Barclay’s Mill-Built NYC-Coaster

In a time where spots like this are reserved for the elite few; common collaborators, Nicolai Fuglsig and The Mill team up to bring you “Rollercoaster” for Barclaycard (via BBH, London). Using scenes from all over NYC this production, that began last fall, constructs and elaborate coaster-ride through the city.

As can be expected, The Mill comes with a solid making of that proves to be as entertaining as the finished product.

Credits

The strange tale of Skhizein

This may be old news to some, but I noticed Jérémy Clapin and Stéphane Piera’s 2008 Oscar contender ‘Skhizein’ has yet to receive any Motionographer attention. So here it is in full. A curious tale indeed yet so quintessentially quirky and French, it’s a joy to behold full of original ideas and visual cleverness not to mention rock solid art direction and admirable follow-through in all aspects of the execution.

Available here to buy on DVD with an insightful making of. Bon appetit!

Studio AKA for BBC Winter Olympics 2010

These dark wintery days are long and cold, filled with shadowy danger. We need a hero; someone who can shed some light. Step forth Mr. Inuit! Like a well insulated cross between James Bond and Batman – he ski’s! He bobs! He sleds! He even curls pretty darn well!

In this latest offering for BBC’s Winter Olympics coverage, Studios AKA’s Marc Craste pits a bleak terrain with all it’s inherent treachery against our hero whose sole Herculean feats can win the day. AKA’s trademark sparse geometry plays nicely off co-designer Jon Klassen’s environmental touches with pitch perfect animation to boot. Gold!

Alaska Nanooks 2010 Hockey Intro

Mike Martinez’s Alaska Nanooks’ Intro of 07-08 was a truly over-the-top pastiche of lo-fi animation with hockey, explosions, a huge Polar Bear and 80s music. Consequently it was a huge viral success – featured on G4’s Attack Of The Show and countless blogs. This year’s Intro finds Jon Dorfman and Szymon Weglarski of HiFi3D lending their talents to up the production values and animation of the bear while adding even more explosions.

We had a chance to discuss the new project with both Jon Dorfman and Mike Martinez.
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Blue Source & A52 Crew for LEGO

Directing duo, Blue Source, recently teamed up with the crew at A52/Rock Paper Scissors to deliver this short film for Lego entitled, “Lego Click Community” (via Pereira O’Dell). Right up Blue Source’s alley, this piece maintains a perfect balance of surreal humor, whimsical narrative and concept reinforcing techniques.

Exploiting all the shared resources of A52/RPS (including one of Elastic’s front-men Andy Hall as VFX-sup), this seamless collaboration is a testament to creative synergy (no reference to their building’s old name) taking place in this continually evolving creative shop.

Credits

David O’Reilly & Jon Klassen “Black Lake”

Check out Black Lake, David O’Reilly & Jon Klassen’s newest collaboration. A personal project rather than a commercial venture, it’s a lovely, looping, electric sheep dream.

“Black Lake” will be screening at the If You Could Collaborate show at A Foundation Gallery (London) through January 23. Wish I was on the other side of the Atlantic so I could check it out in person. Additional artists in the show include Julien Vallée & Nicolas Burrows and Hellovon & Timothy Saccenti.

The Games We Play

Director Jared Eberhardt has just made these four lovely new films for Puma, combining playful live-action with a fully illustrated set that National Forest collaborated on. Each shares the same overall concept, but varies in both the content and execution of the action – a modular world of sport, games, animated backdrops and hairy monsters. Definitely worth watching a few times.

Continue here to watch the four films and read a Q&A with Jared about the project.

Airside + Demos: The Power Gap

British think-tank Demos teamed up with creative agency Airside to create “The Power Gap,” a three-minute visual essay that surveys the history of power structures in Western society and posits an atlernative to the de facto oligarchies that rule most of our lives.

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Buck for Chegg.com

No one is better qualified to employ humor that’s so willfully tasteless as Buck. In a brood of spots for online textbook rental service, Chegg.com, Buck whets the appetite of college juvenescence by appealing to the lure of gross.

By satirizing the social life of college campus, Buck has tapped into the best (or worst) of gross-out humor by walking a tightrope between bad taste and charm. In fraternizing comical abnormality and sophomoric platitudes, the campaign owes a cultural debt to films like Animal House and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, who today, are considered fathers to this vile genre of toilet comedy. For Buck, however, the resulting spots exhibit all the hallmarks of bad taste: gratuitous nudity, uncontrollable bodily functions, and a knack for vulgarity that is inspired. In this campaign, nothing is too raunchy. Raunchy is the point.

For Buck’s ongoing liaison with cel-animation, this campaign is a homecoming, and could not have come at a better time. With so many studios churning out work in the spirit of synthetic, CG polish, Buck is taking the low road to refinement and serving up a look that’s more take-out than table-service. The aesthetic is grimy: illustrative, with a nervous sense of line-work that’s both fast and loose. In tone and nerve, it’s Bucks own brand of grossploitation: disagreeable to taste and a testimony to low humor of a high order.

Nathan Love for Pop Secret “Dark Knight”

As Shakespeare said, “To thy own self be true.” In Pop Secret’s “Dark Knight,” Nathan Love gets back to basics, and back to what they do best. In truth, when I first saw “Dark Knight,” the kid in me perked up. These are the ads of Saturday Morning: The ones of anthropomorphic junk food — humanized creatures that function as likable mascots to kids and grown-ups alike.

Spots like this hark back to the good ol’ days of 80’s product advertising — utilizing stop-motion and “claymation” as a vehicle for spokes-characters like The California Raisins, The Pillsbury Doughboy, or advertising’s salty playboy, Mr. Peanut: kitchen food with arms and legs. These characters personify the businesses they represent, but fail to instill a real sense of life for the characters—one that has human motivation—able to reason, and still sell a product. Until now.

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