Reel of the Month Club (Dec. 2024): Coat of Arms
December 21, 2024
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:
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]
