Wallpaper* Animation Competition

 Wallpaper* and Barbican are holding a animation competition and have whittled the contenders down to 6. Your vote will choose the final winner. The competition, Watch Me Move: The Animation Show will run till September 11 with a special screening at Barbican September 8th. I love Betty by Jessica Wainwright, not only for the narrative but the subtle effects and the giant cuppa!

Alma, A Short Film

I woke up this morning to discover this wonderful short film Alma, a beautifully designed and executed animation by director Rodrigo Blaas. Since it's release in 2009, the film has received many awards and has over 1 million views on Vimeo.  The character design and animation are awesome, the storyline a little ominous, but delightful none the less... watch out for those puppet makers!


Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

 

"Rodrigo Blaas has worked in animation for more than ten years, in Spain and in the United States. Seizing the possibility of directing his first independent short film, Rodrigo Blaas asked some of the best artists in their field to take part in this independent project: French animator Bolhem Bouchiba, character designer Carlos Grangel and Sergio Pablos, ArtDirector Alfonso Blaas, music composer Mastretta and sound designer Tom Myers."

The world of Andy Hixon

The work of Andy Hixon an UK illustrator, designer, sculpture and animator really amazes me. His eerie yet beautiful sculptures draw me into a world that is unique of it's own. When you see them juxtaposed into real world settings, the effect is stirring. Check out more of his work here or visit his blog.

This video for the band Woven, is pretty sweet.

Sometime the Stars

This is a sweet video by Ari Gibson and Jason Pamment  for the title track of The Audreys’ new album ‘Sometimes The Stars’ and is about a lost girl's journey through a surreal landscape, and her yearning to make a connection in this distant yet strangely familiar world.

‘at a basic level it’s about someone suffering from a loss and their journey towards making a connection.’

I love the gray monotones and the simplistic design. It's really beautiful and the song is very lovely!

The Milk Scanner- 3D Fluid Scanning

Creating DIY 3D images is getting easier and easier and Friedrich Kirschner started his process with milk and legos. He was also featured at the Transmediale Festival this year.

"This 3D Fluid Scanning project originally started out as a 3D scanner using milk, but has since developed into many forms and sizes of capturing real world objects using all sorts of household materials. The basic idea behind this process is that you can capture the silhouette of an object easily when it is surrounded by a high contrast fluid, such as milk or ink.

By capturing the silhouette of an object at different stages of submersion, one can generate slices, that, if properly stacked together, can be interpreted as 3D data. This data can then be used in animation software or as basis for 3D printing. " Via Transmediale

To start experimenting yourself you can download the software here 

Cool.

Oh, Hello SIFF trailer

Seattle International Film Festival runs May 20- June 13 and is one of the largest film festivals in North America. Oh, Hello the Seattle based studio created the trailer for the festival as well as several bumpers. I like all the film references that are featured and how they've captured the concept in an illustrative style.

Inside Out- Go inside film, get outside yourself. Check it out

"We tried to load as many film references into the background and foreground of each scene as we could. Another call out to film fans was to try and incorporate the spirit of all these amazing film posters that fans are now drawing and posting on their flickr, deviantart, facebook, etc. Our take on that was to animate the entire spot, creating something new yet recognizable."

Production Co.: Oh, Hello
Creative directors: Dan Brown, Thai Tran
2D Animators: Dan Brown, Thai Tran, Yassir Rasan, Lee Grambush
3D Animators: Lee Grambush
Compositing: Dan Brown, Thai Tran, Lee Grambush
Rotosope and illustration: Yassir Rasan, Leslie Ann Kam
Producer: Nathan F. Barr

via motionographer

I am not an artist

Love these cool animated gifs from I am not an artist created by Johnny Kelly and Matthew Cooper for design agency Soon In Toyko.