Kijek/Adamski: We Cut Corners’ “Pirate’s Life”

Polish directing duo Kijek/Adamski (aka Katarzyna Kijek and Przemysław Adamski) have made lovely music videos using yarn and paper shredders. Their music video for We Cut Corners‘ Pirate’s Life is “As simple as it looks. The whole video is hand drawn frame by frame – markers on paper.”

We caught up with Kijek/Adamski to find out more about the video and exactly how many marker fumes produced this fluid gem. Read the interview here.

Work/Life: Kids

“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.

Playgroundsfestival 2011 Titles

The Playgroundsfestival was a joy. Hidden in the little town of Tilburg, the festival had great speakers and good talks. With talks from: Edouard Salier, Mate Steinforth, Physalia, Encyclopedia Pictura, Ben & Julia, David Wilson, Spread Motion, Heyheyhey, Matt Lambert, Studio Takt, Tokyoplastic, David Wilson, DVEIN, Kyle Cooper and Onesize there was never a dull moment.

And of course there are the titles. It seems to become more and more important for a festival to have good titles. It’s like a pissing contest. Festivals compete in the coolest, biggest and most creative title. After the Offf 2011 titles it would be hard to go bigger, so Leon van Rooij (festival director) must have thought: ‘let’s be creative’. He was playing with the idea of doing ‘live’ titles. A titleshow so to speak. He contacted creative design studio HeyHeyHey and they were more then happy to go to work.

It was great fun to see the unsuspecting speakers present themselves without really knowing what was going on. The show was on thursday, recorded, edited and played back on friday. Of course ‘you had to be there’, but still, the end result is pretty funny and a totally new take on festival titles.

Playgrounds 2011 ‘The Live Titles Show’ from HEYHEYHEY on Vimeo.

Read on…

James Curran: The Adventures of Tintin, Unofficial Title Sequence

We’re huge fans of self-initiated personal projects, and were delighted by James Curran’s fantastic unofficial title sequence for The Adventures of Tintin. Spielberg take note!

James was kind enough to take some time out of his schedule for an interview. Learn more about the piece here.

Le Mob: Stopover

The amount of blood, sweat and tears that went into Neil Stubbings’, of LeMob, “Stopover” must have made it one sloppily wet studio to walk into. He single-handedly wrote, designed, animated and directed the charming short pretty much all on his own. The story follows a dimwitted human as he stops on an alien planet to take a leak. Hilarity ensues.

Work/Life: The 40 Hour Work Week

Photo by adesigna

The headline for this post probably strikes most of you as a joke — at least those of you working in motion design in the US, and especially those of you working in LA or NYC.

But it’s no joke to J.D. Meier, a Principal Project Manager at Microsoft for over 10 years, who uses the 40 hour work week as his barometer for project management success. As he says on his blog:

In my experience, a 40 hour work week is a benchmark of the most effective teams.  They have work-life balance.  They have buffer to respond to opportunity and to deal with crunches.

Meier has overseen projects large and small, with budgets ranging from zero to over a million dollars. A self-avowed workaholic accustomed to slaving over 100 hours a week — and enjoying it — he finally came to realize that such an approach was not only unsustainable for himself, it was also unsustainable for Microsoft.

Inviting inefficiency to tea

Without the constraint of a 40 hour work week, all sorts of inefficiencies become the norm. It’s as though they’re being invited to tea — and to supper and a late-night snack.

Read on →

Dvein: Eva Main Titles

So delicate, and so slick. Dvein puts together a stunning title sequence for Spanish film director Kike Maíllo’s first feature film, Eva. Go fullscreen on this!

Dvein was involved in the film from the beginning by designing the “hands-up” interface through which the film’s protagonist controls the consciousness of the robots that he creates. That design was the starting point of the main titles of the movie: a detailed approach to the mechanisms of the interface, a simpler introduction that turns into something more and more complex that introduces the viewer to the world of Eva.

Credits

DANIELS: Weetabix “Dancer”

A cute little girl takes a bite of her Weetabix breakfast. That’s the usual cue to dive into the bowl for a cereal-inspired world of animation for 20 seconds before zooming out to a smiling family and an endtag.

How about, instead, the girl gets out of her chair and takes us on an acid trip dance party with rimlit breaking bears. Yes?

Who is having more fun than DANIELS? No one.

Credits

Siggraph 2011: Damian Nenow “Paths of Hate” Interview

The trailer for Paths of Hate showcased its effortless combination of comic book visual style with dynamic dogfighting camera motion and kinetic editing. The film is directed by Damian Nenow at Poland’s Platige Image.

I was able to catch up with Damian in Vancouver and find out a little more about this beautiful film. He and Platige Image were also generous enough to provide some fantastic making-of materials that show how much care went into the film, both artistically and technically.

Check it all out here.

Guilherme Marcondes: Bunraku Opening Sequence

For the opening title sequence of Guy Moshe’s film Bunraku, Guilherme Marcondes introduces us to the Bunraku alternate universe — from pre-historic animals fighting for survival to its present-day third world war. It’s got a lovely mixed-media style, including the puppeteering technique explored earlier in his short film Tyger. The title sequence was entirely fabricated and shot at the Hornet Workshop.

Originally made back in 2008, it’s finally available online. Don’t miss the great production photos and art at Gui’s Flickr Set.

Credits