“Blood Trail” (Updated with interview and making-of)

Warning: Extreme gore and violence. Content may not be suitable for all audiences.

Nathan Love’s latest masterwork, “Blood Trail,” is a neo-renaissance for the studio, a breakthrough as they launch into game and film territory.

“Blood Trail” unfolds mysteriously. Its subtle storyline is boosted by bloody, body-ripping visuals that are fervently executed as Nathan dives into uncomfortable CG guts territory. Consequently, this animation is gorrific, ultra violent, horror-themed, over the top CG storytelling in all its glorious might.

UPDATE

Nathan Love graciously chatted with us about this project, sharing their process imagery and delving deep into the details. Check it out.

Psyop Delivers for UPS

Weeks ago, we quickied “Gladiator,” the first of an ongoing campaign for UPS, due to the staggered release dates of the remaining spots. While additional spots are headed our way, shelving “Circus” until then would be a FU to the craft and creativity gods.

Corrugated cardboard, next to clay or pixels, is one of my favorite materials. Its seemingly innocuous appearance can transform into patterns and volumetric structures with a few simple folds, slots and slices. Any shop that manages to infuse human spirit into corrugated cardboard gets major cred from me. In “Gladiator” and “Circus,” Psyop does just this, transforming a bland brand of brown and a non-aesthetic material into a land of lions, elephants, and acrobats.

The charm of hinged puppet characters is met by the team’s technical muscle, layering golden light and atmospheric debris to turn a dull, trash material into treasure.

Watch “Circus”
Watch “Gladiator”

Additional notes from Psyop…

David O’Reilly: When You’re Smiling

Pictoplasma, the global clearing house for contemporary character design and art, commissioned director David O’Reilly to create the show open for Pictopia, the Pictoplasma exhibition taking place in Berlin this week.

Set to a hollow yet pleasing rendition of “When You’re Smiling,” O’Reilly tells the story of a skeleton looking for character parts in a warehouse-like digital space. Once the pieces are chosen, he replaces himself with the bits to create a generic but adorable little guy who walks through a mirror onto a stage.

WYS sparked some discussion at Motionographer headquarters. Although it seems innocent enough on the surface, O’Reilly’s film is subtly subversive: The central figure transforms itself from a human form into a clichéd icon, one assembled from samples of Japanese pop culture—a tendency that’s obvious in much of the character work at exhibitions like Pictopia.

In broader terms, “When You’re Smiling sets up a debate about the nature of animation and character design as triggers for empathy,” said Motionographer’s Justin Cone. Do characters—especially simplified, cuddly critters—act as psychological mirrors for audiences? If so, what sort of relationship is that? What kind of stories does that encourage/discourage? Are some stories being left behind?

As the opening for a gathering about character design, O’Reilly’s film couldn’t be more appropriate. It once again shows his penchant for intelligent iconoclasm expressed through engaging narrative. He reminds me of Brad Bird’s famous insistence that animation isn’t a genre, it’s an artform.

Watch When You’re Smiling

yU+Co: The Watchmen Titles

NOTE: This title sequence was removed at the request of Warner Bros. I will never understand Hollywood’s approach to free publicity. Persistent souls will still find the titles elsewhere online.

yU+Co and director Zach Snyder teamed up to create this epic title sequence for the eagerly anticipated “The Watchmen”, which opened in theaters today.

The title sequence sets up the movie by traveling through several stylized time periods beginning in 1939 and ending in 1985. Vintage superheroes take stage as dynamic slow motion and selective movement empower each shot with beauty and intrigue.

From the yU+Co release:

The challenge for yU+co. was integrating titles into an already edited six-minute sequence that was built without the placement of titles in mind. In order to make the titles feel like an organic part of the sequence, Yu and his creative team wove meticulous detail into the type design. Rather then simply lay 2D type onto the foreground of the live action, it is incorporated in 3D into each scene.

According to Director Zach Snyder (via Fandango);

From the very beginning I wanted to do a cool title sequence for the movie and it was actually the thing that got me started drawing Watchmen because they were trying to figure out how much this movie was going to cost. I said it’s really impossible to say until I start drawing the movie and a get a sense of what the movie is…

So I literally went to the beginning of the movie and started drawing. It was funny because I had the music—I was pretty positive that it was going to be Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” Then it started to take shape for me as we really find out where we are in the world, and that’s how that sequence came about, tracing the alternate history.

The result is an imagined yet nostalgetic superhero landscape, setting up the film to be, hopefully, as inspired as the title sequence itself.