Reel of the Month Club (Dec. 2024): Coat of Arms
December 21, 2024
In his latest work for Activision (with one of the best/worst titles of all time), Axis director Ben Hibon keeps the engaging action and drama of his previous game pieces while shifting from his signature illustrative/stylized 3D approach toward a more conventional genre realism.
Animation and production by Axis in Glasgow, produced by Gerardo Alvarez. [Watch]
Paris prodco Zeppelin Pictures elevate the art of gifting with precise staging, dramatic lighting and a whole lot of luxe in these two black and gold CG dreams for legendary French fashion house Dior. Produced thru the Malherbe Retail Design agency with music by Mael Oudin. [Watch]
“Transcendent steampunk octopus,” said no one. Ever. Except Jon Yeo, the London based director/writer/editor and DP of “Leviathan Ages,” the VFX-driven short sweeping thru the film festival circuit for the past year powered by the authoritative VO work of Robert Blythe and atmospheric audio from Radium. [Watch]
The latest in a wonderfully wacky animated campaign for French financial services provider Cofidis from Passion Paris director Jack Antoine Charlot asking a timeless question about bikers: “Prejudice, why?” [Watch]
A pristine and intricate 3D treatment for the Fine Jewellery Room of legendary UK retailer Harrods from director Liam Chapple and London motion veterans Mainframe who say they were asked to base the piece around a clockwork insect. [Watch]
Veteran Santa Monica motion mavens Blind let you choose your own path to love in the new interactive Coldplay adventure/video called “Ink,” offering over 300 narrative variations all rendered in a seductive illustrative style. Teamed with interactive specialists Interlude, Blind wrote, directed and animated the project. [Watch]
Five weeks and 85 takes later, Cirkus director Christian Greet and crew wrap “Welcome to Airbnb,” a one-minute, one-shot, CG and animation-free project shot with a custom toy train-cam careening through an insanely detailed miniature set where all the transitions happen by hand in real time. Agency: TBWA\Singapore.
The finished spot:
[Watch]
Insightful/inspiring short film about “speech recognition, language understanding, neural nets, and using our voices to communicate with the technology around us” directed by Jessica Brillhart at Google Creative Lab with production and post handled by Artjail. [Watch]
Brighton animation and illustration studio Persistent Peril kicks up a brisk and bouncy music video for UK band Diagrams about a man who “travels to a secluded clearing in the woods and opens portals to his past in order to reflect on his relationship. [Watch]
Elastic CD/filmmakers David Brodie and Angus Wall introduce the ambitious and quietly emotional Interstellar Time Capsule project which invites you to contribute multi-media evidence humans are worthy inhabitants of planet Earth.
Powered by Google Play and curated by Christopher Nolan with production by Elastic and finishing by a52. [Watch]
Combining sleek live footage of the previously unseen Lexus LF-C2 concept with ominous matte paintings, Gentleman Scholar and Team One indulge in what a friend of mine likes to call vehicular porn.
“Playing with illumination and carefully manipulating shadow, we hoped to tell a story with atmospheric wonder and stunning visuals. By hand-painting vast, dreamlike expanses and weaving them with tightly composed shots of the vehicle’s sleek contour, our goal was to leave viewers ruminating on the exciting future of automotive design.” [Watch]
London filmmaker/CG artist Frédéric Bonpapa anchors “Light Motif” on the rigorous architecture of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, Section II, using procedural and key-framed animation to create an austere, mesmerizing and fully-CG short. [Watch]
Director/video artist Marco Brambilla and Artjail CD/Flame maven Steve Mottershead literally dip into old school film techniques to create this textural ode to passion currently running on an eight-panel installation in the Vera Wang flagship store in Beverly Hills. [Watch]
UK director Kris Hofmann and her intrepid stop motion crew spent five months helping Harry the urban hedgehog find his way back to the safety of the forest. Turns out numbers of the wee spiny beasts have plummeted from 30 million to one million in Britain due “to loss of habitat and a variety of man-made dangers”. [Watch]
