Reel of the Month Club (Dec. 2024): Coat of Arms
December 21, 2024
Ice versus gold. The battle of the warring sisters – Evil Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) and Ice Queen Freya (Emily Blunt) – visualized by director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan and The Mill crew in a shimmering collision of live-action, CG and motion design for Universal’s “The Huntsman: Winter’s War” end credits. [Watch]
Independent Spanish director/CD (formerly a co-founder and director at DVEIN) Fernando Domínguez Cózar shows off his mastery of style, tone and haunting photo-real 3D in these titles for Kike Maíllo’s second feature film, an action thriller called “Toro.” [Watch]
Hideyuki Tanaka and his Tokyo prodco Frame Graphics prove maximalist bubblegum is alive and thriving in Japan with this kooky and complex candy store of motion capture, CG and compositing for the track “Sai & Co” from Japanese fashion model and singer Kiriko Takemura aka Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. [Watch]
Supamonks, the French animation crew responsible for 2014’s infamous Holypop film, are back with another off-the-rails 3D rampage.
[Watch]
The standout in a series of three films created by Beakus director Amaël Isnard for the Royal Observatory Greenwich in London, “Seeing the Invisible” is a master class in how to make educational content entertaining, digestible and therefore memorable. [Watch]
Part of a full rebrand for UK culture-oriented TV channel Sky Arts, these 25-second IDs from MPC in London mix live action and VFX to “visualize the transformation from ordinary to extraordinary through color.” [Watch]
Meet Sofia, a 3D amalgam of 500 actual children trapped in crisis situations all over the planet, their faces merged into a scared and vulnerable young girl created for UNICEF Sweden by Stockholm agency Edelman Deportivo and Swedish VFX facility Pixel Grinder. [Watch]
Join New York prodco Dress Code for an intimate and insightful look into the life and liberty of David Carson, a singular combination of self-taught graphic designer, surfer, lecturer and free spirit. [Watch]
The 15th edition of the venerable FITC Toronto creative technology event opened April 17 with this title sequence by Vancouver’s Giant Ant. Leveraging the conference theme “Level Up,” the 2D, 3D, and cel-animated romp traces a fun revisionist history of video games packed with sly nods and clever transitions. [Watch]
Populated by impossibly cute and enigmatic characters, this frenetic promotional animation called “Zoning Tokyo” for Arts Council Tokyo was directed by Takashi Ohashi with character design and animation by Japanese manga artist and illustrator error403. [Watch]
After his lecture at Hyper Island in Karlskrona, Sweden, GMUNK reveals his ideas on the future of motion creation and collaboration styles – encouraging students to “Get their motion graphics off the screen and applied to other surfaces, other mediums.” [Watch]
A snowy night in New Jersey and some skeletal matchmoves lend an otherworldly aura in this stark and unvarnished music video from PostPanic’s Brooklyn-based director Fons Schiedon for jazz drummer and crossover artist Jaimeo Brown’s track called “Be So Glad.” [Watch]
In 2013 Austrian director Daniel Moshel unleashed a slice of campy weirdness called “MeTube: August Sings Carmen Habanera” featuring Swiss tenor August Schram, his mom Elfie and a Fellini-esque cast of misfits. Yesterday, Moshel struck again with a bigger, crazier, crowd-funded sequel. [Watch]
NYC director and former VFX artist Dan DiFelice sculpts a beautiful and redemptive film from a raw and powerful poem by Johnny “Bang” Reilly, a 51-year-old UK fighter, filmmaker and VO artist – with Framestore handling the VFX. [Watch]
