Reel of the Month Club (Dec. 2024): Coat of Arms
December 21, 2024
Even if you’re familiar with how traditional hand animation works, this behind the scenes feature put together by the good people at Th1ng in London is worth your time just to meet director/animator and three-time Oscar nominee Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville, L’illusionniste, and The Old Lady and the Pigeons). [Watch]
Animator/director Russ Murphy re-teams with fellow Bristolian talent Patch Keys to push their signature, hand-crafted-frame-by-frame style into the mainstream with this treatment for the title track of Lily Allen’s Sheezus album wherein she invokes all her pop-diva rivals. [Watch]
Dvein continue their explorations outside the 3D playground teaming with fellow-Barcelonians Physalia for the first in a series of IDs for the new Converse ‘Colors’ campaign thru Blacklist for Anomaly, “Together we developed machines that bring color to the sneakers in a quite unorthodox way.” [Watch]
London’s FIELD studio wrings beauty and engagement from cold computer code to create what co-founders Marcus Wendt and Vera-Maria Glahn call “expressive and dynamic artworks for digital platforms” for galleries, festivals, public installations and mobile. Case in point: Energy Flow, a free non-linear film app for [Watch]
If you’re familiar with the song “Strange Fruit,” made indelible by Billie Holiday in 1939, you already know the theme of this tense and emotional animated short created by Shimi Asresay and Hili Noy as their graduation film from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.
“The story discusses the question of the personal conscience of each of us, versus the education we receive from our families and environment. Can we really insist on our personal belief system, when what we must believe in, is dictated to us? The film presents how easily we acquire fear and hatred of foreigners, as well as how easily we might become the ‘strangers’ and ‘others’ ourselves.” [Watch]
Dubai studio Infofillers combines an earthy pallet with old and new Middle Eastern motifs for the broadcast packaging of a local TV show called Al-Mukhtasar. Co-director Firas Ershead: “Since it’s a talk show, covering different topics, from culture to sports, tech, etc., the presenters are the heroes. So we developed [Watch]
Tavo Studio (Madrid) and Crowd Studio (Barcelona/London) open the three days of the ADC’s recent awards event in Miami with these lovingly rendered CG sur-realities where “three types of different materials metaphorically represent the transformation of raw material into something more polished, as do art [Watch]
You don’t have to be a Coke geek to appreciate this frenetic and vibrant work for the 4th Annual Malaysian Coca Cola Collector Fair by local design/animation/VFX house Glass Fin featuring bottles from 1899 to 2007: “We decided to give it a Malaysian theme which can be distinguished in its patterns. We have [Watch]
According to UNICEF, every day in India, “620 million Indians are defecating in the open. That’s half the population dumping over 65 million kilos of poo out there every day. If this poo continues to be let loose on us, there will be no escaping the stench of life threatening infections, diseases and epidemics.”
In response, UNICEF launched the www.poo2loo.com campaign with this insanely over-the-top, potty-mouthed animated music video by Studio Eeksaurus in Mumbai as the center piece. The absurdly catchy music was composed by Shrikanth Sriram (Shri) who composed the theme for “Life of Pi”. No word on animation credits yet. [Watch]
The MPC NY crew flex their character design, animation and slapstick narrative muscles with an Easter confection written and directed in-house by Bill Dorais and Ty Coyle. “Enjoy the Sweets” blends traditional stop-motion techniques and CG into 3,000 frames of sweet-toothy feel-goodness. Lead animator Grae Revell: [Watch]
Framestore CD/director Mike McGee leads an intrepid crew into weightlessness aboard a Go ZeroG plane to, well… flavor some water with Robinsons SQUASH’D thru Iris Worldwide.
McGee: “When we were inside the ‘vomit comet’ things got out of control pretty quickly: bits of our equipment floated away, cables floated up in front of the camera, cameras pointed in the wrong direction and the crew spun around uncontrollably feeling nauseous.”
“We had a team of eight up on the plane with a Go Pro camera each and two high-speed cameras shooting at 2K to allow us to slow down and zoom in on the all-important mixing shot. With only 12 takes to get everything we needed and only 15 seconds of weightlessness at a time, it was a formidable task.”
McGee: “When we were inside the ‘vomit comet’ things got out of control pretty quickly: bits of our equipment floated away, cables floated up in front of the camera, cameras pointed in the wrong direction and the crew spun around uncontrollably feeling nauseous.”
“We had a team of eight up on the plane with a Go Pro camera each and two high-speed cameras shooting at 2K to allow us to slow down and zoom in on the all-important mixing shot. With only 12 takes to get everything we needed and only 15 seconds of weightlessness at a time, it was a formidable task.” [Watch]
Director/animator Clément Morin re-imagines Angus Wall’s now-classic 2011 “Game of Thrones” opening sequence to reinforce HootSuite’s prediction of the coming Social Media Winter caused by the “battles being fought between many social networks, who are building walls and blocking access between their [Watch]
Hornet director Yves Geleyn reveals to Stash readers his design and narrative goals behind the powerful new 90-second PSA for States United to Prevent Gun Violence:
“Most commercials would cut on the gunshot, but we felt strongly that we should show it. If it were live-action, broadcasting regulations would have stopped it. Animation allowed us to show the whole scene. People expect the climax even less because of the medium.
“Once we settled on using animation, the key to heightening the emotional impact is in the simplicity of the piece. Less is more. Your brain fills the gaps. You understand that you are in a kid’s room, but it is not filled with too many objects. It is about the mood. This gives more room for the characters to inhabit each scene.
“The character designs themselves are graphic. They have human proportions but in an illustrated way. It is about striking a balance between lovable characters while keeping them realistic so people can project themselves. The family also does not have any sort of key defining characteristics, which helps make them relatable to a wider range of people.
“Speaking in terms of lighting, it is designed in such a way that it points to areas we want you to focus on (something Renaissance painters used frequently). The lighting is sharp. There are no gradients. There are no shadows, just highlights. The lighting helps to build the scene.”
Facts about kids and guns in the US:
• 1.5 million American children live in homes with unlocked and loaded firearms.
• Every day at least 6 children age 0 to 18 are injured in an unintentional shooting.
• 75% of gun shot injuries to children under ten that are serious enough to require hospitalization are due to unintentional shootings. [Watch]
The Japanese delicacy known as hachinoko (baby bee larvae) lends its name to this track from electronic duo Simian Mobile Disco brought to life in a “3D-animated whirlwind of the surreal and humorous” by London creative agency DesignStudio and AD/designer Jack Featherstone. [Watch]
