the car chase, the ceiling fan in the office, and the movie projector.  The modeling, animation, and rendering was all done in Maya.  Mental Ray’s contour shader was employed to achieve the outlines on the objects, and the models were built very specifically to accommodate the line work to match the drawn designs.  Hard shadow render passes, animated texture overlays, and a great deal of rotoscoped hand-drawn effects were composited onto the 3D elements to mesh them within the hand-drawn world as much as possible.

Compositing was all done in After Effects, where additional treatments were placed over the drawn elements to achieve a more analog aesthetic.  Subtle texture overlays, diffusion filters, and in many cases film grain and noise were added to conform the elements.”

For more, check out the Q&A and behind-the-scenes artwork that went into creating the opener here.

ITFS Zoopraxiscope by Johannes Schiehsl

Check out Johannes Schiehsl‘s fluid, joyous trailer for the 2010 Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film.

Johannes Schiehsl – ITFS Zoopraxiscope

For the 2010 Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film, Johannes Schiehsl has created a clever ode to animation centered on the idea of constantly changing silhouettes chasing each other in a praxinoscope. Created during his third year at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, it’s a fluid, joyous leap from one animal to the next.

Check out concept art, animatics, motion tests, and more info here.

Jonny Kofoed for Pams “For The Love of Food”

Beautiful spot by Jonny Kofoed for Pams: “For The Love of Food”

Baby I’m Yours by Irina Dakeva

We saw this beautiful cel-animated and aquarelle-painted music video by Irina Dakeva for Breakbot recently and wanted to find out more about the production process she used. You can tell immediately that it’s a real analog and painted work. It’s got a real energy and kinetic style of painting that is entrancing. The inventive transitions and constantly-shifting color washes go hand-in-hand with the bouncy, French pop-disco track.

Read more for a Q&A with Irina here