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Clik Clak was one of the student entries at the 2007 Chicago Motion Graphics Festival screening that I attended tonight. Very creative piece with a clever soundtrack and great animation. All that I really know about the piece was that it was created by French artists.
Harry's Note: This was a piece produced by 3 students at the animation school "Supinfocom" in France, which has produced some amazing work in the past, and is a regular recruiting pool for 3D animation studios around the world.
Sunshine, a new sci-fi film from Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days) looks like a phenomenal action flick.
There are also video interviews with Sunshine's Director, Danny Boyle, and the Visual Effects Supervisor, Tom Wood discuss the challenges of "visualising the power and the beauty of the Sun".
YEAR OF THE FISH is an animated independent feature film written and directed by David Kaplan, shot entirely on location in New York City’s Chinatown. A modern-day adaptation of Cinderella based on an old Chinese version of the story, it was shot on inexpensive live-action video that was used as a guide for digital painting in post-production." It's also an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival.
"Once the shooting and live-action editing were completed, the animation of YEAR OF THE FISH began. Following in the footsteps of Richard Linklater's "Waking Life" and "Scanner Darkly", the production was shot and edited on miniDV and then rotoscoped in post production to create a high-definition animated feature film."
There are no clips of the film, but there are several screen shots and very interesting production notes and details about the animation process. They used Synthetik Studio Artist to acheive the unique look.
John Rice sent us a still of one of the characters from the short he has been working on. This is Al the Alien, in one of his more annoyed moments. John used Maxon's Cinema 4D r10 and was able to use Bodypaint for his head. Very cute alien!
John says, "I designed and textured him, but my buddy Stew Burris modeled him, using Maya, and my fiance Katie Cheang animated the shot that the still was pulled from. We animated a 2 1/2 minute short and pitched it as a potential series to the Sci-Fi channel. We're currently waiting to see if they will pick up the show and hire us to produce a pilot."
"A Dream" by Common feat. Will.I.Am is a song from the film Freedom Writers and uses pieces of the Martin Luther King "I have a Dream" speech. The video uses illustrations composited in 3D space with video which give the video some amazing transitional elements. Also, note the transitions from video to poster. A former student of mine showed me this video today and that is the type of stuff he would like to create.
I saw Common at Lollapalooza in Chicago last summer, at least a few minutes of the show. Good stuff.
AOL Omnibus from James Price and Transistor Studios is a very cool spot that I've seen quite a lot on television lately. Very cool layering and movement.
"Thinking About You" by songbird Norah Jones is the latest video from Director Ace Norton, who also did the Teddybears "Cobrastyle" (love that song!), Death Cab's "Crooked Teeth" (very worth the watch!) and "Someday You Will Be Loved" and commercials for Honda and Coke, among others. And, according to his MySpace, Ace is just 24 years old! Unbelievable.
Thinking About You is a playful mix of video and cartooney thought bubbles in an infinite zoom transitions.
Feel The Machine is an 80's new wave style song by the Chalets, a Dublin, Ireland band that totally reminds me of the B-52s. Maybe it's the two female leads. The video by Team D.A.D.D.Y. cleverly combines video of the band on stage with a working computer screen of a graphic designer dragging and dropping and using a somewhat familiar 'Chalet Doodleshop'! Hahaha. This is my new favorite video.
You may recognize Team D.A.D.D.Y. from their N.A.H.P.I. 's Do They Know it's Halloween?, a creepy take on 'Do they Know It's Christmas?', and much more entertaining and scary than it's 80's counterpart, with or without Michael Jackson ;-)
Lobo Skank One Song is an amazing and beautiful conceptual piece from the Ebeling Group. Now that is some serious tracking (Boujou, maybe?) There are playful 3D elements sprouting throughout the environment and a sweet piano soundtrack. Those must be some extraordinary headphones.
The animation is gorgeous and full of detail, not to mention cute (girls like cute stuff, what can I say.)
The set up of the web page, with the production still thumbnails and credits is really well put together, plus you can watch an HD version. Blown away... yeah, just a little.
Clik Clak was one of the student entries at the 2007 Chicago Motion Graphics Festival screening that I attended tonight. Very creative piece with a clever soundtrack and great animation. All that I really know about the piece was that it was created by French artists.
