Director Lea Esmaili Joins Blinkink for UK Representation
November 21, 2024
Effective parody is hard to do and harder still to make it work for your brand. All the more reason to love this promotional film for stock footage house Dissolve based on a poem by Kendra Eash first published on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency (read the poem after the jump) and all held together by Dallas McClain channeling Sam Elliott in a perfect VO. [Watch]
Julien Vallée and Eve Duhamel‘s claim to “favor a playful and experimental approach toward work” rings true in this whimsical clip for luxury brand Hermès Paris thru agencies Digitas France and Publicis Et Nous. Check the behind the scenes vid to watch the Montreal duo and their crew shoot everything live in-camera. [Watch]
UK audio and visual engineer/producer Harry Martis (aka Denial of Service) unleashes a fabulously dense and ominous abstract CG piece he describes as “another chemically-induced self-initiated project. All visuals completed in 3ds Max (utilizing some seriously intense PFlow scripting for the sound-reactive 3D [Watch]
The Kwan half of Daniels’ Kwan/Scheinert directing duo finally reveals his true inner self in this surgically choreographed jaw-dropper of frenzied testosterone. Pacing, casting, edit, VFX (by Zak Stoltz) all add up to 3.5 minutes-o-genius. Production: Prettybird, DOP: Larkin Seiple, edit: Paul Rogers, VFX: Zak Stoltz. [Watch]
Wonderfully eccentric hand-drawn animated festival trailer from German director/animator Merlin Flügel for the 2014 edition of AFTER SCHOOL CLUB, a free week-long art and design festival organized by students in Offenbach Germany “all about getting in touch and having a good time together.” Director/animator: Merlin Flügel Sound Design: Jonatan Schwenk Music: Felix Krapp [Watch]
Head of CG Andy Nicholas and the Rushes team in London create a strategic mix of 2D, 3D and live action for this fun in-house piece. “A key creative decision we made early on, was how to approach the various effects (smoke, water splashes, explosions, etc.) when dealing with a world being shown at such a small scale [Watch]
CDs Shaun Collings, Curtis Doss and the BBDG team in Santa Monica collaborated with Carl Sagan’s widow Anne Druyan and “Pulled from every talent in the shop” to create this vast, elegant and inspiring mix of micro and macro to open Fox’s re-launch of the ‘Cosmos’ series, including “shooting live action, creating [Watch]
Check this fabulous stop motion, non-linear philosophical rant from director/animator Rafael Mayrhofer, aka 1/3 of the Austrian trio of filmmakers known as Motiphe (with Florian Juri and Clemens Wirth). Mayrhofer, a self-taught stop motion animator, says he was inspired by his work experience in NY at Buck and Hornet and reveals he created the bars of soap sequence by biting into them himself for each frame, “I didn’t swallow, but my mouth was quite irritated and I didn’t have much ability to taste anything for the rest of the day.”
[Watch]
The Titanfall/Xbox One media avalanche continues with another NY Times article and this happy :60 complete with towering pet CG mechs and lots of casual urban destruction from The Mill in league with Hungry Man director Wayne McClammy backed by Sinatra singing “My Shadow and Me.” [Watch]
Light and delightful promotion for the Telegraph UK STEM 2014 competition from London designer/director/animator Ben Collier-Marsh, “This is an opportunity for undergrads to showcase an idea that will benefit society. The animation sees a ball exploring seven worlds manifested from the seven disciplines of the competition: Engineering, Aerospace, Maths, Technology/Science, Automotive, Pharmacy and Construction. [Watch]
Stash 104 continues our 10-year obsession with archiving exceptional animation, VFX and design work. 104 adds another 90 minutes of motion inspiration and insight to the Stash permanent collection of over 4,000 films and behind the scenes features, with creative and production notes, toolkit and links for every project [Watch]
After 25 years the planet’s foremost typographic duo are no more. But before their recent bitter and litigious split, Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones created hundreds of fonts including the elegant Hoefler Text and ubiquitous Gotham. This mini-doc produced and animated by New York design studio Dress Code [Watch]
Paris production, design and animation house ChezEddy just launched their new site which includes this emotion-soaked (and not fully SFW) music video directed by Alexis Beaumont and Rémi Godin based on the art of Austin, Texas illustrator Jonny Negron. “The graphic treatment aims at underlining both the tragic [Watch]
For just $0.99, The National Film Board of Canada’s StopMo Pro for iPad2 looks like a complete no-brainer. The release updates the NFB’s original stop-motion animation app called Pix Stop released in 2011 and offers more than 20 functionalities, intuitive commands, a friendly interface, contextual help, visual and audio editing and sharing options.
Here’s animator Patrick Bouchard’s film “No Disturbing Gramps” made with the StopMo Pro app:
