Cyriak: Bonobo “Cirrus”

Cyriak is no stranger to Motionographer. His experiments in looping animations are the closest thing you can get to a mind-altering experience without ingesting psychedelic drugs. This is both economical and fun.

His latest, a music video for Bonobo’s “Cirrus,” features the same surreal looping technique for which Cyriak is celebrated, with source material that looks as though it was mined from the public domain video treasure trove, The Prelinger Archive.

As the video progresses, its campy tableaux morph and coalesce into nightmare machines and gigantic robots of consumerism gone amok. It’s beautifully creepy stuff, done the way only Cyriak can do it.

Adam Powell: Sivu “Better Man Than He”

Adam Powell directs Sivu’s “Better Man Than He,” using MRI-based imagery

Nicholas Ferreira and Dominik Grejc: MOVA Title Sequence

Check out these slick titles for MOVA, a fictitious Motion Design Festival dreamed up by Nicholas Ferrira and Dominik Grejc as part of their final project at Vancouver Film School.

From Nicholas Ferreira and Dominik Grejc:

The Main Title Sequence for MOVA is a journey through multiple environments that aims to explore the creative process of bringing an idea to life. The project became more powerful with the astonishing sound design by White Noise Lab which was a key factor in conveying the emotions we were looking for.

Credits

RIP Chris Marker

If there ever was a “motionographer”, an artist who used film and pen with equal eloquence, it was filmmaker Chris Marker who died today on his 91^st birthday. His name does not resonate with everyone because Marker was a recluse, refusing to be photographed and seldom accepting interviews and yet, he collaborated with the greatest film directors of our time, most notably Alain Resnais. Terry Gilliam brought Marker back to the attention of many with Twelve Monkeys, a film he based on Marker’s iconic La Jetée.

His films were always intensely personal and poetic, challenging the very notion of narrative, of documentary, and of memory. Marker used cartoons, graffiti, text, photographs, voice-over, and various means of image processing in much of his work, animating and ‘writing’ images with a profound sense of poetry. He will be missed.

Much Better Now

The studio Salon Alpin (Portugal) has recently released this fantastic in-house piece called Much Better Now. In their words:

Much Better Now is an independent mixed-media short film. It combines live-action, stop-motion, 3D animation and tells the story of a bookmark, stuck in a forgotten book, in a life marked by standstill in a deserted room.

Not only the video’s fine visual quality deserves all possible recognition, but also the strong narrative beneath it.

To work on this stop-motion project had the same creative impulse on us, as the wind has on our little character. We tell a universal story of evolution in a inspiring new way by using surfing as a metaphor, and no-one knows what future books will bring.

Don’t miss the project’s special website that has making of videos, galleries, credits and so on.

Oscar Lhermitte: Experiments

Check out Oscar Lhermitte’s experiments on vimeo: Seeing in Circles and Revolve.

Andrew Thomas Huang: Solipsist

You loved the trailer. Now you can enjoy it online in full. Winner at Slamdance 2012 of the Special Jury Prize for Experimental Short, Solipsist by Andrew Thomas Huang. For more about the film and balancing personal projects with commercial work, listen to his interview over at Directors Notes.

Hat tip to Short of the Week and Yves Geleyn.