Toolfarm Inspirations

A Conversation with David Torno and Brandon Parvini about Flight of the Conchords 'Ladies of the World'

5/16/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

Yesterday I had a Conversation with David Torno and Brandon Parvini about Flight of the Conchords' 'Ladies of the World' video they just completed.

It's incredibly funny and has a cool 70s style to it. They rotoscoped the faces of The Conchords onto stunt skaters. They talk about the challenges they had with the project and how they used lots of digital tools to make this really impressive video.

Check it out!

Labels: Interview, Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Choosing My Religion - Buen Chico

5/11/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

Live action combined with hand drawn stuff. The video was shot in one day. Very nice work!

Labels: Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Gnarls Barkley - Going On

5/11/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

This video, directed by Wendy Morgan, has some interesting time manipulation on the dancers and a very cool 'Look' (Magic Bullet Looks perhaps?)

The effect in the door was a bit cheesy. Not quite sure about that one. The rest of the video is great, IMHO.

Labels: Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Apple Music Video

5/11/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

Talk about low budget, but this had to be very time consuming. The song is 'Again and Again' by The Bird and the Bee. I'm not sure if this is the official video, but it's
very clever. Mac geeks will totally appreciate it (and the rest of you geeks as well).

via Signal vs. Noise

Labels: Experimental, Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Liam Finn - Second Chance and Gather to the Chapel

5/05/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

Excuse me if I gush, but I *LOVE* Liam Finn. Liam is a Kiwi and son to the beloved singer/songwriter Neil Finn, and nephew to Tim Finn. The boy has some musical genius flowing through his veins. (I warned you I would gush).

Liam's video for Second Chance, easily my favorite Liam Finn song, is directed by Angus Sutherland. The video looks as if it was filmed on 8mm and the projected video was video taped, cut up and effected. There are lots of interesting stop motion effects and the video works extremely well for the song, as it crescendos near the end and the speed of the video picks up. I'm very glad to see that the video is as original as the song.

'Gather to the Chapel' video is one continuous shot. This video has gorgeous camera control. Either Liam can run really fast behind the camera and get himself set up for the next shot, or they've really done a great job of matching shots. I'm sure this was programmed camera control, but it's so well done. It's seamless, not like they've made a quick cut on the back of a guys suit as they did in Hitchcock's rope. (Oddly - 'Everyone Gather to the Chapel' and no one is there.)

I had no luck finding any information on the director of this video.

Labels: Music Video, Stop Motion

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

MGMT - Time To Pretend

4/29/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

I was first turned on to MGMT and the song Time to Pretend on The Sixty One, my favorite time sucker.

Wow, I've never seen a video with such crappy keys, outside of community television, but somehow this video is freakin' amazing. It totally reminds me of those LSD like tv shows on community television too. It was directed by Ray Tintori who in an interview for Dazed Digital said "We wanted to portray a sort of post-apocalyptic utopia where the world had caved in on itself but the kids were all right and too resilient to give up hope."

I love the part where Andrew, the singer, is riding the kitten, who is named John Voight, by the way.

Labels: Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Architecture in Helsinki - Like it or Not

4/22/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

I like it! Is it true that this everything in this video was really stitched and shot stop motion? I can't imagine the work that went into that.

Be sure to watch it full screen.

Architecture in Helsinki - Like It Or Not from helsinkids on Vimeo.

Labels: Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Buckethead - Spokes for the Wheel of Torment

4/22/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

I saw the video on Xeni Jardin's Twitter. This is such a strange video. Strange, but captivating. From YouTube: "It was directed by Syd Garon and Eric Henry featuring additional artwork by Frankenseuss. It is based on the works of Hieronymus Bosch, namely 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' triptych, 'The Last Judgement' triptych, the 'Paradise and Hell' triptych and 'The Temptation of St Anthony' triptych." Sort of hoity toity for metal :-)

Labels: Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Gotye - Hearts a Mess

4/21/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

I run a music site called MaxBumps.net, and one of our contributors, AnnieB, posted an article about Gotye in her AnnieB's Detour column. This is some gorgeous compositing and 3D work by animator and director extraordinaire Brendan Cook of PictureDRIFT.

