Reel of the Month Club (Dec. 2024): Coat of Arms
December 21, 2024
London’s Time Based Arts (founded in 2009 by Flame artists Mike Skrgatic and James Allen) prove once again that big VFX no longer have to come from big shops. [Watch]
In what I suspect is a typographic first, Leo Burnett Lisboa crafts the official font of their hometown by deconstructing and reassembling the electrical wires of the city’s famous tram system. Created with the support of the Lisbon City Council, LX Type can be downloaded free here – with additional interactive features, so you can try out the font and find locations associated with each letter “transforming words into spontaneous and personalized guides to the city.” [Watch]
Few people on the planet do cool and clean 3D like Mike Alderson and his ManvsMachine crew. Case in point: this new Air Superiority campaign introducing the Nike Air Max 90 with audio by Echolab. “The 2014 collection sees Air + Lunar + Flyknit technologies combined for the first time, so we wanted to develop a [Watch]
Cluster Studio in Mexico City just sent us there latest: a frenetic, genre-mashing :60 for the Nissan Juke featuring surgical editing, over-the-top action tropes and a multitude of animation and VFX techniques all created by a team of 16 artists on a tight schedule. Agency: TERAN \ TBWA, Production: Garage Films, [Watch]
Directors Michelle Dougherty and Karin Fong and the Imaginary Forces crew carve out dramatic and superbly intricate titles for the new Starz pirate series “Black Sails” and declare them “Nothing less than a full-on art history mash-up of Baroque motifs, Gothic architecture and Rococo style. Using a sculptural language [Watch]
Newcastle Brown Ale and Droga 5 prepare you for the Super Bowl ad they didn’t/couldn’t make. More taking the piss here. [Watch]
Interesting insights shared here by Shutterstock who distill data from their archive of 30 million+ images and 350 million+ downloads to explore recent and emerging design and video trends from around the globe. [Watch]
Ryan Honey and the Buck team show off their mastery of cel animation (and sense of fun) as they illuminate an eccentric ditty from CHI & Partners in this light and lithe :40 for the Hive next-gen thermostat control system from British Gas. [Watch]
Prodco Animasjonsdepartementet, Mill+ Studio and director Martin Engh spin a Norwegian folktale and cross-country skiing triple olympic champion Marit Bjørgen into an inspired mix of 2D hand animation, 3D, camera projection, and compositing, all inspired by the style of 19th century Norwegian illustrator Theodor [Watch]
Bristol director/designer/animator/seizure inducer and Stash fave Russ Murphy teams with director Pace Rivers for his latest graphic maelstrom, a flickering glitchiphonic “Apocalypse” by NY rapper/producer TiDUS – shot in the artist’s home town and screwed with heavily back in RUFFMERCY studios. [Watch]
Shynola adds a new chapter to their canon of innovative music videos with this otherworldly CG take on “Tookah” by Iceland’s Emiliana Torrini. The synthetic style of the submerged facial animation will strike some as unfinished or at least lacking finesse, but there’s no doubt it adds an element of unease that elevates the clip above the merely ethereal. Label: Rough Trade, direction/animation/edit: Shynola, production: Black Dog Films.
Stash is pleased to present the online premiere of Richard Hickey’s “Francis.” A former Superfad director/CD, Hickey (now repped by Not to Scale in the UK and Logan & Sons in the US) worked with EP Kevin Batten to craft the tense and perfectly-paced film from a Dave Eggars short story first heard on a “This American Life” broadcast. [Watch]
London animator, director, writer and all-round motion-master Fraser Davidson follows his 2012 “Irritable Bowl Syndrome” with another sharp and breathless ode to American football once again combining the pacing of a rant with his signature graphic style to provide both hilarity and insight, all fueled by the VO talents of Billy Baumann and Mark Brickey at aidpodcast.com. Audio: Morgan Samuel. [Watch]
Stop-motion cheese. Lots of cheese. Check out how the crew at PlusOne in Amsterdam painstakingly water-cut 1500 slices of the stuff into a fun spot for giant Dutch dairy co-op FrieslandCampina. Creative team: NotJustAnotherTeam Co-production: Shoq-Studio Creative Director: Martijn Hogenkamp Direction: Cas Prins Production: Geert Jansen D.O.P.: Dirk de Graaff, Sebas Vriend Gaffer: Nicholas Burrough […] [Watch]
