“Yes, I know I’m supposed to be bathing him tonight, but … Yeah, I know I didn’t bathe him last night either, but tonight we’ve got a hell of a lot to get through, client changes and … What time? I really have no idea, you know I can never tell until we … Dinner? No don’t worry about dinner, we’ll call out for take-away from here … Yes, I miss you too … He’s asking for me? Tell him I love him and I’ll definitely bathe him tomorrow night, I promise … .”

Anything in the above bit of fictional dialogue sound familiar? Yes, it does for me too. You see, we are creative people us motion folk and perfecting a design, a texture, a storyboard, a render or whatever it may be takes time. And despite working like demons all day to be “out the door”-bang on leaving time, fate and clients all too often conspire to derail our best intentions.

Now, when we just have ourselves and perhaps a willing “other half” (who has decided to throw their lot in with us) to consider, late nights at work are bad enough. Bags under the eyes and cold shoulders in bed are no fun. But throw kids into the mix and it’s a whole ‘nother ball game. Concerns and neuroses multiply and multiply again: My folks were around for my bedtime, and so should I! If I don’t see her all week, will she still know me? Is my patchy bedtime attendance causing her long-term psychological damage?!

But all the while, perfection is drumming its fingers on the desk and we can’t let something half-assed go out the door. And there you have it, the classic creative parent’s tug-of-war: Do I rush this thing and leave on time to see my kid or do I do myself justice as an artist and give this the extra four hours it needs? Do I leave my design baby screaming in the cot whilst I rush home to bathe and put to bed the human one?

Well here at the Motionographer Work / Life Think Tank (disclaimer: “Think Tank” may in reality refer to a couple of casual email threads), we have decided to throw this open to you, the readers. Why struggle on your own when you can take solace in the fact that many others are having the very same problems? To this end, we’ve created a questionnaire to see how work life after kids is shaping up for you. And those of you without nippers, we want to know how you think becoming parents will change your working lives.

When the results are in we’ll pump out a couple of fancy looking diagrams which will show us what you the Motionographer readers think about work/life with kids.

Posted on Motionographer

La Moustache, the new animation company operating out of Montreal have created these compelling animation segments for the acclaimed new documentary H2Oil. The documentary, produced by Loaded pictures exposes the ‘enterprise of epic proportions’, which is the Alberta Oil sands industry.

So what’s up with extracting oil (or bitumen rather) from Alberta’s oil sands and why do we need to know about this? Well extracting bitumen from oil sands (Often referred to as tar sands) is a hugely energy intensive process, requiring industrial scale heating (using natural gas) and 4 barrels of fresh water to produce one barrel of oil. So right there you have the depletion of the planet’s most valuable and scarce resource, clean water, along with the burning of natural gas to create another carbon emitting fuel…and so it goes on. Add to this the explosion of ‘rare’ cancers in areas where post industrial contaminated water is let back into the environment, and you have a bona fide, 100% proof environmental catastrophe on your hands. And tar sand mining is only going to increase as the world’s conventional oil wells dry up…

Despite the animation itself being rendered by the friendly hand of James Brathwaite (of I met the Walrus fame), it makes for uncomfortable viewing and in as much it does its job perfectly. Sequences are inventive and dynamic whilst tonally staying in keeping with—and never overshadowing—the subject matter.

For me, viewing this work and the trailer for the film came as a real wake-up call. I try and keep up with environmental news as best I can, yet I still thought of tar-sand mining as the institutionalized crazy uncle who’d never actually get released. After watching these clips it’s obvious that the lunatic has well and truly taken over the asylum.

Also, please remember that budgets for documentaries and specifically documentary animation are ridiculously low, especially compared to commercials and studio features. So La Moustache have almost certainly invested much of themselves into making animation of this level for a documentary film that doesn’t yet have a wide scale theatrical release.

For a fairly neutral overview of tar-sand mining check this link.

H2Oil produced by: Loaded Pictures
Animation Production: La Moustache
Narration: Catherine Kidd
Animation Directors: Dale Hayward & Sylvie Trouvé
Illustration: James Braithwaite
Animation: Dale Hayward & Sylvie Trouvé

Posted on Motionographer

Blackfish, charged by Ogilvy & Mather have created a storming romp through a bizzarist’s take on life after graduation from HEC (Apparently Europe’s no.1 business school). From first person perspective we watch as our hero burns a trail through the job market, vanquishing all that stands in his way, all within a blown-up musical-esque stagescape.

I love this spot because it essentially pokes a lot of fun at the very thing it’s advertising without denigrating it in any way. We arrive at the end of the spot having sold malls to martians, proving that for HEC graduates the sky is no limit! The film also assumes that aspiring business students must have a cracking sense of humour, which is something I was thus far un-aware of…

Client | HEC

Agency | Ogilvy & Mather

Creatives | Ève Roussou & Benjamin Brégeault

Director | Camille Bovier Lapierre

Production | Elegangz & Blackfish

Producers | Aurore Maincent Feer (Elegangz) & Pierre Sémon (Blackfish)

AD | Zurich29

3D | KnightWorks
Romain Politi
Umaru Embalo
Guillaume Gaussuron
Nadia Zouaoui
Geoffrey Pons
Brice

Charcater Design
Aurélien Marrel

Sound | Studio Apollo (Montreal)

Production duration : 10 weeks

Posted on Motionographer

Posted on Motionographer

Dutch agency These Days along with Sheffield based animation house Finger Industries have produced this heart warming viral for Friends of Glass. The animation makes up part of a well conceived campaign to encourage the use of glass over plastics and so on, because of its ability to be recycled 100%.