Check out Gotye's site for other videos, and here's a higher-res QT version ofHearts a Mess.

Labels: 3D, Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

The Knife: "We Share Our Mother's Health" by Motomichi

4/07/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

Motomichi's recent work for the Swedish band "The Knife". Motomichi has a signature style- clean, Flash-based animations in black, white and red (note- often graphic in nature/may be disturbing to some viewers).

Motomichi's work also includes live video/animation mixing along with print, installation and design work. Check out his portfolio at: motomichi.com.

Labels: 2D, Flash, Music Video

Posted by Alicia VanHeulen

Björk's "Wanderlust" Music Video Released

4/01/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

After nine months of hard work, Björk's new video, "Wanderlust" was released to the public on March 31st... and is no less than spectacular. The 3-D version of the video will be released as a DVD single package on April 14, complete with 3-D glasses. You can view the high quality version (highly recommended, as the more compressed version doesn't do it justice!) at www.encyclopediapictura.com.

This is the "making of" video montage:

Labels: 3D, Character Animation, Film Short, Music Video

Posted by Alicia VanHeulen

Vanessa Paradis - L'incendie

3/28/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

Vanessa Paradis is Johnny Depp's squeeze and he directed the video and he supposedly makes a cameo (but that could be any guy... you never get to see his face).

The video is surprisingly good. I love the flaming footsteps. That's some nice tracking. My guess is that they employed tracking dots on the floor and painted them out because there's no way they could've tracked that floor. The echo motion blur effects on her arms also caught my eye. I am guessing that they shot her over green screen and used a 3D tracker since the camera is panning around her.

Labels: Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

MyToolfarm Red Giant NAB Contest Entries

3/28/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

The Red Giant/MyToolfarm NAB Contest submission was officially over earlier this week and we had several terrific entries. Because of a problem we had with our uploader, the entries were also collected via another method, so this is not every entry unfortunately. This will give you a good cross-section of what was entered and if the winning entry is not in this bunch, we will put it online. There were about 24 entries in total. There are some super talented designers and motion graphics artists out there. I was blown away by some of the entries.

For a video to qualify, they must use Trapcode Form or Magic Bullet Looks. The first place winner will receive a trip to NAB and present their project at the Red Giant Booth. The first and second runners up will receive software.

The official winners will be announced next week. The list below is in the order they were submitted from newest to oldest and is no indication of the winners.

I should also note that the star ratings are not accurate if you view at MyToolfarm, so please ignore them. I think they work fine, but I wonder if someone has come through and given them all low marks just to be funny. All of these videos deserve higher ratings than they've received. I'm going to look into this.

Symantec NetBackup Product Launch

Submitted by Mark Jeschke

Veritas Backup Exec 10 Event Opener

Submitted by Mark Jeschke

Tori Amos Greenscreen Contest Submission 2007

Submitted by Mark Jeschke

Freedom Fall (Clip)

Submitted by Erik Candiani

Ryan Wheat Motion Graphics Demo

Submitted by Ryan Wheat

Penny and Ashtray

Submitted by Axel Roessler

The Field Scene

Submitted by Pericles Lewnes

Mumbai Central

Submitted by Alexander Snelling

Besuch der Holztiere

Submitted by Axel Roessler

Labels: 2D, 3D, Demo Reel, Experimental, Film Short, Music Video, MyToolfarm, Student Work

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

The New Pornographers "Myriad Harbour"

3/20/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

Check out "Myriad Harbour" by Directors Johanne St-Marie and Mark Lomond of Fluorescent Hill. Here's an excerpt from an interview at FEED's site:

"Because we had so little time in that shoot, we couldn’t afford the time to have them act out anything. So I shot Jo as the body double for Neko and Kathryn in the band, and shot my friend Richard as the body double for all six guys.

Then I redrew all the bodies in different sizes and clothes, and attached all of the heads I drew. The mouths are stop motion photographs of my mouth and Jo’s, then drawn and in-betweened and composited into the mix. We went completely paperless for the whole process, and drew everything in Photoshop.

I kept the colour to a minimum and played with three or four combination. I had gone further with the colour combos, but it made the faces unreadable in the really short scenes."

You can view more of Fluorescent Hill's portfolio at: www.fluorescenthill.com

Labels: 2D, Experimental, Film Short, Music Video

Posted by Alicia VanHeulen

The Blue Seeds- Lost and Delirious

3/06/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

This dreamlike music video features a nice mix of traditional animation and VFX; directed by Stephane Fournier.

Labels: 2D, Music Video

Posted by Alicia VanHeulen

Justice - DVNO

3/03/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

The AE-List is full of good ones today. Gary Reisman posted this one. I'm sure it's posted to one of the music video blogs I frequent (like Daily Motion! Haha), but I haven't made it there yet. This video is just stellar. 100% pure unadulterated eye candy. What's not to love!

Labels: Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Sara Bareilles - Love Song

3/03/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

I heard this song first on a commercial for Rhapsody? The song is just delicious. The video is equally good. It just has a beautiful surreal "look" with gorgeous warm colors.

Labels: Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Super Grass - Bad Blood

2/26/2008 • Permalink • 1 Comments •

This is hands down one of the coolest videos I've seen so far this year. Lots of visual effects and really cool tracking effects. I'd love to know how they did this. I've been Googling around but haven't found any useful information.

Supergrass - Bad Blood

Labels: Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Music Video "Blackbird" by giraffentoast

2/26/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

This mesmerizing video was created by giraffentoast for Michael Fakesch. They took a simple costumed character and built a mountain of effects and distortions around them- it's a really unique look.

Labels: 2D, 3D, Bizarre, Music Video

Posted by Alicia VanHeulen

Midnight Vignette - Evangelicals

2/21/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

I love the Evangelicals. They make great music. This video is a homage to horror films and is full of old school horror text animations, film effects, and other miscellaneous video effects. It was directed by Matt Leach.

MIDNIGHT VIGNETTE from leachmo1 on Vimeo.

Labels: Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Erykah Badu - Honey

2/18/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

Singing and Dancing LP sleeves. They do a great job of copying old albums, like the Beatles Let It Be, a Grace Jones album, the John & Yoko cover of Rolling Stone, and a Diana Ross album. This is so well done. Directed by Chris Robinson.

Labels: Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

The Mountain Goats - Sax Rohmer #1

2/18/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

I can't imagine the planning that went into this. Directed by Ace Norton.

Labels: Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

The New Pornographers - Myriad Harbour

2/18/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

A really cool animated video for The New Pornographers newest release Myriad Harbour. I love the color palette. I wonder if they used CC Hair?

Labels: Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

The One AM Radio - A Brittle Filament

2/18/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

I first heard this band a week or two ago at TheSixtyOne and I really like 'em. This is an interesting video because Hrishikesh Hirway, the director, made it with a Mac with the iSight and Photo Booth. Talk about low budget! This was probably cheaper to make than Van Halen's 'Jump', which was said to be made for $600 (and probably most of that was spent on Jack Daniels).

Labels: Music Video, Stop Motion

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Stab the Matador - Low Rider & Doctor

2/17/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

Here are two videos by the band Stab the Matador. The first is a professional video for the song Low Rider. It has interesting pulsating video effects and an awesome guitar sound. They had to use some sort of 'convert audio to keyframes' tool. YouTube quality though. Meh. (MyToolfarm quality is much higher, and made for motion graphics/vfx artists to share their work. It has just been launched. Try it out!)

Here's another Stab the Matador video for the song 'Doctor'. This one is by high school student Abby Wheeler of Harrisburg, Pa. The tear effects are really cool. Abby did a lot of the editing 'in-camera' and used FCP to finish it. Very cool, Abby. You have a future in this.

Labels: Music Video, Stop Motion

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

She is the New Thing - The Horrors

2/17/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

This is one freakin' disturbing video. About two minutes in it gets really gory, but still really cool. Looks to me like a combination of hand drawn art, stop motion and video effects. It was directed by Corin Hardy. What I've seen of Corin Hardy's work is nothing short of impressive. He has a film called Butterfly, that I'm trying to find a high quality clip to post here. It's stop-motion claymation style. It's on Corin's site Mysterious Cat. The site has cool content but is AWFUL. It looks like it was designed in 1999. Frames, tiny white text, tiny video. Did I mention frames? Ugh. Sad because his work is amazingly good.

