Bluemotion

Director Yani and Paul Postma of hazazaH and DDB Amsterdam bring us these wonderfully minimal spots for Volkswagen. A cut out tree here a spot light there, two circles and voilà! You have yourself a scene. Straight to the point with no frills and a few creatives twists to take them out of the ordinary and into something special. Appropriate for the agency (DDB) and the client (Volkswagen) that created the famous “Think Small” campaign.

Offline by Matthew Santoro

Good Monday morning Motionographer readers. Maybe you are confused as to why we are starting this week out by posting a trailer for some big budget sci-fi movie. Would it make you more interested to know that this trailer for a short film was produced entirely by a single person?

Matthew Santoro, a Senior VFX artist who has worked on large scale productions such as “300″ and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”, is the sole talent behind this epic sci-fi piece. Santoro draws upon his vfx background to make guerrilla style filming look like a highly polished Hollywood flick, yet due to this being his own creation there is a unique life to his aesthetics and effects. In his own words, “I directed, edit, animated, composed, built costumes/ props and bled over this thing for almost 2 years”. Santoro has the creative versatility and drive most wistfully desire, a combination of skills that leads us to expect big thing from him in the future. First and foremost will be the opportunity this short has opened for him, which is to create a feature length film based in the same world.

I got a chance to ask the man himself a few questions about this project and his plans for the future.

I’m guessing that this started as a one man production and has since grown. How many others are now involved in this production?

Well the trailer that you just watched was basically a one-man production. I had to put the thing together from the ground up. Of course with a little help from my friends. Which meant anyone willing to deal with the consequences of possible getting busted for sneaking onto rooftops in the middle of the night. There were parts of this project that I literally filmed in my apartment using cardboard boxes, cheap hardware store lights, and a half-broken fog machine. I built the costumes using model parts and superglue. Most of the time my actors where doubling as crew even my dad (Charlie Santoro) who was playing that scary guy with the silver hair.

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Jesus2000

A hip short created by another crop of brilliant students at Gobelins by the names of Rémi Bastie, Jean-Baptiste Cumont, Clément Desnos, Jonathan Djob Nkondo and Nicolas Pegon. A cute idea that is carried along by energetic Flash animation, which seems to be a focus that is growing in popularity at Gobelins. Maybe we can look forward to a rise in flash animation quality for film and television in the coming years if this trend continues.

Not to mention that this is another short produced entirely at Wizz Design who helped produce another short, Flying V: Virgile, earlier this year.

Encyclopedia Pictura Asks, How Will You Create The Universe?

Encyclopedia Pictura has struck again! The directing trio recently finished a personal animation entitled, “How Will You Create the Universe?”, inspired by the creature evolution concepts put forth by the video game Spore. Using that idea as a spring board, Encyclopedia Pictura explores what would evolve from a world if they were gods (as well as ask the viewers what they would create through verse). While creating a Universe can be hard, Encyclopedia Pictura puts all the odd pieces together just right to make a quirky, lush world that is unique to their vision.

Their sculpted style has evolved itself with the help of CG masters Tippett Studio, who brought their highly detailed designs to life. Tippet may be one of the few studios with the ability to take this style and intricate design and make something that even better looking then the stills. This animation could have easily looked like cgi trying to be claymation or borrowed from other more trendy 3d styles, instead Encyclopedia Pictura and Tippet created something brand new.

Enjoy.

EDIT: We discovered that this was in fact originally created a year ago for a Spore ad campaign that was ultimately killed. Kudos to Encyclopedia Pictura for taking the initiative and finishing this project. Shame the client couldn’t conceive what amazing attention this spot would have given their brand.

Twenty120 Interview

Twenty120 is around the corner and we have a few announcements that we would like to share. Firstly, as a reminder, this Thursday night at 7pm Twenty120 is releasing its third annual collection of films at the Art Directors Club in New York. If the twenty great films aren’t enough to bring you out, they will also be providing free drinks along with the an all event set from DJ Chrismix.

