You know how it is. Everything is calm. The pace, relaxed. Maybe you’ll write a little email to your mum, letting her know how special—
BAM! The shit hits the fan. Demands on your creative powers are being made from some shadowy force on high, and you jump into high gear, riding that familiar blend of adrenalin and caffeine that all creative workers know too well.
Favorite moments: the error message during the blender sequence, the post-it note reading “Find money and weapons” and the elegantly executed end-tag.
The sound design, created by Ubisoft, really pushes this to the next level (as all good sound design does), exaggerating the action and creating striking contrasts throughout the project.
Some philosophies of aesthetics enumerate seven primary art forms derived from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s “Lectures on the Aesthetics” and the writings of film theorist Ricciotto Canudo: architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, music, poetry, and cinema.
The order is disputed, and architecture is sometimes shuffled to the third position, as it was by aspiring filmmaker Alex Roman for the title of his breathtaking work in progress, TheThird&TheSeventh, an artful combination of photorealistic architectural renderings and stylish CG cinematography.
In Roman’s able hands, the combination is undeniably poetic. His reverence for light borders on transcendent, and his attention to detail is inspiring. We caught up with Alex for a little background information.
Justin Weber makes his directorial debut with “Juiced and Jazzed,” accompanied by the forces of Minnesota’s MAKE Visual, as they blast us back to a 1930’s-esque drunken rubber hose cartoon. The adventure follows Lulu, a seemingly innocent girl who happens upon a flask during the depths of the Prohibition Era. One drink is all it takes to get things fired up and out of control.
Justin began “Juiced and Jazzed” as his senior film at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Around the time he graduated in 2008, He had finished about 90% of the animation on paper. After being hired at MAKE, he opted to finished the cartoon there with the help of animation artists Andrew Chesworth, Aaron Quist, and Joe Kim.
It’s Friday. Your aching brain machinery needs a little lubrication, some sonic petroleum to rejuvenate your synapses.
We’ve got just the thing. Lovingly mixed for Motionographer by Expansion Team’s Alex Moulton, “Time Traveler” is a feel-good journey through sine waves, black holes and the fourth dimension.
This is our first ever guest DJ mix. If you like it, let us know. Maybe there’s more where this came from…
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Psyop is quick on the draw with “West,” the studio’s latest cowboy epic in their cardboard-inspired campaign for The UPS Store and agency Doner.
“West” is peppered with the lore of the old frontier, and opens fire on any charge that “certified packing” is all hat, and no cattle. Barnstorming the airwaves with a rough ridin’ emphasis on theatrical swank and rip-roaring thrills, Psyop packs heat, and hangs em’ so high it would make Clint Eastwood blush.
Stay tuned for some exclusive behind-the-scenes action for the forthcoming final spot in the UPS campaign. In the meantime, check out the other two releases:
I’m very pleased to announce that two news films have been added to the Challenge Your World 20/20 project.
What’s Challenge Your World 20/20?
Each year, 20 video artists create 20 wild, whimsical, and unconventional machines that solve environmental issues. These videos reject the status quo, explore crazy ideas, and blast beyond boundaries.
The latest two additions, “Potato” and “Want|Need” come to us from Paris’ Moustache and Trango Interactive in Pakistan. Check them out on the Challenge Your World page or visit the Challenge Your World website for more information and to learn how you can get involved.
In the words of Capacity’s Ellerey Gave, “Before we became designers and animators and communicators, we were painters and illustrators and dreamers.”
Over the course of the last year and a half, Culver City-based Capacity has been working on an in-house short film while juggling client projects for companies like NBC, Cartoon Network and Toyota.
At long last, “Upgrade + Mobilize” is ready for the masses, and it’s definitely worth the wait. Mixing inspiration from Asian animation and art with their own polished aesthetic, Capacity has created a high energy, two and a half minute preamble to an epic battle of good vs. evil backed by beautiful audio from Plaid.
Motionographer was fortunate to get an advance interview with Ellerey about “Upgrade + Mobilize.” Check it out, along with some process work showing the development of this ambitious short film.
Peppermill Berlin recently created a fine visual essay for German rail company Deutsche Bahn. We’d normally Quickie this sort of thing, but the video comes with a special promise attached to it:
For every view of the above video, Deutsche Bahn will donate 10 cents to the “Bergwald Project,” which has worked over 20 years for the protection and preservation of forest ecosystems in central Europe.
For more on Deutsche Bahn’s green efforts, go here.
Typographic animation, it’s everywhere. You now get a free typographic animation with a box of breakfast cereal, and word has it that there’s an iPhone app for turning your shopping list into a twirling maelstrom of typographic glee. Apparently, Gary Busey is planning to turn himself into a typographic animation for an installation piece at The Whitney…
Anyhow, the point is that here at Motionographer Glades we kind of now feel that a typo animation now has to be pretty special to make the cut—which is definitely the case with this new cinema spot from Mighty Nice for The Melbourne Writers Festival.
Says Mighty Nice’s Darren Price:, “JWT Melbourne came to us with a straight brief: to animate type as it gets read by a voice over. Each genre of writing would see a change in the style of typography.”
And so it does. Type styles were meticulously mapped out by Mighty Nice’s art director, Softly Dunstan, who then contracted swine flu and dropped out of the picture, leaving the boys in charge.
“By the time the art director returned to the task,” says Price, “there were little girls turning into skeletons, spaceships and zombie hands added to the mix.”
What really surprised me is that all the voice over tracks were recorded by the authors themselves. The horror author sounds creepy, romance writer sounds sexy and the sci-fi author makes a great android… amazing.
So says Chris Harding, one of London-based Shynola’s four founders, in our interview with him about their recent music video for Coldplay’s “Strawberry Swing.”
Despite the disclaimer, Shynola’s body of work—especially their music videos—have inspired thousands of fans worldwide with their innovative visuals and compelling narratives. Motionographer’s Lilian Darmono and James Wignall went deep with Chris about the process behind “Strawberry Swing” and touched on Shynola’s development over the years.
The Bicycles’s “What a Fool” is a charmingly silly little MS Paint-like animation, directed by one Chris Cunningham. (edit: probably not THE Chris Cunningham. Thanks, Bran)
