BEELD.motion: The Man Who Had Never Been to the Cinema

BEELD creates this unique and poetic short film for Telecine Network.

Sehsucht: Vorwerk “Stadt der Milben”

Sehsucht destroys a microscopic city for Vorwerk in “Stadt der Milben.” Making-of here.

Blizzard: Diablo III Cinematic

Blizzard reveals an epic intro cinematic for Diablo III. (Thanks, Ash!)

Big Lazy Robot on the Keloid trailer

We recently Quickied Keloid, a stunning trailer for an as-yet-unrealized film that the wizards at Barcelona-based Big Lazy Robot hope to produce someday. BLR’s director, J.J. Palomo, was kind enough to shed some light on the project and share some behind-the-scenes goodies.

Where did the idea for this film come from?

We’re very few in our team, so we’re very close and always hear what each other have to say in terms of ideas for possible future projects. Some 12 months ago, one of the animators came up with this idea of mechanical SWAT forces rushing into a clandestine drug lab also operated by robots.

We all agreed on two things: The idea was very, very appealing, but it still needed something else beyond just satisfying a visual appetite. We spent some months reading, surfing the web, looking here and there to build up a solid story.

In my opinion, what we’ve got today is something bigger that the art itself. We are very fond of following our appetites instead of our ideas, and our biggest appetite for this project was to showcase a real fresh perspective on sci-fi panorama.

Is there only the trailer?

The story we want to tell is nothing of an easy one, so we don’t know if a short movie can cover it all. Hopefully, it can.

We have all the characters, script and art ready. I mean, the trailer displays some of them, but there’s much more behind it. We would like, of course, to go for a feature film, but the biggest thing we’ve done so far are commercials, so we need to move slowly here.

We do advertising, mostly: Projects are never too big, the pay is good and it’s a field that’s evolving so much. This allows us to “buy” time to devote to more artistic goals, those we really love. We’re in the middle of a commercial project right now that will keep us busy until next March, so it’s a good while to sit and think.

 

(more…)

Digital Domain + Neil Huxley: “Transformers: Fall of Cybertron”

Digital Domain and Neil Huxley (Mothership) crafted this stunning teaser for Activision and High Moon Studios’ Transformers: Fall of Cybertron title.

Call for entries: 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards

The 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards call for entries has begun. Do it!

Prologue: X-Men

The main sequence for X-Men: First Class, produced by Prologue, has a special retro/2D hand-made feel and serves as a strong example of how a simple execution can go a long way when put together with well-developed conceptual thinking. Director Simon Clowes kindly shared some words with us.

I saw this as an opportunity to make something that stands out not for its visual complexity or photorealism but for its simplicity and sensibility.

As he puts it, they had the technology and the talented artists to pull off a really complex sequence; however, prioritizing the concept and having to deal with various limitations eventually led them to this stylish and remarkable result.

(more…)