Found this Atist in an Issue Of Super 8 Today

I have no idea why I'm reading (on paper) a magazine about a dying technology, but this article on Martha Colburn had some striking images exemplifying her artistic style.

She has a video channel, and some excerpts are below:





Very political.

Some of her work has been shown at The Museum of the Moving Image among others.

Machinima/Animation Tools as Dollhouse Bitchfests

Like kids working out interaction issues by playing with dolls or action figures. Instead of writing a letter to the editor, these played out scenes are definitely designed to make a point. The computed generated voices allows anyone to whip one of these up.

Normally this is something you would complain about to your friends or family (or complain ABOUT them to someone else). When you use an animation tool to complain about it to the world, what do you call it?

Complainimation.


One of the more famous examples, Cinematographer vs. Producer.
Discussed here.


Fireman vs. Cop

I tried to find some examples in other tools but had no luck.

Rango

Is a damn fine animated movie (isn't it interesting that some of the best movies of recent years are animated?).

Surprisingly it's not Pixar nor Dreamworks, but Gore Verbinski and ILM (Pirates of the Caribbean director) and a great performance by Johnny Depp (how long before an acting award goes to an animated character?) that bring this movie to the stage.

The film was made in an unusual style with the actors performing ensemble-wise in a 'theater of the absurd' as opposed to the typical one person at a time in front of a microphone and served to capture great reactions. It blends the film together very well and I wouldn't be surprised if more animated films use this style.

Throw in a ton of movie references, one of the most unique beginnings to an animated film I've ever seen, some truly hallucinogenic scenes, fantastically detailed character design, and a great cast, and this could be the animated film to beat this year with Pixar releasing a cash cow in Cars 2. The king can be unseated.



IMDB
Official
Indiewire
Q&A With Verbinski
NYTimes

David O'Reilly's The External World

Is 17 minutes of brilliantly demented animation oddness all packed full of irony (literally), pop culture, and moments of brilliant insight. I was laughing so hard I almost fell out of my chair but I am quite sure that this will offend many viewers.

The External World from David OReilly on Vimeo.

I've mentioned Please Say Something before, another very odd animation from the same creative mind.

David O'Reilly site.

The Illusionist

Another fantastic animated film from Sylvain Chomet (whose last feature was The Triplets of Belleville ). The film is based on a story by Jacques Tati and is now nominated for an academy award (best animated feature). It is too bad that it is up against Pixar as this is a film worth seeing. The fantastic backgrounds and completely restrained animation coupled with the very sly humor lends itself to an appreciation of animation that is not all CG and bombastic over the top style.

The Illusionist
Uploaded by ThePlaylist. - Check out other Film & TV videos.

Go see this movie so more films like this get made.

Wikipedia

Official Site

IMDB

Fantastic Student Animation - The Return Of John Frum

Director's Notes covered this fantastic animated short by student Christian Schlaeffer. The imagination just explodes from this thesis project, The Return Of John Frum.

THE RETURN OF JOHN FRUM from christian schlaeffer on Vimeo.

I do hope to see more of his work in the future.

How To Train Your Dragon And Other 3D Things

I heard a lot about this movie so decided to check it out. Not bad. Not perfect either, but at least it felt like the filmmakers were actually trying, something that occurs in decreasing frequency these days. I watched the 3D version and found that it does not try to assault your senses like Avatar does, but that's fine.

It's better than Avatar in many other ways (like a story, characters that matter, coherence, etc.).
imdb
official site

Saw about a billion trailers too:
Shrek Forever After - the 4th - time travel? blech.
Toy Story 3 - Disney cashes in.
Despicable Me - Evil Genius type and 3 orphan girls = hilarity? This actually piqued my interest.
Legend of the Guardians - Apparently someone realized they could render feathers with such amazing accuracy that they decide to base an entire movie around the concept. I couldn't tell if I was looking at demo, a documentary, or a animated fictional movie.
Megamind - More Evil Genius. Nothing like a fad.

Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts

Another great year for animation.

If you get a chance to see the Oscar nominations (and they are online), then do so.

From CartoonBrew:

• Watch French Roast.
• Watch Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty.
• Watch The Lady and the Reaper.
• Watch A Matter of Loaf and Death.
• Watch Logorama.

French Roast was an amusing tale of some unusual patrons in a French cafe. I was impressed with the simplicity of this short and the effective camera.

Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty is a hilarious short dominated by the great voice acting of the creator Kathleen O'Rourke.

The Lady and the Reaper - this is my pick to win - a bittersweet tale of a woman near death and a doctor who fights to save her. A slapstick tale of death!?