Labels: Music Video, Stop Motion

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Shine - Golden(3D Music Video)

2/07/2008 • Permalink • 1 Comments •

I was looking around for Bjork's new Wanderlust video (which I plan to post here as soon as it's released) and found Shine, a 3D music video. The 3D music video was shot in 3D (no tricks in post) and was produced, directed, shot, edited, and stereo conformed by Eric Deren of Dzignlight Studios. They have an interesting link on the site about Stereoscopic Production

They recommend you use red-cyan glasses with the red lens over the left eye, and watch the video in a darkened room. Too bad I don't have any 3D glasses. They'll also send you a free pair. I want to watch it now! Have any gels laying around your studio? I think they would work in a pinch!

Labels: Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Chicago Motion Graphics Festival Highlights/ Best of STASH

1/21/2008 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

In case you missed it, here's a few of the highlights from "Best of Stash 2007" at MGFest08.

Microsoft Zune Ad by Fulltank.

Music Video: Faithless-Music Matters by Micros Image.

Coca-Cola Happiness Factory- The Movie by Psyop.

Labels: Character Animation, Commercial, Experimental, Film Short, MGFest, Music Video, Television

Posted by Alicia VanHeulen

Seal - Amazing

1/02/2008 • Permalink • 1 Comments •

This video is AWESOME! Great song as well. It gets my groove on. I'm not sure who directed it, but if you know anything about the post production, please leave a comment.

Labels: Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Genki Rockets - Heavenly Star

12/26/2007 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

The name Genki Rockets serves them well; this has to be the happiest song of 2007. This is a drawn style (could they have used Digital Anarchy's ToonIt?). There are lots of particle effects, which are always great, and lots or rainbows. I want to visit this world.

Labels: 2D, Music Video

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Rescue Me - D-Syfer

12/20/2007 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

This music video was created by the multi-talented Yohan Daza, for his band D-Syfer. He's also the bands vocalist. This was his first big project in After Effects, which he mainly used, along with Lightwave. He used the Puppet Tool in AE CS3 to give his character organic movement. I love the style and flow of the video and it really matches the mood of the song. Is it because Yohan created the music and the video? I don't know, but I think it's terrific.

rescue me

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Labels: Music Video, Student Work

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

The Skies Revolt - The Transitive Deficiency (Part One)

12/17/2007 • Permalink • 0 Comments •

Oh, lack of sleep is a brain cell killer. I sat on this one for a full day because I couldn't find the MySpace embed link! After a good night's sleep, whaddaya know, I find it after literally 5 seconds.

I digress, The Skies Revolt is a West Michigan based Indie Rock outfit. Dave Prindle, the lead singer, is also a Kendall student. This was his first real After Effects project, which right there is mindblowing. This isn't the quality of projects you usually see for someones first run in AE. He said he had some friends show him how the program worked and the video took only a couple of weeks to make. He's an AE Prodigy ;-)

The video contains a part one and part two, which combine two different styles (like Justin Timberlake and other artists have done recently). The idea came to Dave when he was creating a flyer with scissors for arms and was shooting laser beams into a city. The style was inspired by Michele Gondry's 'The Science of Sleep', Wes Anderson's 'The Life Aquatic' and also a The Cribs 'Mirror Kisses' video.

Dave says, "I created the scenery and characters shapes in Illustrator and
used Photoshop to add the textures. I used After Effects to arrange the scenes and Final Cut Pro to edit them together. I really liked using the cameras in After Effects to get more interesting angles. I liked using its color correction, too."

The Skies Revolt

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Labels: Music Video, Student Work

Posted by Michele Yamazaki

Styles P feat. Swizz Beats - Blow Your Mind

12/17/2007 • Permalink • 5 Comments •

Directed by Todd Angkasuwan and Styles P, they didn't skimp on visual eff

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Inspirations Archives

Inspirations

Symantec NetBackup Product Launch

Veritas Backup Exec 10 Event Opener

Tori Amos Greenscreen Contest Submission 2007

Freedom Fall (Clip)

Ryan Wheat Motion Graphics Demo

Penny and Ashtray

The Field Scene

Mumbai Central

Besuch der Holztiere