onedotzero: just one week away

onedotzero_adventures in motion returns to London’s BFI Southbank from September 9th to 13th, presenting international moving image work from an international lineup of pioneers and innovators.

Highlights include new work by Johnny Hardstaff; a retrospective of work by French collective H5 (which also includes an exclusive preview of their much anticipated film), Logorama; production company Partizan showcases its new talents; exclusive preview of the break-dancing documentary film Turn It Loose; breathtaking shorts by Keith Loutit and Reza Dolatabadi, whose animated film Khoda consists of over 6,000 individual paintings that were painstakingly produced during two years to create a five minute masterpiece and work from directing collective, Zeitguised.

More info and tickets on the onedotzero site.

NOTE: The onedotzero trailer (above) is part of the festival branding efforts from Weiden+Kennedy UK, created with the help of computational designer Karsten Schmidt. Schmidt authored a generative engine for producing random visual systems, which were recorded for use in the trailer and festival posters. You can also check out the interactive component that was presented at the NFT here.
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Cream O’ the Crop: People’s Choice

Photo by altemark

Over the last couple weeks, we’ve gone through the usual chaos of voting for our summer update to the Cream O’ the Crop. We’re nearly ready to roll out our latest choices for Motion Design Studios—but this time, we thought it’d be fun to cut you all in on the action.

Introducing the first ever Cream O’ the Crop People’s Choice Poll. The three studios with the most votes will be listed alongside our picks on the Cream O’ the Crop page.

Everyone gets to vote for three studios, but you only get to vote once. Choose wisely.

Voting ends on Friday, September 11th.

Gabe Askew: Grizzly Bear “Two Weeks” (Unofficial)

Taking a break from his day job in architectural visualization, Gabe Askew’s fan video for Grizzly Bear’s “Two Weeks” goes in an entirely different direction from the official video directed by Patrick Daughters (embedded after the jump).

Gabe’s 2.5D opus is a delightful journey through countless faux analogue dioramas inhabited by paper-mâché-like creatures and flattened illustrations dangling from the proscenium. Gabe nimbly avoids the “say cow, see cow” approach, instead opting for metaphorical devices that mix naturalistic imagery with human forms gliding, battling and embracing throughout myriad environments.

Thanks for the tips, Jostein Finnekasa and Jeffrey Zablotny!

Watch the official “Two Weeks” music video.

Vera Bee’s Snow-Bo

Sometimes when you are trawling the infinite ocean that is the inter-web, you come across a little treasure that makes you wonder how on earth you missed them first time around. This is one of those cases!

It’s a simple tale of a lonely little boy in search of a playmate with a good dash of darkness thrown in for good measure! Cute, enchantingly naive animation style with a great sense for comedy timing.

Created by Vera Brosgol and her buddy Jenn Kluska whilst in their final year at Sheridan College. Make sure you stop by her website for some lovely concept art.

Source: Media Molecule

Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs Inc.

Partizan Lab’s Chris Cairns recently directed this highly entertaining surreal video featuring everyones favourite beat juggling junkies, the Scratch Perverts.

I managed to interrupt Chris’ busy schedule to give use a quick insight into the techniques used to create the video:

We shot the people spinning on turntables at 33.3rpm at high speed and then matched them to the turntables which were working with Serato. The film was made in collaboration with The Scratch Perverts, Foreign Beggars, Shlomo and Will Clarke with sound design by Will Cohen. Post production by The Mill London.

For more information drop by the Neurosonics Audiomedical website. Be sure to check out the production stills, guaranteed to brighten up your day and put a smile on your face!

Twenty120 Interview

Twenty120 is around the corner and we have a few announcements that we would like to share. Firstly, as a reminder, this Thursday night at 7pm Twenty120 is releasing its third annual collection of films at the Art Directors Club in New York. If the twenty great films aren’t enough to bring you out, they will also be providing free drinks along with the an all event set from DJ Chrismix.

