Illustrator Ana Benaroya provides the colorful characters for National Geographic's out-of-character promos for their latest minisieries The 80s: The Decade That Made Us.
Says Joe Burrascano, ECD for agency Nathan Love, to Digital Arts, "This is a completely different look for the network, and that’s exactly what National Geographic wanted. Because the series itself – which details the many unsung cultural revolutions ignited during that time – was such a departure from their traditional programming, the goal was to catch people by surprise, piquing their interest while connecting them to the light-hearted spirit of the 80s.”
The adorable new animated spot for Oreos wonders if the iconic cookie would change the villainous fates of the Big Bad Wolf, vampires and great white sharks. The spot is set to a jaunty tune sung by Owl City.
Says Janda Lukin, director of Oreo at Mondelez International to Fast Company's Co.Create, "[the commercial] celebrates the notion that something as small as an Oreo can bring about a change in perspective and help people see the world with fresh eyes.”
Watch the colorful video for Delicate Steve's "Tallest Heights," directed by animators Becky & Steve. As Rachael Steven of Creative Review explains, "The video uses 16mm, 35mm and super 8 film strips and is part of the duo's experimentation with drawing on top of live action film. The quirky, colorful visuals work perfectly with Delicate Steve's largely non-vocal and slightly psychedelic music, and we guarantee you'll be glued to your screen for the whole four minutes."
Check out the adorable animated commercial for Fuze Tea in which the combination of things like ink and paper, man and moon, and tea and fruit lead to "great things" and a very catchy jingle. The spot was directed by Smith & Foulkes.
Evan Viera's beautiful, award-winning short animation "Caldera" was inspired by his father's mental health issues.
Viera says, "'Caldera' is inspired by my father's struggle with schizoaffective disorder. In states of delusion, my father has danced on the rings of Saturn, spoken with angels, and fled from his demons. He has lived both a fantastical and haunting life, but one that's invisible to the most of us. In our differing understanding of reality, we blindly mandate his medication, assimilate him to our marginalizing culture, and entirely misinterpret him for all he is worth. Caldera aims to not only venerate my father, but all brilliant minds forged in the haunted depths of psychosis."
Read more here on Creative Bloq. Watch "Caldera" below.
Watch the charming animated video for Alphabet Heaven's instrumental track "Birthday" created by Renata Gasiorowska.
Gasiorowska tells The Creators Project, "‘When I first heard 'Birthday' I quickly got addicted and after couple days of listening to it I had this film in my head. Animating all of this was very fun and the music has a very sharp rhythm and accents so it was perfect for me to fit fight and dance scenes to it."
To create the music video for Deadmau5 and Imogen Heap's collaboration "Telemiscommunications," the artists staged a competition for animators. They posted a brief which included a set storyline, sketches of where the main character needed to be on the screen at a given time, and a color palette. The final result features contributions from 19 animators.
Says project director Colin Gordon, "We had to think about how the piece would work as a whole and not necessarily who we thought was the best animator, so it was about getting a good mix of styles and techniques as much as anything."
Watch below and read more here on Creative Review.
The Creators Project profiles the abstract and dreamllike video work of Kurtis Hough, which combines a variety of techniques including timelapse, stop-motion and CGI. Says Hough of his short film "Toyland" (found below), "I had smelly smoke bombs going off in my studio, time-lapse footage of colorful crystals growing, hoses of water filling up a fish tank, and layers of additional effects and jelly fish footage combined in post.”
The below short video brilliantly pares down the entire filmography of Stanley Kubrick into a minute-long series of connected animations, starting with his first film, 1953's Fear and Desire, and going all the way to 1999's Eyes Wide Shut. It was created by animation duo Deadly Puppies.
Bent Image Lab has returned to create animated skits for IFC's Portlandia, including the popular "Rats" segments. Says Rob Shaw, the director of the animated segments, "I love having the Portlandia style dialogue with characters that are weird and cartoony looking and then having this human voice come out of them."
Watch a behind-the-scene video below and read more here on Dexigner.
The Creators Project profiles the sleek, mixed media animation work of Natalia Stuyk, most recently seen in Mat Maitland's video for Kenzo's 2013 resort collection. They write, "The UK-based artist’s small body of work is exciting because she not only has a handle on...aesthetic trends but is also versed in programming, the creative potentials of social media, and interactive media."
"To This Day" is an 8-minute collaborative animation created by 87 animators, each responsible for 20 seconds of the anti-bullying film. The film is set to a spoken word poem by Shane Koyczan. The full list of credits can be found here.
Animator Jonathan Seligson took inspiration from the aesthetics of modern Cartoon Network hits like Dexter's Laboratory and Adventure Time to create the music video for Black Light Dinner Party's "We Are Golden." Says Seligson, "The story, setting and character dynamics came to me spontaneously upon hearing the song for the first time. As I listened, the imagery simply manifested in my mind’s eye.”
