The students of Gobelins never fail to impress. “Blind Spot” isn’t new, but it has been nominated as a Best Student Piece for SIGGRAPH 2008. And with good reason. The technical and artistic strengths of the film’s creators all dovetail brilliantly, making for a tightly packed narrative that’s full of detail and comedic irony.
“Blind Spot” was created by Johanna Bessiere, Nicolas Chauvelot, Olivier Clert, Cecile Dubois Herry, Yvon Jardel and Simon Rouby.
French motion director Slim (a.k.a. Aniss Slimane) poured a heaping helping of color and sunshine into this whimsical music video for 80s pop star Richard Gotainer. As silly and free-spirited as the illustrations are, there are some quite beautiful compositions throughout, giving the piece as unexpected dash of slickness that I like.
I won’t comment on the music or Mr. Gotainer’s performance except to say that I find them both wildly entertaining. Apparently, Mr. Gotainer wrote the song to promote the joys of vacationing in the Champagne region of France. Based on this video, it looks like maybe Mr. Gotainer didn’t quite have enough to time to shoot on location. Ah well, c’est la vie. A green screen and some CG can do in a pinch.
If you just couldn’t get enough Richard Gotainer from this video (and who could?), there’s more in store on YouTube.
Thanks to Cyril Drouin for the tip!
Credits:
Direction, production, art direction and animation : Slimane ANISS
Director of Photography : Pierre-yves BASTARD
Animation : Nicolas HU
Illustration : Charles BIGEAST, Nicolas TUAL
Agency : Horizon bleu Didier JANOT, yannick MERRAND
Executive production : 555lab Noordine FAYEK
I recently stumbled onto an interesting site from Lee Brimelow called gotoandlearn.com. While it’s essentially a tutorial site, it also gives you some great new peeks into the upcoming Flash Player 10 release from Adobe.
Ever since Flash 6, when embeddable video was made possible, Flash has been on a collision course with broadcast quality motion graphics. I’ve written before (here and here) about the increasing overlap between After Effects and Flash and what this might mean for designers (and developers). It’s no secret that I’m excited about the sea change we’re experiencing.
But now I’d like to geek out and share some of the fun new technical bits about “Astro,” the codename for Flash Player 10. My favorite is the ability to dynamically generate sound, as seen in this tutorial. It’s something that Processing has been able to do pretty much since its inception, but no distributable web technology has the reach (both in terms of developer community and penetration) of Flash. I’m hoping this added ability will attract new experimenters to the happy land of dynamic audio/visuals.
Another interesting new addition is native support for 3D (another demo here), something people have been clamoring about for some time now. Papervision3D has done a great job filling that gap, but now with “official” support, I’m hoping we see even more craziness.
Lastly, though perhaps most importantly, increased efficiency in the runtime drawing engine and other general performance boosts mean more real-time manipulation of video elements. With more and more cutting edge sites already pushing Flash to full-screen extremes, I can only imagine what’s next. As always, I’ll keep my eye on The FWA.
By the way, I don’t recommend installing FP10 beta yet, unless you don’t mind some bugginess and/or you’re a hardcore Flash geek. I had to uninstall it after running into some issues with WordPress.
(In the interest of full-disclosure: Adobe is a sponsor of Motionographer, but this post was in no way initiated or endorsed by Adobe. I did it all by myself.)
It’s been a while since we’ve posted JL Design, but Johnason Lo and company have been busy building some beautiful IDs for HiHD, Taiwan’s first HD network. Each spot mixes live action, lighting effects and minimalist CG elements to create mysterious vignettes that emphasize connections between people.
Taking illustrations from James Taylor as their starting point, James “Mutanthands” Wignall and co-animator Mark Warrington built a little Pied Piper narrative for agency fivefootsix, who approached Mainframe needing an animation style guide for Nokia.
Taylor’s illustrations are full of character on their own, but in the hands of Wignall and Warrington, they spring pleasantly to life. I’ll be curious to see how Nokia uses this project. It could be the start of an interesting new direction for them.
QuickTime version at the Boards Screening Room
Recently posted Koichiro Tsujikawa has created another beautifully strange video for Japanese musician Cornelius. This one appears to be all 3D, which, unless I’m mistaken, is new territory for Tsujikawa. Like Cornelius’ music, this video is meditative and self-referential, looping back on itself and building complexity by amassing simple elements.
Thanks to Sean Pecknold for the heads up!
Motion Theory co-founder and director Mathew Cullen has been busy lately. There’s a good chance you’ve already seen his music video for Weezer’s new single, “Pork and Beans.” It’s been burning up YouTube since it was released on Friday, which is only fitting, since the video is an homage to all the viral hits before it.
For a complete list of the video’s references, check out this page. Wired also links to some more videos and supporting materials. Oh, and here’s an orchestral version of “Pork and Beans.” No, seriously.
Full credits for “Pork and Beans”
Of equal interest (well, to me at least) is MTh’s launch spot for O2’s new “Connections” campaign, directed by Mathew Cullen and Grady Hall. Borrowing from the panoramic approach MTh used in their epic 2004 Resfest opener, “Connected” strings together six locations and a motley cast of characters to create a wondrous visual odyssey that merits—or perhaps demands—repeat viewing. My favorite detail (and there are hundreds to choose from) is the teddy bear being elevated on a manhole cover by his fellow bear below.
The Weezer and O2 projects are perfect examples of why MTh is a rare gem of a studio. Each is stylistically distinct while showcasing MTh’s attention to detail and love of visual culture. Although they’re radically different, both are collages of imagery that blend their disparate elements together into a fine puree, smooth and seamless.
Speaking of blending… I wonder how the new Weezer CD tastes…
