Playgrounds Festival 2010

Playgrounds describes itself as a festival for innovative and creative digital art. During the two-day festival in Tilburg, Playgrounds presents an impression of the latest developments in technology as well as creativity. The festival program offers an inspiring mix of inventive films, documentaries, animation, graphic design, artist talks, character design and performances.

Playgrounds was a joy and surely measures up to the big festivals in the world. Allthough the festival is held in a small town called Tilburg (South of The Netherlands) it’s speakers reflex bigness. From big directors like Pierre Coffin (Despicable Me) and Rex Crowle (Little Big Planet) to powerhouses like Mini Vegas and Zeitguised. Furthermore there were Nexus, The Blackheart Gang, Shy the Sun, David Wilson, our own Matt Lambert, Champagne Valentine, Radical Friend and BIF to complete it.
It was nice to see every speaker had their own style, their own story of success and their own piece of advice. The motto seemed to be, stay true to yourself, explore and make what YOU want!

I especially liked the Talkshow between Fons Schiedon and David O’Reilly, what was meant to be a talk about inspiration, became a showdown of truly bizarre and sick works from all over the world. Movie clips, snippets of porn and pieces of animation were all wrapped into a humorous, often awkward, dialogue between Fons and David. The Art of ‘Wrongness’!

This years’ titles came out of the sick mind of animator/director/designer Fons Schiedon. With Post Panic on the production it turned out to be on of the most creative festival titles ever made.  Wether you like it or not, they are a definitely a fresh, new approach. No slick 3D, no heavy sound design, skilled typography or layers and layers of post. It looks like a surreal movie, a part of a series you’ve missed. Fons cleverly hid the titles in the dialogue of the film.

enjoy

Edouard Salier: Massive Attack “Splitting the Atom”

The fixed moment of the catastrophe. The instant the atom bursts on the beast, the world freezes into a vitrified chaos. And we go through the slick and glistening disaster of a humanity in distress. Man or beast? The responsibility of this chaos is still to be determined. — Edouard Salier on “Splitting the Atom”

Originally posted as a Quickie, the promo for Massive Attack’s “Splitting the Atom” deserves a brighter spotlight, if only to illuminate all the incredible work that went into the project. From the storyline to the final composites, it’s a project that glitters darkly, thanks in large part to the vision of director Edouard Salier.

We asked Salier for a little more info on the project: (more…)

Meindbender Duplicates for Cartoon Network

Meindbender Animation Studio in Sweden has really done a nice job for Cartoon Network. They’ve reproduced stop motion-like animation with a real clay feeling—but with all the advantages of CG.

The Duplicator Series was animated in Maya and rendered with Maxwell Renderer using HDR’s Rendernet. Check out the series on Meindbender’s site or individually here:

The Duplicators
Evolution
Audition
It´s Magic
Push The Button

Some background information from Meindbender’s Olov Burman:

In 2007 we released an animation test called Rabbit vs Football. This film got quite a lot of attention on the internet, and one the companies that contacted us was Cartoon Network. We were at that point looking for buyers for a film called Gifts for Greta.

Cartoon Network bought this as a Christmas ID short film, and it ended up winning awards in Promax/DBA Europe and world awards. Cartoon Network then ordered 5 more ID shorties, and we started working on the “Duplicator Series.”

We put together a small but dedicated crew of world class CGI artists and got to work. After several months of hard work we completed the production. We hope you enjoy the films.

Credits