Here is an interesting use of camera tracking, 3d animation, and possibly some motion capture: Snickers Stop and Go ad. It scores points for being new and different, but as Matt Haughey observes, “the message is: nothing makes me hungrier for a Snickers bar than beating the piss out of someone within an inch of their life.”
Uploaded by Razorbuzz
Hit play or watch at Daily Motion.
Please enjoy the beautiful Oscar winning animated short, The Danish Poet. It’s done in a very traditional Canadian animation style and has a storyline that will melt even the coldest of hearts.
The Danish Poet, Torill Kove, provided by the National Film Board of Canada
I’m a typographic artwork fan, a Quintin Tarrentino movie fan, and I really like motion graphic compositing projects, so, when I saw Jarratt Moody’s time-based typography assignment (at SCAD) based on Samual L. Jackson’s “Say What Again” dialogue from Pulp Fiction, I figured I couldn’t pass up the chance to share this:
The basic idea of the project is to take a piece of audio from wherever (movie, song, poetry reading, answering machine) and then represent that audio on screen using only typography.
Jarratt chose a famous bit of dialogue from Pulp Fiction as his subject matter. (Okay, what dialogue from Pulp Fiction isn’t famous?) The resulting piece is full of whimsy and style. Jarratt does some great things with scale and simple but effective camera movements. Get those headphones on and prepare yourself for several lashings of Samuel L. Jackson’s naughty tongue.
A special valentines day cartoon I came across today that is sure to put a smile on your face: Ah, L’Amour by Don Hertzfeldt.
“Ah, L’Amour” (1995) was produced during Don’s freshman year at UC Santa Barbara for a beginning production class, and was never intended to be screened publicly. The two minute 16mm short was somehow completed in just a few weeks despite Don having had little experience working with film; made most noticeable by the visible fingerprints all over the camera lens. By no small miracle, Don’s shaky guitar soundtrack — recorded solo in his dorm room on a broken down boom-box — somehow stayed in sync.”
From Bitterfilms.com
The movie initially saw limited action at film festivals because Don was embarassed by it. He was also afraid of being pelted with rocks by angry women, until screenings revealed that women usually cheered very loudly for the cartoon girls, and always applauded much louder than the men.
A few of the “evil women” in the film are crude caricatures of some of Don’s ex-girlfriends – drawn not so much out of bitterness but from the fact that he was running out of different hair styles to think up. No one could tell that Don drew caricatures because you can barely tell that Don drew people.
Luckily, the incredibly grungy look of the movie plays into its frustrated energy, so it appears as if it was made to look bad on purpose. Don usually stays very quiet whenever this is brought up.
“Ah, L’Amour” became a wildly popular cult film that gave Don the shot in the arm to begin pre-production on Genre. “L’Amour” was still playing the midnight movie circuit in 1998 when it was awarded the World Animation Celebration – HBO Comedy Arts Festival Grand Prize Award for the “World’s Funniest Cartoon” – and it continued to rerun at animation festivals for several years after.
Midnight audiences began a tradition of chanting along in loud unison to the cartoon’s dialogue captions – all the men chanting aloud the man’s lines, and the women chanting along with the women’s. It’s very spooky.
Our studio name, Bitter Films, comes from this film’s opening caption, “A Bitter Film by Don Hertzfeldt.
Mr. Citymen is a series of five wonderful short animated pieces by Eric Lerner. It seamlessly combines computer rendered characters inside live action environments.
Coupled with the avant garde soundtracks, these animations work on a variety of levels and evoke various responses from the viewer. Also the combination of live action and animation is incredibly effective.
Why is it easier to make friends than to keep them? Check out this great 3D animated short, Potapych.
I love this short cartoon on YouTube, and I think you’ll like it too.
Watch here:
It’s a Master’s thesis animation by Dony Permedi of The New York School of Visual Arts. He used Maya, After Effects, and rigged it using The Setup Machine by Anzovin studios. So far it’s had over 2 million views on YouTube, which, as Cartoon Brew points out here, means there is a good market developing for short animations online.
The city of Lethbridge, Alberta (the place where I live) was featured in a gag on the Simpsons. The Simpson family was watching a show called, “Hunch” and Lethbridge was the “filming location” for the City of New York.
From the episode: 17×22 – Marge and Homer Turn a Couple Play
I’ve been saving this little gem of a video much like a pirate hoarding gold. Today is the day I was planning to link to it and I almost forgot!
Enjoy: Pyrats, a swashbuckling animated short from those talented scallywags at Gobelins animation school.
From the best of my feeds:
Malcolm Gladwell calls the New York Times on their misleading story about the costs of prescription drugs.
Jason Kottke explains how brands that are so recognized actually run the risk of losing their trademarks due to people’s everyday usage of the words (did you know Escalator was a brand?)
Brad Bird’s classic The Family Dog on YouTube. Brad Bird directed Pixar’s “The Incredibles”. I remember watching the Family Dog as a kid on Stephen Spielberg’s Amazing Stories.
25 years in the making The Thief and the Cobbler (youtube playlist) is a collection an unofficial clips from a fan restoration of the world’s most ambitious animation project. Directed by Richard Williams (of Roger Rabbit fame), play all for an enchanting peek at what might have been.
Update: Cartoon Brew just posted a great interview with Garrett Gilchrist the person responsible for The Thief and the Cobbler Recobbled.
Even with the broken links, I’ve decide to leave this page up for posterity.