Reel of the Month Club (Dec. 2024): Coat of Arms
December 21, 2024
A heart-wrenching narrative becomes exponentially more emotional when the hero is a child. Witness “Pete’s Story,” a new chapter in the powerful body of ad work commissioned by UK children’s charity NSPCC. [Watch]
The spankin’ new Blend festival launched late last week in Vancouver with this hyper-active happy meal of clever wordplay and characters created by Gareth O’Brien and crew at Buck‘s new Sydney studio with nicely-caffeinated music and sound design from Antfood. [Watch]
Even if you’re a diehard pacifist, this promo from Mothership director Neil Huxley for the UFC world bantamweight championship btw Ronda Rousey and challenger Holly Holm will grab you by the heart and learn you a thing or two about backstory. [Watch]
Brilliant concept and exacting execution from director Carl Addy and the Mill+ crew in response to an open brief from the British Film Institute to create a fund-raising film for its mission to preserve and restore the national film archive. [Watch]
Rendered in visceral, expressionistic oil pastels and backed by layered audio fragments, Marcus Armitage‘s BAFTA nominated graduation film “My Dad,” looks, feels and sounds like an edgy and experimental NFB short from the 70’s. That’s a good thing. [Watch]
Creating hundreds of visual “boob” metaphors looks like a fun project but Totuma CD Hubert Reinfeld says creating this breast cancer awareness campaign for Lifetime Latin America was among the most difficult he and his crew have ever attempted. [Watch]
Indulge your fetish for 70’s design with this five-minute, low-key feast of tightly kerned Helvetica, Swiss-flavored graphics and Op art – courtesy of German designer/animator Henning Max Lederer. [Watch]
Madison, Wisconsin doesn’t leap to mind as a hotbed of animation or road rage but local director/animator Nate Theis transcends such petty limitations for his first indie film “Driving,” channeling the style of mid-20th century studios like UPA and the intense fury of big city commuters. [Watch]
Wonderful mix of styles and techniques add up to a whole lot of quirky charm in this self-referential short film from director/animator Jon Boutin, currently in his third year at the EMCA in Angoulême, France. [Watch]
Nexus wunderkind director Johnny Kelly talks to Stash about pulling together 100+ artists, designers, craftspeople, architects, engineers, scientists and musicians; assigning them each a scene, then merging it all into a hypnotic brand film for Dropbox. [Watch]
Unless you’re a package designer, paperboard is just not something you’re likely to think about much. Stockholm animation house Happycamper and their client Iggesund, a venerable Swedish paper company founded in 1685, hope to change that with this poetic CG work emphasizing the firm’s ecological outlook. [Watch]
London-based animator/illustrator Yukai Du elevates a potentially banal TED-Ed lesson called “The Torturous History of the Treadmill” into a four-minute work of motion art with vigorous palette choices, unexpected framing and stripped down characters. [Watch]
You don’t have to like the Phillies, baseball or even sports to appreciate the draftsmanship, character work and story-telling from Mixtape Club in this episode of ESPN’s #NotPictured docu-series featuring former MLB all-star John Kruk. [Watch]
Can a four-minute animated film capture and convey the intimate horrors and dark heroism of war? According to US veterans who’ve seen the film and the two marines who helped co-produce it, “Chosin: Baptized by Fire” proves you can. [Watch]
