Sehsucht: Misereor

Mate Steinforth and Sehsucht create this woodcut-inspired spot for Misereor.

Terry Gilliam’s cutout animation tutorial

A blast from the past! The youthful Terry Gilliam explaining the methods behind his cutout animations.This has been circulating the interwebs for a bit, and we thought we’d share it with you all. Should be a treat for all you Monty Python fans out there.

Ori Toor: Panda Bear — “Alsatian Darn” (unofficial)

Ori Toor continues to explore psychedelic, fluid animation in this unofficial music video for Panda Bear’s Alsatian Darn. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out his video for Animal Collective’s Lion in a Coma.

Black Swan meets Sesame Street

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, from Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling (with the London-based This Is It Collective) was a Quickie that caught my attention recently. To explain why, I’m going to just talk about what you’re thinking as you watch.

So the video begins, and you’re wondering what’s going on. You’re panning over a few scenes in a kitchen, except the kitchen is made of felt. And then, suddenly, a notepad is singing and you’re in a children’s video.

Something’s bothering you, though. This is kind of lame for a children’s video. It’s telling kids how to do what they do really naturally anyway, use their imaginations. (Typical pedagogic reasoning: Tell people to do slightly more of what they’re already doing, thus making the instructor seem useful.) Its examples of “creativity” are barely above the threshold of wonder — looking at a cloud, the puppet children see a ladder leaning on a log. Isn’t that … fun?
The plot thickens and an interview with the directors …

David Salaices: Clock DJ

Wiki wiki wiki. A clock collage by the Madrid-based Musikame team — David Salaices, Alex Santiago and Latrama. (Via Vimeo staff picks.)

Michel Gagné: Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

I don’t have an Xbox, but if I did, right now I’d be playing Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, created by Joe Olson and Michel Gagné. I’ve been excited to see how Gagné’s beautiful FX animations translate to a gaming environment since the initial trailer came out in 2007. Gagné’s previous work includes the Ratatouille taste visualizations, The Iron Giant FX, and his epic short, Prelude to Eden.

The ITSP blog has beautiful concept art and screen shots. There’s a free trial version on Xbox Live Arcarde.

Yowie and the Magpie by Dylan White

Been a long time coming, but this delightfully illustrative and darkly comic tale is now available to view in its entirety online, after having toured festivals. I especially enjoyed the constantly pulsating and bubbling white beard of “dad.” Designed and directed by Dylan White, so be sure to head over to his site for more behind-the-scenes info. I enjoyed the click-thru showing the juxtapositions between storyboard images and final style frames. Full credit list on the site and on the Vimeo page here.

Channel 4 Street Summer promo

Update: MPC’s behind-the-scene ‘making of’. Fascinating stuff!

Given the recent riots and looting that’s been plaguing England, I cannot help but post this “Street Summer” promo by Channel 4. MPC London is responsible for the flawless VFX, which is fascinating to watch if you can ignore the highly charged content for a second.

Glancing through the comments on the official YouTube page and also here, I find them to be just as interesting as the video.

Is this inappropriate, done in poor taste? Or is this simply a honest portrayal of the youth culture in Britain now? Does this condone stereotyping or challenge viewers to rethink it? What do you think?

Thanks to Zinnia for the nudge, and our hearts go out to U.K. residents affected by the riots.

SIGGRAPH 2011: Technical Papers Fast Forward

Hi Motionographers! We’re at SIGGRAPH 2011, here in beautiful Vancouver. SIGGRAPH is the Association for Computing Machinery’s annual conference on computer graphics, where you can find the most recent academic research and commercial software/hardware developments for computer graphics and interactive technology. This year, upwards of 20,000 artists, research scientists, gaming developers, engineers, filmmakers, and academics have descended on the conference.

Check out our first dispatch on the Technical Papers Fast Forward event here. More Motionographer SIGGRAPH posts to come, including 3D scanning and printing as it relates to motion graphics, all about lenticular displays and building glasses-free 3D displays, and, of course, highlights from the Computer Animation Festival.

Memory Tapes’ “Yes I Know” by Najork

Memory Tapes’ “Yes I Know” from Najork on Vimeo.

At first glance, a quiet, almost serene black and white video. Nevertheless, it’s packed with visual effects. Each image is carefully and subtly modified and contributes to the incredible atmosphere. With controlled changes in reality that take you into a dreamworld, you not only listen to the Memory Tapes, but you can see them as well.

What makes this video even more special is that it is not made with ​​extensive 3D applications — no Flame, no Nuke, just After Effects. Two-dimensional camera tracking, puppet tool and a lot of layers make this ambitious project come to life.

Director Eric Epstein:

This would have been a good excuse to learn, but it’s hard to abandon one’s strengths. And with the emphasis on footage integration, much of the project was going to live in AE no matter what. I figured if the approach was unusual then at worst the results would come out looking unique. Realistic compositing was not top priority, so long as the motion seemed natural.

The main techniques I employed in this video were things I had played with before and had wanted to push further. That helped zero in on some images I wanted to create, but the feeling of the music was still the driving force behind everything.

On Najork.net you can find, next to other neat works, a bit of making of.

credits