Reel of the Month Club (Dec. 2024): Coat of Arms
December 21, 2024
Chinese diva Wang Rong Rollin (with the help of anonymous animators and VFX artists) aims directly at the heart and soul of viralocity by extracting the silliest parts of “What Does The Fox Say?” (approaching half a billion views) and “Gangnam Style” (over two billion views) and mashing them together as “Chick Chick,” four minutes of poultry-flavored madness. [Watch]
Exec producer Gustavo Karam at Le Cube in São Paulo just dropped us the studio’s latest work, a dark and dramatic online clip called “Wind” marking the 20th anniversary of Greenpeace in Chile
“We believe that design and animation are universal tools for communication and need to be used much further than just entertainment and advertising. With this in mind, Le Cube joined forces with the Chilean agency Porta to tell a story of the corruption of nature by men.
“Ecology and sustainability are not just public relations words, they are values every single person on Earth need to incorporate. Greenpeace is a leading organization undertaking this mission and this is why we are proud to create this film for them and for the cause.” [Watch]
Powered by celebrity voices including Amy Poehler, Andy Richter and Sarah Silverman, this short from Funny or Die co-founder (and Will Ferrell BFF) Adam McKay tackles the not-so-funny issue of income inequality in the US by semi-disguising itself as a syrupy toy-driven kids’ show. [Watch]
Our species’ talent for cruelty to other animals finally catches up with us in this stark and striking short shot over six days and posted by Phua Cardin, Wong Voon Fei and Fong Kheng Wai (aka Malaysian prodco Northern Lights) who describe “Manhunt” as a “surrealistic revenge fantasy of animals on humans for the mess they have made.
“The core idea for this short film is to switch the roles of humans and animals, hunters hunted, to show how the world could be like from the animals’ perspectives, and to put us humans in their shoes.”
Behind the scenes:
Quick blast of stylish 3D adrenalin from the crew at Milan motion studio Ditroit to open MTV’s new docu-reality property “Motorhome” tracking the exploits of four teenagers vying for an Italian motorcycle racing championship. [Watch]
The Stash Permanent Collection keeps growing with Stash 108 adding another 31 brilliant animation, VFX and motion design projects totaling over 110 minutes of inspiration and insight including our biggest line up of behind-the-scenes yet, plus exclusive interviews with the designer and directors behind the work. [Watch]
Lobo breaks out their full range of production and animation skills to yank you back and forth in time to revisit more than 20 of adland’s most-award work for the UK’s prestigious D&AD awards.
“Wish You Were Here? offers an alternate, off-kilter and somewhat belated 50th anniversary tribute to the D&AD, summing up in an unusual way many highlights from over five decades of Pencil winners, it’s also part of a broader Call for Entries campaign aimed at generating awareness and excitement around the 2015 D&AD Professional Awards.
“We didn’t want to simply create a collage of pieces in a retrospective reel fashion. Our goal was to offer a creative reinterpretation of the Awards’ heritage… all the while keeping a coherent visual identity throughout, since D&AD is notorious for its strong brand integrity.” [Watch]
Airbnb and VCCP Berlin leverage Psyop‘s design/animation/narrative skills plus the emotional resonance of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall to tell a daughter’s true story of her father, a West German guard during the cold war. [Watch]
Royale sets the tone for CW’s hit post-nuclear drama “The 100” with an intriguing mix of live action, CG, matt paintings and motion graphics.
Jayson Whitmore, ECD/partner at Royale in LA: “We wanted to expand on the show and give viewers a reason to pay close attention to the titles. The narrative information in each shot gives die-hard fans and casual viewers a sense of a much larger world yet to be fully explored.
“Everything from the locations to the telemetric data being displayed is pulled straight from the show’s cannon. Taking this even further, the first and last shot of the sequence will change for each and every episode.”
The pitch: Time-traveling, super-powered scientists (Freud, Einstein, Tesla, Darwin & Tapputi) travel through time fighting Nazis, renegade soviet cosmonauts and assorted scientific nemeses. The talent behind it: Tinman Creative Studios in Toronto. The Kickstarter page.
[Watch]
Mr. Munkowitz and Bot & Dolly mold the robots-meet-projection-mapping magic they developed for their 2013 triumph “Box” into a sleek series of illusions for Autofuss‘ new Audi A3 Sportback spot thru Verba. As with “Box,” all visuals are accomplished in camera. [Watch]
Vancouver’s Image Engine handles the majority of the VFX work in Neill Blomkamp’s new robot-coming-of-age feature called “Chappie” featuring an exceptionally emotive CG hero plus the genius casting choice of the decade: Yo-Landi and Ninja from Die Antwoord as the criminals who abduct him.
[Watch]
The latest film in the New York Times literate and low key ‘Modern Love’ series launched yesterday: a minimalist swirl of abstracted romance by new Vancouver studio Manyhands based on a narrative by Amy Butcher.
Director Stuart Langfield: “My goal was to tell the story without showing people. Instead the characters are represented through color, shape, movement, and some nasty weather. All of the animation was blocked out in 3D to get the basic movement locked down before rotoscoping began. Then some additional rotoscoping was added to the in-betweens, to smooth out some of the transitions.” [Watch]
UK retailer John Lewis and their agency adam&eve/DDB London team Blink director Dougal Wilson with the CG creature skills of MPC in an attempt to match the phenomenal success their 2013 holiday spot “The Bear & the Hare” (by Blinkink and Hornet directors Elliot Dear and Yves Geleyn). [Watch]
