PetPunk’s promo for Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania, is a delightfully cacophonous bit of work. Using just about every imaginable animation technique, the project is a riot of color, type and whimsy. (I especially love the dog-head characters.)
In the same spirit of tourism promotion and cheerful nationalism, PetPunk’s “Welcome” from a couple years ago is definitely worth watching again.
Big ups to Mark Haley for the tip!
This stunning promo from Sehsucht for the Konzerthaus Dortmund concert hall celebrates a new season of musical performances with a lyrical ode to fire. It’s a perfect example of Sehsucht’s inventive approach to motion design, one that blurs the line between real and unreal as abstraction becomes literal.
This isn’t the first time that Sehsucht has worked their magic for Konzerthaus Dortmund and agency Jung von Matt. Like last year’s effort, “Black Poem” uses a natural phenomenon as a medium, pushing it to lyrical extremes that extend the beauty of the spot’s soundtrack. This year’s muse was Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say, whose wild fugues fueled the project’s impassioned permutations of fire.
It’s rare that a work of motion graphics actually quickens my pulse, but this one manages it. The editorial pacing combined with the increasingly frantic camera work and animation creates a mounting sense of exhilaration that creeps into your bloodstream before hitting your heart like a hammer. Beautiful stuff. Sehsucht remains one of my favorite studios not just in Europe, but in the world.
This video by Action Figure has been making the rounds lately, so it seems very well suited to be up here as well.
Their site describes that they had some extra time with a Phantom HD camera and took the opportunity to capture some people on set getting punched in the face. Really, there isn’t a much better excuse out there for a director to take. Even though I’ve seen some videos like this floating on the web already, I still feel giddy watching how distorted a face can get from a good solid punch.
UPDATE: Although the face-punching phenomenon has been around since slow-mo video, it turns out this project is awfully similar to this video from Digital Kitchen, made many moons ago but only recently posted on YouTube.
I originally thought this was a “blatant rip-off” (to quote myself), but as is often the case, there was more to the story. I called Jason Marlow, who came up with the idea of shooting his co-workers getting punched while working on another project for which Action Figure had rented the Phantom camera. He assures me he had never seen or heard about the DK video. And I believe him.
Why? Well, let’s break it down: You have a camera capable of shooting 1,000 fps. You have some time to kill. There’s a boxing glove sitting on the desk at your office. Is it really that much of a stretch to see where this is going?