The free admissions are now closed. Hope you made the cut!
Along with those details we are happy to announce that Twenty120 put aside 50 free admissions for us to dish out to the Motionographer readers who want to come join the fun. What you need to do is email rsvp@twenty120.com (check the invite linked above) and say that Motionographer sent you. It is on a first come first serve basis so act fast. For those of you who wont be able to make it to the show, Motionographer is offering a web premiere of the 20 films. From the hours of 7-11pm Eastern Time on Thursday, tune into Motionographer, we will have a clip of all the films to watch, but dont wait until later because we are pulling the plug as soon as the clock strikes 11pm.

Twenty120 brings amazing opportunities to the creatives in this field, so I’ve been perplexed by how many people don’t know about the annual series. After my first meeting Connor Swegle I learned a good deal about the history of Twenty120 and saw how invested he is in it’s future. Which drove me to have an official interview with both Connor and Rich Rama, the two men behind Twenty120.

Click here for the interview

Twenty120 NYC Premiere

One can easily say that motion graphics has become one of the most tantalizing careers for the creative minded. The opportunity to make art utilizing design, illustration, animation and sound as mixed medium is an easy sell for any artistic person. Which is why this little industry of ours has drawn some of the best creatives in the world. The only snag, this art form’s foundation is built entirely around advertising. Although the challenge of designing to sell can be a thrill, in the end, the purity of our ideas become diluted by the needs of the client and a myriad of other factors. This hurdle is one a fine artist normally does not have to overcome.

Almost as a reaction to this, festivals and collaborative projects have emerged that give the creatives in this industry an opportunity to take their artistic energy and focus it on their own personal work.

One such independent film series is Twenty120, which invites 20 filmmakers to create two minute films on a given theme.

Here at Motionographer we see a need to embrace independent film collections like Twenty120 that give all of us a venue to channel our creative desires. As a result we are excited to sponsor the NYC premiere of this years Twenty120 films to be shown on August 27th at the Art Directors Club presented by MassMarket and Click 3x.

Also, in this coming week we will be releasing limited free tickets to those who are in the neighborhood and want to come down to see the event, drink some free beer and mingle with the directors. We will also be doing an interview with Connor Swegle and Rich Rama, the two men in charge of Twenty120. Stay tuned for more details on the 3rd annual premiere of Twenty120.

Flying V: Virgile

Flying V, a new collaboration between 2008 Supinfocom alumni Clément Soulmagnon & Gary Levesque, has created a short film titled Virgile. Following a shy guy named Virgile who desperately tries to impress a gal by being everything other than himself, Clément and Gary display their prowess for everything a successful short film needs. From original concept to final composite this film would make Supinfocom proud, especially considering that they are only one year out from creating the extremely successful short films “Gary” and “Yankee Gal“.

Apart from being impressed by these french youngsters kicking ass and taking numbers, I’m also intrigued by the fact that this film was entirely produced at Wizz Design. During a year in which financial survival has the edge over creativity, it is uplifting to see a company put their own dime into a short film. When all the competition is churning out “money jobs” a few solid investments in creative can jockey companies into better positioning when all the economic turmoil is over.

Philippe Grammaticopoulos

Allow me to introduce the work of Philippe Grammaticopoulos, a French director working with the somewhat mysterious production company Mr. Hyde in Paris. Philippe has also somehow managed to evade the Motionographer radar until now, which comes as a massive shock to me after seeing the long list of his wonderful animations. His stylistic approach and animation techniques are truly unique, but for me his off-beat, strange storytelling is what makes him stand apart from the rest.

His newest animation, Les Ventres (”The Bellies”) caught our attention when it hit our inboxes last week. Take a look at this bizarre four minute tail four minute clip from the 18 minute short about snails, glut and self-consumption.

Seeing how we missed out on all the great work the this fine director has released over the years, here’s more of his work, all of which is worth viewing. In fact, any of these could be full posts of their own.

• Les Processus-created at Supinfocom
• Signature-Amnesty International
• Le Régulateur–as well as a “making of” clip.
• Les Escargots