This Is Studio created this nostalgic, animated promo for Greenpeace which criticizes the business practices of the National Federation of Fisherman's Organisations. It was co-directed by animator Bill Porter. Watch below.
LOGAN plunges Nike+ users into a spectacular post-apocalyptic ice storm of a world with two 6:00, fully CG, stylized character-animated games featuring a cast of top athletes – NFL receiver Calvin Johnson, soccer players Alex Morgan and Neymar Jr., and sprinter Allyson Felix – and promoting a new line of weather-resistant clothing. LOGAN, which collaborated with Conscious Minds on the project, handled an incredible array of character design, modeling, matte painting, character and environment animation, dynamics and final compositing.
Disney's epically charming short animated film "Paperman," nominated for an Oscar this year, is now available to view in full online. The beautiful retro film, which is dialogue-free and filmed almost entirely in black and white, uses an innovative combination of hand-drawn animation and CGI.
Explains Wired, "'Paperman'‘s seemingly seamless way of blending the personality of hand-drawn animation with CGI in the physical space of the story is the result of new in-house software called Meander, a vector-based drawing program that allows for manipulation of the line after the fact — something that [director John] Kahrs described as 'just like painting on the surface of the CG.'"
A schoolboy fantasizes about his teacher in the part live-action, part animated video for Tame Imapala's "Mind Mischief," directed by David Wilson.
Says Wilson in the making-of video, "The inspiration from the video came directly from the bassline. As soon as I listened to that bassline with the guitar riff at the beginning of the song, I imagined this [butt] walking down the corridor."
He adds about the animation, "He daydreams that he follows his teacher out to her car...Instead of it going into kinda sexually explicit romp in a car, it just gets more fantastical; it gets more about feelings. And that's where the animation comes in to transition into this psychedelic, cosmic sexual exploration."
One of the Academy Awards' five nominees for Animated Short Film is available for viewing online. See the clever "Fresh Guacomole" along with the trailers for the four other nominees ("Adam and Dog," "Head Over Heels," "The Longest Daycare," and "Paperman") below. (via Short of the Week)
Lost Highway Films director Mike Patterson and USC School of Cinematic Arts colleague Candace Reckinger have created a new piece for musician/composer Jeff Lynne based on Lynne’s 1977 Electric Light Orchestra track “Mr. Blue Sky.” With influences ranging from Bollywood to psychedelic imagery and English gardens, the sunny music video is an exuberant and rich interpretation of ELO’s upbeat and infectious tune.
Along with directing for Lost Highway, Patterson has been putting his talents to work as an associate professor of animation at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Michael has used his animation skills on iconic music videos including A-Ha’s “Take on Me,” Suzanne Vega’s “Luka” and Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract (with MC Skat Kat),” as well as for many spots with Lost Highway.
Animator Julia Pott discusses how she interpreted Tom Chivers' poem "The Event" into a lushly morbid short film. She says, "With a poem of this nature it was difficult not to confuse matters. I tried to find a constant iconic image to carry throughout the piece, and I was very drawn to the severed foot. The aspect of my work that I find the most engaging is in creating malleable worlds where bodies can morph and stretch in line with their internal struggles. Focusing on the severed foot as a symbol of love, loss and pain seemed the right fit."
Michel Gondry's short animated film "Haircut Mouse" is about as surreal as you can expect from the French director responsible for helming Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Be Kind, Rewind. The tongue-in-cheek film tells the comically tragic story of a mouse who decides to be a hairdresser. Watch below.
To promote a new Penguin English Library edition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Woof Wan-Bau created this adorable animation that stars Penguin's iconic logo as the doctor with multiple personalities.
Wan-Bau also created the below surreal animation for the launch of the collection. (via Creative Review)
If you give dreams a chance, and purchase New Jersey State Lottery Holiday Instant Game tickets as gifts, you, your family or friends might find yourselves walking through a magical “Winter MoneyLand” with up to $100,000 in your pocket!
The :30 holiday spot, produced and directed by Xenon, the New York-based commercial production company, and developed through Brushfire, Inc. (Cedar Knolls, NJ and New York, NY), debuted in November.
Last week, the team at My Active Driveway (MAD) joined Alicia Keys, Whoopi Goldberg, Jennifer Hudson, Bonnie Raitt, Oprah Winfrey and other celebrity philanthropists for the Black Ball, a charity fundraiser organized by HIV/AIDS non-profit Keep a Child Alive (KCA). MAD contributed to a fully integrated show-wide experience for the event, delivering a series of luminescent visualizations, an animated title sequence and a unique interactive design solution allowing event organizers to track the evening’s donations in real time.
The new animated video for The Killers' "Miss Atomic Bomb" beautifully recalls the style of 80s action/adventure cartoons, providing a nice visual accompaniment to the band's throwback sound. The live-action segments of the clip even star classic 80s villain Eric Roberts and Isabella Miko (who both starred in the video for the band's breakout hit "Mr. Brightside").
