Director Lea Esmaili Joins Blinkink for UK Representation
November 21, 2024
After a string of insanely fun video teasers, the worst-kept secret in the animation world is finally official: UK animation powerhouse Aardman has acquired a majority share in NYC animation studio Nathan Love to establish their US production entity called Aardman Nathan Love. [Watch]
Lots of innovative character work here from director Limbert Fabian (who co-directed the incredible Chipotle “Scarecrow”) and the Moonbot crew for an ambitious new Michelin campaign out of TBWA\PARIS designed “to bring Michelin’s unique tire development philosophy to life.” [Watch]
The popularity of Zoetropes is certainly linked to our current love of all things analogue: meaning handmade, warmer and somehow more honest. But now that TBWA Singapore and Airbnb have created this 12 1/2 foot-wide monster, the question becomes: Did we just hit peak Zoetrope? [Watch]
Take a peek at four months of intensely detailed work by Oscar-nominated stop-motion star PES and “dozens of animators and illustrators” as they recreate the evolution of Honda products with thousands of hand-rendered drawings on real live paper with pre-vis and VFX/finishing by a52. [Watch]
One of the most intriguing short film trailers of the year, this peek at director/CG artist Antoine Delach‘s six-minute stereoscopic opus called “Ghost Cell” renders both grand and mundane vignettes of Paris as impossibly complex webs of scanned data. The nightmarish result, though scientifically generated, feels distinctly organic. [Watch]
Every once in a while, someone puts the awe back into awesome. Witness this short film from Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh documenting their construction of the first physical scale model of our solar system across seven miles of the Black Rock desert in Nevada. [Watch]
Back in April, Belgian rapper/pop-star Stromae teamed with French filmmaker Sylvain Chomet to take on the evils of social media in “Carmen”. Now, upping the darkness quotient several notches, he recruits director Xavier Reyé and Belgian VFX house Benuts for this spectacular interpretation of cancer. [Watch]
The character insanity continues in the second teaser from NYC animation house Nathan Love leading up to their big announcement on Sept 22. We swore not to reveal what the “A” in ANL stands for, but we can tell you the news has to do with the continued invasion of the US by UK animation/VFX studios. [Watch]
The third in a series of brilliant prologue-promos for Ridley Scott’s “The Martian,” finds Neil deGrasse Tyson hosting a segment of his StarTalk series as it might appear in 2035 with humans poised to return to Mars – with VFX work from up and coming Polish post house Juice, MPC, The Mill and Framestore. [Watch]
If you need a kick in butt to start animating again or just want to fall back in love with the craft, Glenn Keane is your guy. After four-decades of character work on animated Disney features, Keane’s passion and excitement remains infectious and then becomes outright visceral as he explores 3D drawing in virtual reality with the HTC Vive headset paired with 3D painting app Tilt Brush. [Watch]
It’s been far too long (for my liking) since we last heard from UK director Ben Hibon but the wait was worth it as he re-teams with Axis Animation to push his singular brand of stylized/atmospheric 3D and surgical timing to new levels for Riot Games’ League of Legends: Project Overdrive. [Watch]
Letting Joseph Kosinski walk in the front door of Digital Domain is like rolling a grenade into a fireworks warehouse: you can bet whatever happens next will be visually spectacular. [Watch]
Beakus animation director Sophie Koko Gate created her short film “Half Wet” during her studies at the Royal College of Art in London after discovering the water level in the human body decreases as we age, “meaning in a way we evaporate very slowly over time.” [Watch]
Blinkink director Elliot Dear (who moved a nation to tears with “The Bear and the Hare”) unites the talents of 37 animators, artists and designers to create a similar effect in this monumental hand-animated call to action for English Rugby Team sponsor O2 in advance of the 2015 Rugby World Cup. [Watch]
