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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.
Based on Madonna's ever changing look in the 80s, filmmaker/painter Rowena True uses stop motion, an old TV and Madonna videos to create a piece of art/fun. I'd love to see this a bit longer with the Madonna of the past 20 years also. Definitely need some 90s cone boobs and slicked back pony tail... wouldn't that be hilarious on a Barbie!? Okay, maybe it's just me.
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).
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.
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.
This is one of the coolest stop-motion animations I've seen in a while. I can't imagine the planning that went into this! This is for South African telecom company MTN. Cape Town's Wicked Pixels did the commercial.
I've been posting info here and there about Get Outta My Face - a non-profit org that teaches kids to eat well and to block out the corporate junk food ads and messages that we are bombarded with daily. GOMF is taking videos by students about nutrition and healthy lifestyles and putting them into this massive collection of videos. It's to raise awareness for what we all know is a huge problem in the US and elsewhere. They're still taking videos so if you're young enough to participate, please do! Or, help your kids make a video.
Winner of Best of Show and Best 72 hour shootout at BendFilm's Future Filmaker's Festival.
This video took 31 hours to make: 20.5 to film and 10.5 to edit.
They've done a lot of really cool hand drawn animations and some stop motion at the end. It's a great video.
Axel Rossler and his girlfriend, Ellen, are really into country music and they're both from Frankfurt, Germany... not exactly the hotbed of country music that one might think of... maybe Frankfort, Kentucky! When I think of music in Germany (okay, I know I'm totally dating myself here), I think of the Scorpions' power ballad Wind of Change or Madchen by Lucilectric, which was sooo popular when I was in Dusseldorf in 1992. Or, worse, David Hasselhoff! Ahhh, what do I know about music in Germany... not much at all, obviously. I'm so sad.
Okay, back to the reason for this post. Country Trouble is an incredible stop motion piece, created with hundreds of photos and 3D layers in After Effects. They took lots of photos at Axel's house. Axel said, "There must have been 400 layers or so, haha.. but I like the fact that After Effects still works great, even with tons of layers."
After finishing the house, they took photos of themselves in front of a green screen. Axel adds "organizing the horse was a little bit complicated over here". They took the green screen photos into AE, keyed them and made them 3D layers. They used the AE camera with some wiggle added to it and finished with some color correction.
So, yeah, it's all stills! I really thought the dance scene was video and they used a posterize time effect to give it the look. That dance sequence, what can I say? Wow! It's wunderbar.
Stash Media Stash 33 trailer came out earlier this month. Man, this is some seriously cool work. I'm too lazy to re-write the description:
Fun, in all its shades and guises, is the operative word for Stash 33.
For instance: we open the main program with complete bunny-mad chaos from Pleix and MacGuff for Groove Armada, and then trample on through Psyop’s hip-rebel-comedy for Fanta, HSI’s deadpan take on Reyka Vodka, manic pirate/bovine/bicyclist stop motion for Cravendale from Nexus, crazed MTV Asia work from JL Design in Taiwan, Wilfrid Brimo going berserk for V Energy drink, Han Huggebrooge’s unhinged vignettes for Dutch TV, Make’s extremely flammable chipmunks, very curious characters from Curious Pictures for Crunch and we cap it all with a surreal and utterly original bit of action-lunacy about courage, show business and inter-media love created at Supinfocom by Corentin Laplatte, Samuel Deroubaix and Jerome Dernoncourt,,, you get the idea – check below for the full list of contributors.
Directed by Jared Eberhardt, the new CSS video is super cute with stop-motion bunnies getting wasted and passing out. It's got an organic feel and is very clever. I give it 5 stars.
The footage does look like a student project and is not very well lit, but the stop motion animation of the LEGO men is really well done and is pretty funny. The Lego guy tunneling into the burger bun is awesome! I enjoyed it very much. Nice work, Nicks.
A pretty impressive piece from Gill Biddle and Ross Phillips, second year animation students. They used After Effects and Flash, with stop motion and live action footage.
On the Kris Lefcoe-directed clip, the barely concealed likes of Ronald McDonald, Tony the Tiger, and the Care Bears appear to have taken Worang's advice. Some cute anarchists try to party in a forest that's about to become an Enormart, but meanwhile your corporate-sponsored childhood memories are taking firing practice, running obstacle courses, and of course hacking up the damn hippies with chainsaws. 'Cause you fucking know, Ronald don't play that.
