Mozilla Firefox Add-Ons

POKE & illustrator/animator Tim Ruffle present Firefox add-ons.

Motionographer Holiday Catalog 2011

Well, it’s that time of year again — car-top pine needles, spiked raw egg beverages, off-key caroling, fantastical sweaters, and of course, cheesy TV commercials.

When I was kid back in the Stone Age, we were pried away from our 19-inch black-and-white TV for one structured December night, when our family had an annual tradition of sitting around the dining room table with milk, cookies and mountains of department store Christmas catalogs* from which to peruse and highlight for The List. This would eventually be hand-delivered to the downtown department store’s walk-through holiday display — Santa’s Workshop — where you’d “mail” your letter, then follow it as it journeyed on a conveyor belt through a Mailroom, Toy Workshop, and other extensive dioramas where animatronic stuffed pantyhose elves were generally making a mess of things. Luckily, the “real” Santa was there waiting at the end, so you could reinforce your wishlist verbally.

Well, today, the Post Office is failing, that department store is gone, and those elves are probably hibernating in some back room leaking moldy stuffing, but commercialism definitely isn’t — it saturates our environment, via e-mail, phone, TV and here, at Motionographer!  So without further ado, let’s try and escape any more fluff and review some of the better holiday-themed digital moving picture ads in this first of three weekly Motionographer Holiday Catalog posts.

American Red Cross 2011 Holiday Giving with Fred, directed by Andy Hall / Elastic (Agency BBDO).  Also check out 2011 Resolve to Give from the same campaign.

John Lewis’ The Long Wait from Blink.

Herman Miller Holiday Video from dress code.

The Gift from BLR_VFX.

BT Vision Christmas 2011 from weareseventeen.

And lastly (but definitely not least), comes an ambitious hand-made interactive project from Peter Sluszka / Hornet for PNC:

PNC’s 12 Days of Christmas from Peter Sluszka / Hornet.

And don’t miss Hornet’s extensive behind-the-scenes process tour (+ credits)!

*As noted by a colleague, this Toy Catalog version might be more memorable for some of you.

Special thanks to Motionographer’s Brandon Lori and Daniel Coutinho for the help!

Globologos characters by Martin Allais

Characters for the Sid Lee Collective interactive project “Globologos,” by Martin Allais and Stephane Poirier.

BLR: Keloid

BLR’s trailer for Keloid looks promising. And a bit terrifying.

Samsung: the tablet of the future

Check out this flexible AMOLED tablet concept from Samsung (Via mashable.com.)

Tokyoplastic: Princess

Tokyoplastic re-imagines a classic fairytale setup for the Whistler Film Festival and agency Dare.

Psyop for FedEx: The Making of “Enchanted Forest”

It’s been five years since Psyop made their mark on the industry with Happiness Factory — the high flying, CG fable that defined a commercial genre they helped to create. If it’s not broke, then don’t fix it, and once more, the studio plays with the textbook devices that make Psyop distinctively Psyop. In their latest work, magical imagery and a wizardry of craft assure that Enchanted Forest stands shoulder to shoulder aside a long line of Psyop classics. The team elaborates:

We wanted to create a world that is surreal, sophisticated and cinematic where the forest is practical with a blend of CG enchantments. Our desire was to have a poetic interpretation of an idealized forest where everything is alive and has a soul to tell our story of FedEx’s eco-friendly solutions. For this fairy tale, we wanted to create depth and mystery with stylized characters and unique magical vegetation to blend them into this weird hybrid world.

In a Motionographer exclusive, Psyop has offered up a rare glimpse into the enchanting artwork that went into the creation of their most recent gem and sat down for a Q&A: The Making of “Enchanted Forest.”