Hank the bottle (Although he has had many previous incarnations) acts as spokes bottle, cheer bottle and vocalist (Sorry, couldn’t squeeze ‘bottle’ in there) for his own tune which spins the yarn of his own super resilient life story.

Creating a convincing and entertaining character to head up a campaign is no easy task and in clumsy hands this can result in a head-shaking cheese-fest. But thanks to some deft lyrics writing by Paul Van Oevelen at These days and sweet animation work by Finger Industries, the result is a character and viral that really ‘warms the cockles’.

Also, make sure to check out all the letters on the accompanying website addressed to various luminaries of the showbiz world. The agency really rinse out the schwarzenegger joke that makes up the backbone of the campaign, as well coming up with a few more gems. Trying to get ‘Plastic Bertrand’ to change his name to ‘Glass Bertrand’ certainly raised a smile in the Robson household…

Concept: Paul Van Oevelen (copy), Bram Van Looveren (AD)
Creative Direction: Sam De Volder
Design: Bert Beckers, Valentijn Destoop
Development: Geoffrey De Muer, Tom De Pauw, Greg Vandevyver, Kathy Van de Gaer
Strategy: Karin De Bruyn, Tim Willems
AM/PM: Sylvie Versteylen, Liesbeth Stevens
TV-Producer: Bruno Dejonghe
Music: Thierry Van Durme
Voice: Chris Brooker
Animation: Finger Industries

Posted on Motionographer

Posted on Motionographer

Posted on Motionographer

Democratic moving image project “PSST! Pass it on” have just created their first music promo for the Cincinnati, Ohio-based band, Over The Rhine.

The “PSST!” model, loosely stated, is for each artist to create a section of video, pass it on to the next and see where it goes. The results here are stories of owls, a skate-boarding zombie girl, a gardener robot and a cult-guru and a jilted lover… Sounds like my Sunday.

I’m a big fan of this sort of “round table” collaborative affair. Differentiated aesthetics paired with a common drive can make something really eclectic and beautiful. The evidence is here. I wonder if PSST! is a pioneering model for the shape of creative things to come…Here’s hoping.

Music: Over the Rhine

Co-Curation: PSST! + Ryan Dunn

Part 1:
Director: Ryan Dunn
Illustrator: Elliot Lim
Propmaster: Alex Foucre-Stimes

Part 2:
Designed, animated & directed by Paul Cayrol

Part 3:
Director: Masayoshi Nakamura
DP: Magico Nakamura
Editor: Erik Montovano

Part 4:
Designed &animated by Ryan Rothermel & Thai Tran
DP: Billy Summers

Part 5:
Design and story: Jon Saunders
Animation and story: Cary Janks
Lunch: Jan’s Mom

Part 6:
Directed by Caroline Attia

Titles by Bran Dougherty-Johnson

Posted on Motionographer

Buenos Aires based studio Punga have created two stop-motion inspired spots for Temaiken Bioparque (Biopark is apparently a PC way of saying Zoo).

Although the pieces are on ‘ones’ as opposed to ‘twos’, the grade and physical sets bring a warmth and charm that evokes the stop-motion days of yore. Patricio from Punga explains:

The idea was to create a stop-motion like piece. We took an artist to build the mockups (sets) at the studio and shot it in HDV, then using PF tracking and 3D studio max + after effects, we achieved these two funny little pieces: Chita and Mono… so what you see as scenario is not 3D, it’s paper and cardboard. The little characters are 3D

I can see that this way of working could really appeal to artists wanting to get their hands dirty with physical modeling, whilst retaining the control of CG for animation. Certainly the stop frame aesthetic seems to be resurging right now, all be it simulated by a full or partial CG execution. I know there’s been some debate over on ‘Cartoon Brew’ about Tom & Mark’s recent spot for RBC, and whether it’s fair game to use CG to re-create an art form that for many people is held very dear. IMO, if the idea and execution stand up, (As they obviously do here) then to me it’s not so important how the creators get there, but I’m no puritan…

Watch the spots here:
Chita
Mono

Posted on Motionographer

A couple of weeks ago, back in the dark days of Motionographer 1.0 we posted Sydney based Sixty40′s showreel as a quickie. In amongst their work, this recent gem for Kmart particularly stands out as worthy of an upgrade to feature. So voila!

It’s great to watch as a studio ups their game to the next level, and with this spot sixty40 do just that. The character design particularly stands out to me. I love the helmet-sporting gorilla on the start line, and wish we could have seen some more of him in the rest of the spot. But then again with ads like this it’s all about dashing through a cool alternative reality that kids would rather live in. And that’s what the crew have delivered here; no wuckers…Good on ya fellas.

Title: Kmart Super Toy Sale
Length: 30 sec
Director: Sixty40

CLIENT: Kmart

AGENCY: CumminsNitro
Executive Creative Director: Sean Cummins
Creative Director: Fiona Leeming
Agency Producer: Georgina Toole
Writer: Angela Harding
Art Director: Astrid Schmidt

PRODUCTION and ANIMATION
Production Company: Sixty40
Directors: Sixty40
Producer: Sixty40
Lead 3D Animator: Nick Paroz
Character Design and Storyboard: Matt Taylor
Art Direction: Lilian Darmono and Daniela Bau
Lead Compositor: Daniel Fitzgerald
Compositors: Mark Simpson, Andres Gomez and Jason Morice
3D Animation: Gary Pate and Alison Bond
2D Animation: Evan Newby and Antonio Artese
Editor: Haywire Films
DOP: Andre Deubel (Resolution Films)

MUSIC AND SOUND DESIGN
Music: Final Sound
Sound Design: Final Sound

Posted on Motionographer