The free admissions are now closed. Hope you made the cut!
Along with those details we are happy to announce that Twenty120 put aside 50 free admissions for us to dish out to the Motionographer readers who want to come join the fun. What you need to do is email rsvp@twenty120.com (check the invite linked above) and say that Motionographer sent you. It is on a first come first serve basis so act fast. For those of you who wont be able to make it to the show, Motionographer is offering a web premiere of the 20 films. From the hours of 7-11pm Eastern Time on Thursday, tune into Motionographer, we will have a clip of all the films to watch, but dont wait until later because we are pulling the plug as soon as the clock strikes 11pm.

Twenty120 brings amazing opportunities to the creatives in this field, so I’ve been perplexed by how many people don’t know about the annual series. After my first meeting Connor Swegle I learned a good deal about the history of Twenty120 and saw how invested he is in it’s future. Which drove me to have an official interview with both Connor and Rich Rama, the two men behind Twenty120.

Click here for the interview

Fx and Mat: IOC “All Together Now”

Nexus Productions’ directing duo Fx and Mat put their powers to use for the International Olympic Committee and agency Coler & Weber United in “All Together Now,” a beautifully rendered tale of titanic Olympians literally pulling the earth’s geography together into a neo-Pangea.

Like their work for the Royal Bank of Canada (through Parisian prodco Mr. Hyde), “All Together Now” uses soft lighting and a rich palette to evoke a sunny, feel-good vibe reminiscent of Art Deco’s happier imagery. The contours of the characters remind me of Tamara de Lempicka’s hefty but friendly human forms—just without all the sitting around and pouting.

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Mass Animation: A Guest Rebuttal

Back in July, I scribbled out a diatribe against Mass Animation, a Facebook-supported competition to create a CG short film by crowd-sourcing the animation to thousands of animators around the world. (See trailer above.)

While most of the Motionographer regulars agreed with my points against Mass Animation, not everyone felt that spec-work competitions like Mass Animation are a bad thing.

To help flesh out the other side of the story, we got in touch with Alexander Micah Snow, Mass Animation participant and then animation student at the Savannah College of Art and Design. We edited his response for length, but left it otherwise in tact.

Let’s keep the conversation going in the comments.

Read Alexander Snow’s guest rebuttal…

Helen Clemens: Eskimo Joe “Losing Friends Over Love”

Plaza Films’ Helen Clemens directs a curious odyssey for Eskimo Joe’s “Losing Friends Over Love” music video. The project’s gentle ambiance is shot through with streaks of tension, creating a compelling narrative arc within a claustrophobic world.

Animated by Pete Commins (Partizan), the video’s faux stop-motion feel, electro-mechanical props and use of room-based vignettes remind me a little of the classic Super Furry Animals “It’s Not the End of the World” video (created by David and Laurent Nicolas), but “Losing Friends” has a look-and-feel all its own, driven as it is by the innocent exploration of the lead character.

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Twenty120 NYC Premiere

One can easily say that motion graphics has become one of the most tantalizing careers for the creative minded. The opportunity to make art utilizing design, illustration, animation and sound as mixed medium is an easy sell for any artistic person. Which is why this little industry of ours has drawn some of the best creatives in the world. The only snag, this art form’s foundation is built entirely around advertising. Although the challenge of designing to sell can be a thrill, in the end, the purity of our ideas become diluted by the needs of the client and a myriad of other factors. This hurdle is one a fine artist normally does not have to overcome.

Almost as a reaction to this, festivals and collaborative projects have emerged that give the creatives in this industry an opportunity to take their artistic energy and focus it on their own personal work.

One such independent film series is Twenty120, which invites 20 filmmakers to create two minute films on a given theme.

Here at Motionographer we see a need to embrace independent film collections like Twenty120 that give all of us a venue to channel our creative desires. As a result we are excited to sponsor the NYC premiere of this years Twenty120 films to be shown on August 27th at the Art Directors Club presented by MassMarket and Click 3x.

Also, in this coming week we will be releasing limited free tickets to those who are in the neighborhood and want to come down to see the event, drink some free beer and mingle with the directors. We will also be doing an interview with Connor Swegle and Rich Rama, the two men in charge of Twenty120. Stay tuned for more details on the 3rd annual premiere of Twenty120.