Watching Un tour de Manège (Merry Go Round) is like flipping through the pastel drawings of a child—but coming away with clean fingers. Directed by Nicolas Anthanè, Brice Chevillard, Alexis Liddell, Francoise Losito, and Mai Nguyen, this latest Gobelins short is an impressionistic tale of being lost and found, as experienced through a child’s eyes.

Saying so much by doing so little, Un tour de Manège gets it right. It’s tactile: full of tonal and shading effects, chalky, and sprinkled in baby-powder. It’s innocent: tapping into the existential dramas of childhood, and like many works from the Gobelins school, crystallizing emotions like fear and loneliness in graphical simplicity. These moments are brief, but define a coming of age for the character, and help to humanize the inherent flaw by providing an escape from reality. Liberation by imagination.

The narrative is simple, buttressed by the fundamentals of good storytelling, and follows the same three-act structure documented at the turn of the 19th century. Much is left unexplained. The audience is left to fill in the blanks, without papering over the poetic nuance.

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I really like the illustrative aesthetic and how animation was kept to a minimum to not overshadow the narrative.

“Whenever creating, make sure you are passionate and continually excited about what you are producing. Pre-production is so important. Never jump into something without having something solid or you may waste countless hours. All in all, be expected to work hard when you want to create something you are proud of.”

-Dewi Mariam And Christian Whiticar

Deforestation

Overexploitation

Global Warming

Pollution

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Perhaps this official description sums it up best: “Turbo is a high adrenaline short film in the tradition of The Karate Kid and Tron.”

The Karate Kid and Tron. Uh, where do I sign up?

However you spin it, USC film student Jarrett Conaway’s epic 23-minute short film is an incredibly ambitious and thoroughly entertaining MFA thesis. Born from his loves of gaming and kung fu, Turbo is a sci-fi action flick shot through with impressive vfx work and an interesting interactive gaming concept at its core.

Conaway also managed to snare some decent talent for the short, including Justin Chon (the annoyingly chipper guy from the Twilight movie).

There’s much more information on the official site, as well as a cart load of goodies for sale.

Thanks to Nathan Boyd for the tip on this one!

You might want to hit mute for this one, but this behind-the-scenes video gives you a couple nice glimpses at the level of production that Conaway achieved. Impressive. He’s sure to find his way onto a major studio’s set soon.

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Beyond portraying a situation that we can all relate to, Eamonn added the dizzying effects of a tumbling camera and shifting perspectives, creating a palpable vertigo that artfully echoes the confusion and awkwardness of the moment.

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Justin Weber makes his directorial debut with “Juiced and Jazzed,” accompanied by the forces of Minnesota’s MAKE Visual, as they blast us back to a 1930’s-esque drunken rubber hose cartoon. The adventure follows Lulu, a seemingly innocent girl who happens upon a flask during the depths of the Prohibition Era. One drink is all it takes to get things fired up and out of control.

Justin began “Juiced and Jazzed” as his senior film at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Around the time he graduated in 2008, He had finished about 90% of the animation on paper. After being hired at MAKE, he opted to finished the cartoon there with the help of animation artists Andrew Chesworth, Aaron Quist, and Joe Kim.

The cartoon screams with the energy of 1930’s jazz, with beautifully lit environments, highly expressive characters and memorably exaggerated movement. I was able to catch up with Justin for a little more info on his film:

We wanted to make a cartoon inspired by 1930s rubber-hose animation in the fashion of Max Fleicher’s Betty Boop, as well as having the polish and excitement of 1940s cartoons, à la Bob Clampett and Tex Avery.

I wanted fun, lively music to drive the story and the characters’ actions. As a result, “Juiced and Jazzed” begins with a bouncy, jazzy piece by Joe Venuti and moves into the wild and fast paced music of Spike Jones. 

Each artist really helped add a richness to the cartoon that made it even more fun to watch.

We firmly agree. For more info on “Juiced and Jazzed,” have a look at the official site and be sure to check out some of the process work above provided by Justin and the MAKE team.

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Then he busted out some 90s flavored palettes and combined them with Keith Haring-esque illustrations to create an ad promoting his kicks. The advert is as lively as the shoes, effectively building a sunny persona for his imagined sub-brand of Nike.

Original soundtrack by DJ Markey Funk

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The narrative for “Without Arms” is elegantly simple. Where did the idea come from?

The idea for Without Arms came to me as I was falling asleep one night. I think some of the best ideas come when you’re not consciously trying to create them. I have always had a fascination with statues, and studied marble sculpture in Italy a few years earlier, so it seemed fitting that my thesis would head in that direction.

“Without Arms” was created for your MFA Thesis at Pratt Institute. What made you decide to go to graduate school?

I received my Bachelors in illustration from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. I always knew I wanted to go to graduate school, but I wasn’t sure that illustration was going to be enough for me. I wanted my images to move and have more depth, so I took a storyboarding class at VCU. After that I knew I wanted to get into 3D animation. So I decided to pursue a Masters in CG, even though I had no undergrad experience.

How did you decide on Pratt?

Once I decided on a Masters in 3D animation I started applying to multiple colleges. But because I had never touched a 3D program before, most schools were not willing to accept me. Pratt however caters to students like me that are going into the Digital Arts MFA program with little to no 3D experience. They offer intense introductory courses to learn the basics, which was perfect for me. I also decided on Pratt because of its reputation as one of the best art schools in the United States and because of its location in NYC.

