"Hapless Hooligan in 'Still Moving'" is what happens when comics and dance collide. Award-winning graphic artist Art Spiegelman and Pilobolus dance troupe create an amazing tale based on early comics. The dancers recreate the story by interacting with Spiegelman's art.
Tokyo/Glow from Nathan Johnston on Vimeo.
Happy Olympics everyone. We introduced you to the super cute mascots back in November, but don't miss meeting Mukmuk, the first official sidekick to the Olympic mascots. Check out his adorable video.
Sometimes cute beats all at Pica + Pixel. Mix surf music with amigurumi stop-motion animation and it is too cute not to share.
Illustrator Jon Klassen worked with director Marc Craste of Studio AKA to create this amazing animation for the 2010 Winter Olympics for BBC.
Check out this awesome animation from the 2008 Olympics created by Jamie Hewlett (of Tank Girl and Gorillaz fame) and Damon Albarn.
[Found via Drawn]
I wouldn't normally post a full 23 minutes of video but this new Disney animated short is amazing. The brainchild of beloved John Lassiter of Pixar fame, you have to watch this to fully appreciate it. So, grab your lunch to go today and park yourself in front of your computer. You'll thank me -- even you grinches out there. Warning: you may laugh out loud and get weird looks from your co-workers.
We posted about Capacity.tv's rebrand of Cartoon Network back in January but I thought you'd enjoy seeing the video montage of all the interstitial clips. Watch it all the way through for cool Halloween and Jedi bits!
Four minutes of stop-action brilliance about a papier mache wolf/man and a papier mache pig. Really, its amazing!
[The winning motion graphics short for the Digital Design Tournament here in NYC by our good friend Jake Guttormssom.]]
Our good friend Jake Guttormssom!!! YAY!! Jake participated here in NYC this past weekend and WON the motion graphics section of the tournament. We blogged about this contest back in January and we are excited to know one of the winners. Now we are going to let Jake tell his in his own words what happened and how he went about creating his masterpiece.
"Hi, My name is Jake Guttormsson. I just won the Motion Design Competition at the 2009 Cut & Paste Digital Design Tournament In New York City.
It was a live, one day event for 2d Designers, 3d Modelers, and Motion Designers at Webster Hall on Saturday, March 21st. Cut & Paste is a multi-city Tournament holding events in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Boston, New York, Toronto, Chicago, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Barcelona, Milan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Sydney. It will culminate in the 2009 Global Championship to be held June 20th at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York.
My portion of the contest began with the orientation a week before the tourney. We all met at the Cut & Paste offices in beautiful central Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There we received some training on the Wacom Cintiq 21UX pen tablet monitors (Wacom is a major sponsor of the event, and we each got on of these touch screen monitors to work on for game day.) We then went through the ground rules, we were able to bring 4 prepared assets to the competition (psd's, video clips, 3d models, etc.) as well as any number of royalty free audio clips. No animation could be done before the day of the contest. We have 8 hours to create and render an animation no longer than 15 seconds.
The next day we got our theme which was "The History of Music." A few things I tried to keep in my mind while I was making it: 1) This was going on in front of a live audience; 2)they've been drinking; 3) they've been there for 2 hours already, while they're watching the other competitions, they've been listening to a Dj. I tried to keep my idea simple and easy to read, my audio minimal, the animation fast paced and punchy. And most importantly, it had to be funny. I also tried to design it so it could be built in layers, meaning I could outline the basic premiss, then go back adding more and more embellishments until I ran out of time. This way if it took longer than I anticipated, I would at least have something to show, with a beginning middle and end."
Check out Jake's award winning short above and get ready to cheer him on in the worldwide tournament in June.
Check out this great stop motion video by Oren Lavie for your end of the week inspiration. Learn more about how it was made on Lavie's myspace page.
[Clockwise from top: Oktapodi, Lavatory (Lovestory), La Masion en Petits Cubes, Presto and This Way Up.]
