Reel of the Month Club (Dec. 2024): Coat of Arms
December 21, 2024
Strange Beast directors Shy The Sun apply their signature fascination with organic detail to create a lush CG music video about Amumu, a lonely young mummy with anger issues. Produced as part of The Music of League of Legends Volume 1 album.
[Watch]
Very promising new weekly animated series called “Propz” from London’s Animade. Only two clips so far but the design, animation, timing and twists all add up to refreshing sub-30-second breaks from your daily grind. Plus, you can tweet your idea for the next prop @animadetv. [Watch]
Intense and insightful look at how Unit Image artists racked up 5,646 hours creating the latest all-CG blockbuster trailer for multiplayer racing game The Crew (directed by French collective Andy’s) for Ivory Tower and Ubisoft. [Watch]
Riveting stream of cool work produced by multi-national digital studio HUGE over the last 15 years made even cooler in this serial-blast of multi-media by New York motion designer and graphics animator Thomas Heckel. [Watch]
The Martin Agency keeps up the momentum and the fun of their Oreo Wonderfilled campaign with this CG and cell romp from Brand New School called “Play with Oreo” powered by an original tune written by David Muhlenfeld and sung by Yelle. [Watch]
Director/animator Atsushi Makino hand-crafted more than 60 intensely detailed match boxes then blended them with traditional animation, CG, stop-motion, and roto’d footage of Japanese artist Sasano Maly performing his track “Baloney Speaker” for U&R Records.
[Watch]
Toronto freelance designer/art director Andrew Vucko explores the “wonder, conflict, excitement, and subjectivity” of originality in this thoughtful and precisely drafted animated short with sound design and music by CypherAudio. [Watch]
Mr. Murphy doing what Mr. Murphy does best: assaulting your visual cortex with a quasi-NSFW flow of kick-ass nasty. Produced by London’s MyAccomplice. [Watch]
What would life be like in America if the Nazi’s and Japan won WWII? Philip K. Dick took a stab at the answer in his 1962 Hugo-winning novel called “The Man in the High Castle,” and now Ridley Scott brings that nightmare to the small screen for Amazon complete with ominous titles by Patrick Clair via Elastic. [Watch]
Back in May of 2014, McDonald’s new Happy Meal Characters were branded as “scary” by the press and the Twittersphere. Looking at this compilation of slap-schtick, minion-like, decidedly non-scary clips of Buck’s work on the character, I can only assume it must have been a very slow news week. [Watch]
Snappy black and white iconography from the DK crew sets the tone for FXX’s sweet and absurdist new original comedy “Man Seeking Woman” starring Jay Baruchel and based on humorist/novelist/screenwriter (and former SNL/Pixar writer) Simon Rich’s book of short stories. [Watch]
Master-storytellers Giant Ant and fellow Vancouverites Taiji Brand Group elevate the profile of a Canadian government rural development initiative with this engaging explainer clip packed with intriguing details painted in a welcoming palette. [Watch]
Math at it’s most hypnotic – created by inventor/designer/artist and Stanford artist in residence John Edmark, “These are 3-D printed sculptures designed to animate when spun under a strobe light. The placement of the appendages is determined by the same method nature uses in pinecones and sunflowers. [Watch]
Impossibly cute stop-motion spot for Japanese beverage brand Maxim Stick using screened powdered chocolate atop 1,000 cups of flavored latte. Make sure to watch the making-of sequence at the end. [Watch]