Ankle Injuries is a song that I've loved for a long time. It's just so catchy when they chant "Fujiya Miyagi" over and over. I had a feeling that the band wasn't Japanese and this video confirms my suspicions.
Director Wade Shotter does this great stop motion effect with dice, reminiscent of one of my all time favorite videos, the White Stripes Fell in Love with a Girl (directed by Michel Gondry). I love the part with the kids going down the twirly slide and on the swing. You know a video is going to be great when they feature Space Invaders.
This one is a couple of months old, but my assistant, Chris, kept singing about a cootie shot. Now I know what he's talking about. Again, stop motion. Stop motion is everywhere. Some people has such steady hands. Apparently they do not drink as much coffee as I do. The stop motion is really well done, especially the dance moves.
Precious Time is from British band, the Maccabees. I can't say I like the song, but the video, directed by Sam Brady, is fun.
Is stop motion hotter than habeneros lately or what!? Seems like it's popping up everywhere. This one has some clever tracking and animated cutouts too.
One Man Wrecking Machine has cute stuffed animal characters.The cotton cloud effects are pretty neat.
It was directed by Drew Lightfoot at Revolver Film Company, made the stop-motion video with literally no help from the band. Drew Lightfood was Tim Burton's righthand man on Corpse Bride, according to Brian Rosenworcel, Guster's drummer.
Floris: Metalosis Maligna, which came out last year, is a scary documentary slash short film about medical implants gone crazy. There's lots of cool 3D and some stellar compositing and tracking work. The man with the metalosis maligna, with his body being replaced by "metal tissue" and the stop motion portions are really impressive. Wow. I'm blown away.
The Dutch duo called Microbia, Floris Kaayk and Sil van der Woerd, produced this amazing piece.
Official video for Marble House, directed by Chris Hopewell. Some awesome stop motion work. Man, I just wouldn't have the patience to do such intense stop motion work. Cute rodents. This one has been out for about six months, but I seem to have missed it. I do love the Knife's music.
We're looking for a few good animators, editors, students or even just fans of visual effects to contribute to this blog. Not HTML skills necessary, but a good eye for the most ground-breaking and rule-breaking techniques and styles out there. We want eye candy! Yes, we do.
Interested? Drop me an email and tell me why you should be considered. You would be expected to make one post per week, but you can post more, as long as they're quality videos. You're welcome to add your thoughts and opinions about the video, too.
Thése Sur la Typographie. Another nice typography project, this one is by Julien Vallée, an artist from Montréal, Québec. I love how it the audio and video mesh so perfectly. I can't imagine how long it took to put together all of this stop motion footage.
"Reflexion based on the famously proclaimed Kurt Schwitters 'Thesis on Typography'. A stop-motion project inspired of the Dada mouvement, demonstrating that the over-used of graphical elements in a typographical composition may cause unreadability of the content."
This piece comes from Dean Denell at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. I envy students. At hand is a daily task to create for the sake of creating without borders, rules or clients. Especially here, where you'll see a mix of traditional animation, stop motion, clay, and motion graphics. Easily caught up in my "branding" and "image" projects, sometimes I lose focus on the 'fun' part. That's what I see here. I think Dean had fun with this.
This band totally sounds like Dizzee Rascall, but the tune is catchy as hell (and maybe a bit too vulgar for the kids and the pure of heart) and it will blow your speakers. I'm digging the video. Directed by Bob Harlow and co-created by Tim Cubbitt. Cut out band members over top of graphic backgrounds, lots of depth of field and 3D layering. I have to say that it is a bit reminicent of the Eskimo Disco 'Picture Perfect' video but I like the Hadouken! video a bit more. Hey, I'm a rock 'n roll girl at heart.
Word on the street is that HunterGatherer infused photographed paper and wood textures with After Effects to create this fun, stop-motion style commercials for AMP Energy Drink. The look is organic, with the textures and cutout style of characters, reminicent of early South Park, but much slicker and loaded with clever details. I love the cool color palette and the use of cameras and depth of field. Amazing work, indeed.
This one came from our good pal Dan Warvi. It's a freakin' cool stop motion piece. I really wonder how they did the part with Tony and Paul flying through the air.
Richard Coldicott - I woz ere is a ultra-cool piece of stop-motion animation using paint and lots of it. It takes place in a basement, not unlike the one I am standing in right now. Great soundtrack too (DJ Shadow).
Liam Finn - Second Chance and Gather to the Chapel