Tonight my husband and I checked out all the Oscar nominated short animated films at IFC Center in Manhattan. We watched all five nominated films along with four other acclaimed shorts. All the Oscar nominated films turned out to be captivating, smart and well-done. Some where funny like Oktapodi, Lavatory (Lovestory), This Way Up (small snippet here) or Presto by Pixar. While La Masion en Petits Cubes was soul-searching, introspective and bittersweet (small snippet here). I think La Masion en Petits Cubes should win while my husband voted for Presto. Another winner for us was Bill Plympton's Hot Dog which wasn't nominated, but we loved it anyways.
While catching up on my cartoon intake this weekend, I noticed that Cartoon Network rolled out eye-catching and smart interstitials and network bumps. Capacity, a design studio out of California, turns out to the be the creative force behind the new branding. Capacity partnered with Kidrobot to create cute, blank figures called Noods which then take on the colors, personalities and characteristics of various Cartoon Network stars. Check out their homepage for a great montage of all the branded bits.
I am super excited for this movie!! Coraline is a beautifully detailed stop-motion film directed by Henry Selick, who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, (yay!) and based on Neil Gaiman book (double yay!). See the low res version above or head over to Trailer Addict to see the bigger, crisper and more detailed trailer in HD (way worth it – go!). The story is about a little girl who finds a mirror world where everything seems better… or is it?
Today, I am researching Kawaii, which is the term used to describe that hyper-cute, super flat graphics style so popular in Japan. This led me to some cute, and when I say cute, I mean Cute Overload might think it was too much. Or maybe not.
While Stickers and Donuts is not entirely dedicated to cute with a capital C, this is one of the most enjoyable blogs I've stumbled across lately. A little design, a smattering of decor and fashion and a dash of Kawaii. What's not to love?
UltraKawaii collects mostly cute pet photos but the Stunt Kitty short cartoons and the Hi'Ya Bunnies were too cute to overlook.
Are you cuted-out yet?
[Art by Scott Campbell for the Totoro Forest Project]
Just outside of Tokyo is an urban forest called Sayama Forest. It is believed to be the inspiration for legendary animator Miyazaki's film My Neighbor Totoro. Due to urban sprawl over the last 30 years, the forest has diminished in size. In an effort to protect the remaining woods, Miyazaki set up the Totoro no Furusato National Fund, a trust help to preserve the park and promote awareness of environmental issues.
In an effort to spread awareness of the project and raise funds, The Totoro Forest Project hosted a charity auction of paintings, drawings and sculptures created by almost 200 artists, cartoonists and animators all inspired by the iconic film, My Neighbor Totoro. The project is currently on exhibition and the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. The artwork will be exhibited through February 8, 2009.
A book featuring the work in the exhibition has recently been published but according to the Totoro Forest Project blog, it sold out in a matter of minutes. Hopefully, it will be reprinted soon.
Pica + Pixel are huge fans of the animator/director/writter Hayao Miyazaki films so we are excited to find a trailer to his new movie, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, that was released in Japan this past July. The story is about goldfish who wants to be a human and it will hopefully come to America in 2009.
Animator David OReily created an 3D animation that looks like it is jumping off the screen of the iPhone. The animation utilizes the iPhone's built-in gyroscope to help create the awesome animation.
[via Cartoon Brew]
New Kayne West video done by Murakami. It reached #1 on the iTunes video store within one day of it's release. Super cool.
The BBC did their Olympic opening title sequences right this year. They took portions of a 2-minute animation by Gorillaz creator and animator, Jamie Hewlett, and used it to start the Olympic programs. Check out the full animation above.
Going by the tag name of blublu, the illustrations that make up his work (and this animation) are dark, creepy, highly imaginative and wild. Watching his animation is like watching a living, breathing sketch that's constantly moving and morphing into something else. They are simply amazing. The animation is called "MUTO", filmed in Buenos Aires and completed earlier this year.
[Thanks to Maura at Fragmented for this post and link!]
