David Conley Appointed President of MPC
December 2, 2024
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:
On Monday, the NY Times quoted Yusef Mehdi, Microsoft’s chief marketing and strategy officer as saying, “It’s hard to understate how incredibly important Titanfall is for Xbox.” The critically acclaimed game from Respawn/EA will be bundled with the Xbox One and only available on Microsoft platforms including Xbox [Watch]
Austere, enigmatic and whimsical, this new animated CG music video by Michael Fragstein (director/architect and co-founder of the Büro Achter April studio in Stuttgart) reads like a dreamscape full of strange juxtapositions and unexpected constructs. “Happiness Has A Hole – Solo Piano Version” is included [Watch]
Squeezing into the jam-packed advertising awards ecosystem is a tough assignment but an industry collective is out to try with the launch of ADCAN, a new initiative supporting upcoming film talent through creative productions for charities and good causes.
Developed by Brydon Gerus and Dan Heighes, ADCAN was established as an awards community that connects good causes and charities with aspiring, non-represented filmmaking talent. ADCAN provides a new approach that exists above and beyond the awards themselves; it is not only a creative platform to help aspiring filmmakers get exposure within the industry, it is also a means for films to be made that will do some good and connect filmmakers with charities/causes and production companies looking for the next top talent. [Watch]
Packing enough hardcore tropes to anchor four video game trailers, this full CG film from Tokyo-based director Alessandro Pacciani and VFX house From Software for Namco Bandai’s Dark Souls II holds together with artful rendering, believable mocap and ambitious scope. File under Guilty Pleasure. [Watch]
Unrest in the Ukraine dominates the headlines but, as the Caracas-based Totuma crew and Irene Ramírez make clear in this new infographic poster, the unrelenting political chaos and violence in Venezuela has rendered their homeland one of the most dangerous on the planet with 24,763 homicides in 2013 or one murder every 20 minutes.
Totuma CD Hubert Reinfeild: “As designers and visual communicators we have to make something, so we did this poster and a sculpture to try capturing the essence of (at least one) of the reasons young Venezuelan students are protesting and dying.
“Between 1999 and 2013 there have been 200,509 violent deaths in Venezuela. In comparison, in the Iraq War there where 189,000 casualties (this is data from March 2003 to February 2013).
“In Venezuela there’s no official war, but every 20 minutes someone gets murdered. They aren’t just numbers, on the last month and a half thirteen people have died in a even worst scenario, if that’s possible, by the government forces.
“Until the actual government (or the next one) equally values the life off ALL venezuelans (regardless of their political views), we’ll have a nation divided by hate and we’ll carry over our shoulders and conciseness the sad title of being one of the most dangerous countries in the world.”
Poster: Irene Ramírez, adapted by Totuma. [Watch]
Three-time Oscar-nominated director/animator Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville, L’illusionniste, The Old Lady and the Pigeons) and London animation force th1ng responded to Matt Groening’s invite to create a Simpson’s couch gag with this appropriately over-the-top Gaulish interpretation. Previous guest couch [Watch]
Almost seven years after it first stormed onto the festival circuit, French director/illustrator Franck Dion‘s inventive and stylish animated short “Monsieur COK” still brings smiles despite its melancholy subject and palette. The film keeps your attention for almost 10 minutes with snappy pacing, intriguing character [Watch]
Inventive and minimalist character work keeps Utrecht studio Job, Joris & Marieke on our must-watch list. Like this music video for instance: a monochrome romp with dark undercurrents for fellow Dutchman Job Roggeveen and his collaborative musical project called Happy Camper. “The Daily Drumbeat is a sunny song [Watch]
Best known for the polarizing film projects “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly,” American director/producer Tommy Pallotta mixes fantasy-fueled animation sequences into his new feature doc (co-directed with Dutch new-media producer Femke Wolting) called the LAST HIJACK, “a true tale of survival in Somalia told from the pirate’s perspective.”
[Watch]
Strange Beast director/animator Andy Martin worries about you. Specifically, he worries about the possible side effects of your auto-portraiture obsession (beyond the obvious problem that nobody looks good shot up close with a wide angle lens). “Selfie” was created for the Pictoplasma #Characterselfie project. [Watch]
Approached by NBC “to help emulate the gritty undertones” of the network’s hit drama Blacklist without revealing details of the show itself, MPC NY inserts a sweeping CG domino sequence into stark live footage shot in and above the Mojave Desert. The process started with a 3D previz and six life-sized reference sculptures [Watch]
Parisian character masters Supamonks bust free from their commercial work to unleash a wave of medieval mayhem in this manic and blood-soaked animated comedy produced at the request of real monks in the south of France (Les Frères de la Sainte Famille) to promote their new soda called Holypop. Seriously. [Watch]