Would you recommend Pratt to others?

Pratt has great faculty and very talented students. I had a great time there and would recommend it.

According to your Vimeo project page, “Without Arms” took three semesters to complete, two of which were completed while at The Mill. How did that arrangement work?

At the start of my second semester at Pratt, a string of lucky events granted me an invitation to tour the Mill office on August 8th, 2008. After showing them my work in progress they offered me an opportunity to complete my thesis at their facility. Once I started working at the Mill my thesis only took me 8 months to complete. Being surrounded by such talented professionals everyday motivated me to work extremely hard. 080808 is the luckiest day in the Chinese culture — it’s triple prosperity. I feel like luck was definitely on my side. I still feel like the luckiest guy in the world for being given that opportunity.

What was the most technically challenging aspect of the film?

Honestly, every aspect was a giant challenge. Before my thesis, I had only worked on class exercises and small projects. I had never worked on a project of this scale. One of the trickiest parts was the animation. The hardest part was making it subtle, which meant re-animating each shot dozens of times.

I feel like this thesis was the biggest learning experience of my life. I just kept reminding myself of something that Ed Catmull said at SIGGRAPH: “If everything is going according to plan, you’re not learning anything.”

What are you up to now?

I have been freelancing full-time as a 3D generalist at The Mill in New York City since January.

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How wrong I was.

VFX for Directors, it turns out, is actually fun. Although densely educational, the material makes sense—and more importantly—it feels relevant to the art of digitally enhanced storytelling. Every chapter had me saying, “Oh, so that’s how that works.”

Smarter Directors = Happier Productions

The overarching goal of the seven-disc series is to empower visual effects artists and filmmakers in general to make sound decisions so that post-production time can be spent creating the best visual effects possible. The course is aimed at newcomers to the world of vfx, but it doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to technical details.

Touching on the history of visual effects and CG imaging when necessary, the course delves into the “how” behind digital image-making. The result is a richer understanding of vfx—it’s no longer a “black box” or a magic wand. And that means that in addition to making smarter decisions, directors can also be more efficient (and less annoying) when working with others in the post-production chain.

Depth and Breadth

If you’re looking for step-by-step instructions on how to model a Tyrannosaurus rex in Maya, this isn’t the series for you.

If, however, you want to understand everything it takes to realistically pull off a shot of a Tyrannosaurus rex trudging through the forest before munching on a squealing paleontologist, then you’ll be more than pleased with what VFX for Directors has to offer.

The creators of VFX for Directors literally spent years working up the tutorials, and you get a sense of their commitment right from the start. Countless live action and CG shots are woven into the instruction with nearly 1,000 examples of digital effects in total.

The CG samples are mostly rendered at draft quality, since it’d be cost prohibitive to fully polish each and every shot. This doesn’t get in the way of the instruction, though. In fact, it helps isolate the topic at hand, highlighting only the necessary aspects of a given shot.

The series covers a staggering array of topics, including sexy stuff like the simulation of massive swarms, crowd replication, virtual set creation and digital stunt doubles—to touch on only a few. (See Hollywood Camera Work for a full list.)

Because the series focuses primarily on the underlying principles of vfx, the in-software instruction is relatively timeless. Most of the software packages used in the series are familiar—for example, Maya (for 3D and particle systems), Fusion (for compositing) and BodyPaint (for texturing)—but the coverage is broad enough that it can be generalized to any major package for any part of the vfx workflow. Again, you won’t be going step-by-step, chasing cursors through the UIs, but you will learn, for example, what a Merge node does and why it’s important.

You’ll also learn loads of practical on-set information, like how to properly light a cyc or how to shoot for planar tracking. There’s even a section on building your own cyc from scratch. (Note to self: stop by Home Depot tomorrow.)

Criticisms

It’s hard to find serious fault with VFX for Directors. Hollywood Camera Work knocked themselves out to create a practical, comprehensible course.

My only small criticism has to do with the direction of the narrator. While professional, the narration is very staccato, with slightly too-long pauses after each sentence. In defense of Hollywood Camera Work, this does allow for easier digestion of new concepts and terminology.

Bottom Line

Whether you’re working alone or planning a larger project, Hollywood Camera Work’s Visual Effects for Directors provides an excellent base for understanding visual effects and directing appropriately. Currently the course is offered for $329. Considering the amount and quality of instruction you get, that’s an incredibly good deal.

You might want to go deeper on select topics, but I can’t imagine a more comprehensive introduction to the general subject. I enthusiastically recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in visual effects and filmmaking.

The entire course, by the way, is available as a box set of DVDs or via download. Nice to have that option. See Hollywood Camera Work for more information.

As with all reviews on Motionographer, I was not compensated for this review. I received a copy of the course, which was used for the sole purpose of writing this review.

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The classic quote “never judge a book by its cover,” definitely comes to mind in “Great Glutton Island,” a beautifully animated short by Supinfocom student director, Valere Amirault. When a school of fish-buddies band together to help their pal in a time of need, they put an unexpected twist on a fisherman’s routine.

In all the Supinfocom work we’ve seen, I’m impressed not only by the technical ability from these young filmmakers, but more importantly, by their brilliant story-telling skills as well. The
“Great Glutton Island” is no exception, with a feel-good narrative of camaraderie buoyed by slapstick and a subtle moral subtext.

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