I AM by Tronic

Tronic just finished up this beautiful personal spot, I AM, which aims to bring the voice of the animals back on to the human radar. As Tronic co-founder Vivian Rosenthal says in the attached interview, “they are becoming almost like walking ghosts that are just drifting through a manufactured landscape”.

The simplicity and technical slickness allow for the message to take the front seat, while still providing us with something beautiful and eye-catching to look at.

Sebeastien Agneessens recently sat down with Vivian Rosenthal and talked with a her about the conceptual side of the piece, which you can read here.

Friday Night Lights promo for Direct TV by Iron Claw

DirecTV’s Design Space partnered with VFX company Iron Claw (Sean Koriakin and Greg Talmage), director Ben Mor from RSA Films and DP Dariusz Wolski (Pirates of the Carribean, Alice in Wonderland) to create this foreboding promo for DirecTV’s exclusive broadcast of Friday Night Lights.

Everything was shot on green screen, with the only practical elements in the entire piece being the actors, house facade and pickup truck. The simplicity of the concept allows for the subtle details and beautiful lighting to take center stage and really pack in the emotion and anticipation.

Passion Pictures’ Pete Candeland welcomes The Beatles to Rock Band

It was no surprise when I learned the new spot for The Beatles: Rockband was directed by Pete Candeland of Passion Pictures, director of The Gorillaz music videos and done the past two Rock Band openers (1 & 2).

The illustrations and designs are gorgeous, the transitions are seamless and the piece builds momentum to the very end. Not only does the energy of the piece build, but so do the complexity of the animation techniques themselves. We start off in an illustrated, cut out world and wind up in a fully immersing Psyop-esque jam fest. By the end of the video I had to keep rewinding to catch all the references.

Enjoy.

Strukt: Toca Me 2009

The talented people over at Strukt had a big act to follow after Dvein’s opening titles for last years Toca Me conference, but they pulled off something fantastic.

They took the theme “Hit by Inspiration” quite literally and ran with it. The blooming spheres visit every desaturated color of the spectrum, but still live in the same world and make me wish that tiny little balls of inspiration would fall from the sky and bonk me on the head.

Watch it here

Credits

Street Fighter IV intro

So we posted the teaser and trailer for the new Street Fighter game, and now here in the same fashion is the intro animation that runs at the beginning of the game.

Nothing new as far as the last two trailers were concerned: the style is the same, they’ve just made this one longer and a bit more epic. The painterly ink effects and grit work really well with the textures. It’s the epitome of eye-candy.

Still would love more info, but we now know that Studio4ºC and Polygon Pictures are responsible for this.

Thanks Scott

Animation Director Niko

The portfolio of London-based animation director Nicolas Lesaffre is brimming with unique design and character animation. The surreal scenes he creates are saturated with eye catching elements and attention grabbing characters that will assure you you’re seeing something new and unique.

Be sure to check out the festival traveled “Hernando”, which amazingly was created as his graduation film from Supinfocom in France.