Alice Dupre: Big Scary

Just saw this cool animation created by Alice Dupre. It's got a great look about it!


Big Scary - Tuesday Is Rent Day from Alice Dupre on Vimeo.

Thursday by Matthias Hoegg

Thursday from Matthias Hoegg on Vimeo.

"An everyday love story set in the not so distant future sees blackbirds battling with technology, automatic palm readers and power cuts."

This animation was directed by Matthias Hoegg at the RCA and has been recently nominated for a BAFTA for Short Animation.

For more info go to matthiashoegg.co.uk

Happy Christmas from Pomegranate!

We've just recently finished creating this animated Christmas Message at work (Pomegranate) It was good fun, and not too bad for a first attempt at stop frame... Enjoy!

35mm

35mm - 35 movies in 2 minutes

35mm is a short film which fuses together iconic elements from famous films into a nicely polished sequence. The animation was created by Sarah Biermann, Torsten Strer, Felix Meyer and Pascal Monaco.

Film Bilder : Love & Theft

I saw this amazing animation, created by Film Bilder, yesterday at Love Box. The animation plays through slowly building up to create a memorizing morph between various cartoon characters including the Pink Panther, Sponge Bob Squarepants, Beatty Boop, Ernie and many many more!

I AM NOT AN ARTIST

I just stumbled across this website whilst flicking through a copy of the Contact Illustrators book. I Am Not an Artist was created by Johnny Kelly and Matthew Cooper for design agency Soon In Toyko. The cartoon strip shown above is about the life of a designer, for whom battling with the devil is a daily chore.

You have to visit the website to get the full effect of all the animations! Check it out at: www.iamnotanartist.org

Return as an animal

This video was created by Bruno Dicolla and I think it's pretty bloody cool. Loving the rickety neon style, the music complements it perfectly.

Toyota - Augmented Reality

Toyota have developed a 3D interactive experience to promote their new car; ‘IQ’. The promotional device uses augmented reality so get ready for a little fun!

To have a little digital car of your own just visit the IQ page on Toyota's website and download the program, then print out two pages with differing icons. The two icons represent two modes of animation; the car driving and the car which comes apart a bit like a transformer.

It's a good bit of fun which seems to be cropping up a lot around the internet at the moment. With the Zugura augmented reality shop, the Smart Grid site by GE a new iphone app by Acrossair and the latest piece to take the internet world by storm; a simple business card by James Alliban. The card represents a new turn for the technology as it is becoming more accessible and being applied to more practical routes in the world of marketing.

It looks like digital augmentation is finally becoming a reality.

A true innovator of title sequences: Saul Bass

The title sequence to The Man With the Golden Arm was designed and created by Saul Bass. The sequence has become known as the first to become more than simply a list of big names and producers on a screen, this sequence sets the tone of the film to the viewer. The jagged angular paper shapes Bass produced reflected the mood of the film. At the time this approach had never been exploited in quite the same way.

The title sequence to It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World also designed and produced by Saul Bass. This is just another great example of Bass's work. Simple and understated his work was never egotistical. Just great functional design which achieves exactly what it sets out to do; portray the mood of the film, and provide a platform for the film titles to be displayed upon in an interesting and entertaining way.

To see more on Saul Bass, watch Bass on titles, a selection of title sequences created by the great designer. The documentary also offers an insight into design at the time and into Saul Bass as a designer on the front line of film from the 1950s onwards.

Saul Bass: Bio

"Saul Bass (May 8, 1920—April 25, 1996) was an American graphic designer and Academy Award-winning filmmaker, but he is best known for his design on animated motion picture title sequences.

During his 40-year career he worked for some of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers, including most notably Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. Amongst his most famous title sequences are the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict's arm for Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm, the text racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of the United Nations building in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, and the disjointed text that raced together and was pulled apart for Psycho.

Saul Bass designed the 6th AT&T Bell System logo, that at one point achieved a 93 percent recognition rate in the United States. He also designed the AT&T "globe" logo for AT&T after the break up of the Bell System. Bass also designed Continental Airlines' 1968 "jetstream" logo, which became the most recognized airline industry logo of the 1970s." Source: Wikipedia.

Honda's new TV advert: Do, Keep Doing, Do Some More

Honda have teamed up with Wieden & Kennedy, London and the result? a nice little animated TV advert with the environment close to heart. Of course, They've stuck with tradition and used the now very familiar and oddly comforting voice of Garrison Keillor. He has become 'the' voice of Honda in recent years, and why stop now? Keillor tells the story of Honda's environmental crusaide, battling the non 'doers' of the world into submission and encouraging the public to follow suit. Let's all gather round now, hold hands, and soak up the positive vibes from Honda's new advert 'Do, Keep doing, do some more'. The new Honda advert premiered on Channel 4 on the 4th April, rather nicely placed in the advertising break of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Showing that Honda are still holding onto their shiny advertising crown.

A little story all about doers. But what exactly is a doer? Well, doers do things. Things to move us forward, to make stuff better. We started off small just thinking of ideas, little “dos”. What if we plant trees around our factories, help the air stay a bit cleaner? Perhaps introduce water based paint, create a solve a car, the first hybrid cars. Well how about a car that only emits water? Little steps in the right direction. Then it made us think, “What if we were all doers learning as we go, doing things that can make a difference, like not revving our engines when we don’t need to. Driving a bit slower in traffic jams instead of stop starting. Or keeping our tires properly inflated to save fuel. And emptying out all the stuff we don’t need to carry around. Wouldn’t that be worthwhile? So let’s go do, keep doing, and do some more. Start a to-do list. Because there a million and one to-dos still to be done.

Another one in the bag for Honda!

Geoff McFetridge

Geoff McFetridge seems to be one of those people who can excel in anything he turns his hand to. A renown designer, illustrator, animator, filmmaker and "all-around visual auteur" so I hear. His work is just too easy to like, the simple icon based illustration style he has become known for is what I'll be looking at. Although his work on the Virgin Suicides and Adaptation are surely worthy of note, I am just too distracted by the visual language of his illustrations.

Geoff McFetridge is a designer who is not bound by media, a new breed of creative who uses ideas over method. A kind of 21st century Renaissance man if I could be so bold. Utilizing print, film, animation and skateboards, he has become something of an icon himself. Humor plays large role in his work, using irony, witty phrases and sayings which I'm sure make perfect sense to the LA fraternity. The rest of us just have to nod and agree sometimes, but on the whole it's pretty universal stuff. Enough of that though take a look at a few examples of his work I've gathered to feast your unworthy eyes upon >>>

For more information on Geoff McFetridge check out this interview - kinda interesting. Especially the birch tree revelation. I did not know that the root systems link up! nice.

Also look up the King of Mountain site for a slightly more 'official' take.

And this interview by the Coudal Partners is really worth looking at >>>>