Wallace and Gromit are back in A Matter of Loaf and Death - the typically excellent clay figurines are in a new caper. Nothing new here.

Logorama is the most subversive of all of these films and I was surprised it got nominated. It SHOULD win, but it will not. A dark tale told completely through the use of corporate logos/mascots it pits a foul-mouthed Michelin Man against Ronald McDonald playing like Heath Ledger's The Joker, but the real star is the constant hammering of the corporate presence into every space in the film.

Cinematical review.

Several other shorts are playing along with the Oscar nominees (see Playback for a list).

One Man's Eight Year Journey To Make An Animated Short

What a fascinating tale on the trials, tribulations, and obsessive compulsive disorders required to make a short animated film. Starting last century and continuing for eight years, this story is a warning to those who want to make an animation with original art assets. Perhaps told to small children before they go to bed.

Trailer for the film.



The short won Best Animation at the LA International Short Film Festival.

Muvizu 3D

Muvizu is another application/website to create your own animation and share it with others.

Definitely cartoon-like.



Another animation product from the UK, this time from Scotland

Ultimate Muscle Roller Legend

This animated video makes me both laugh and cringe at the same time. A tough feat.



Just, odd!

More info here.

Serendipity vs. Intellectualizing

Listening to an interesting podcast from American Cinematographer and heard something that struck me. It was about the difference between having to intellectualize the entire movie ahead of time when working in animation/computer graphics on the one hand and on the other being able to capture spontaneous moments and serendipitous events when recording live footage and actors, even after many takes. About the only thing left in animation where you can do that is voice recording.

Machinima, at least in some cases, can give you some of that back (depending on engine, and puppeteered vs. scripted recording). Not much, but a tiny bit.

I was also fascinated to find out that Kubrick would do many, many takes in order to find that magic moment, that perfect take that could then be dropped into the movie during editing whereas Werner Herzog is like "if it's not done in 5 or 6 takes, then there's something wrong" and he would jump into the situation and mix things up in order to get it right.

Stylistic Animation Based On Call Of Duty

The Call - based on Call of Duty, and utilizing the voice and sound effects from within the game, uses entirely new images and animation to very cool effect. Made by simply 'One'.



Very comic-like.
Originally found via MTV Multiplayer.

Of course, when you make animations based on the game 'Call of Duty' and the title for the videos is 'The Call' and 'Duty', and your name is 'One', then it is extremely difficult to find anything more in the morass of information on the net. If anyone has any more information, it would be greatly appreciated.

Second LIfe Machinima

Busy, busy, busy, busy.

But, these two tidbits (both via NWN) might make Second Life machinima more interesting:

Real time shadows as shown in this video:



And Animeeple, with the capability to import your SL avatar and animate and then export.

You May Have Heard Of World Builder

Others have.

Well forget about it.

Worldwide destruction is so much more fun.

Beware the nanobots!

Two Docs

Both dealing with very horrific experiences but in different ways.

Waltz with Bashir is getting numerous awards and buzz, some of it due to the unusual nature of it being an animated documentary (Wikipedia, IMDB, web). It explores the remembered, misremembered, and forgotten experiences of Israeli soldiers during the invasion of Lebanon and the Sabra and Shatila massacres. The name Bashir in the title refers to the Phalangist leader Bashir Gemayel whose assassination led in part to the tragedy explored in the film.













Trouble the Water (IMDB, web) is another doc dealing with tragedy: Hurricane Katrina and the vicious aftermath. Using footage shot by a survivor (Kim Rivers Roberts) who decided to stay when the storm hits, the film shows the utter devastation caused by the natural force of the hurricane. As we all know, the destruction caused by human ignorance, neglect, unpreparedness, and hubris turns out to be far greater. Following the survivors both during and after the storm results in a fantastic story that everyone in America should see.













Of the two I think Trouble the Water is the better film. Bashir deals with horrific experiences, but in the reliving and retelling of them. There appears to be no consequences to the exploration of memories of a horrific event, and apparently little long term repercussions to those who witnessed them besides bad dreams and memory gaps. In Trouble the Water, the repercussions are real and immediate, both good and bad. Although the plight of poverty and racism taints the entire Katrina event, there still appears in this film a thread of hope. Bashir never transcends its animated reimaginings, and in fact, abandons the them at the end, something that I think arguably concedes that the way they were used is flawed.

Still, I highly recommend both films. Both are nominated for Oscars, although in different categories, so they both could win.

Canadian Animation

The National Film Board of Canada has put a portion of its archive of films online.

Of course a great many are animations (usually shorts), and many have been nominated or won Academy Awards.

Two classics are The Big Snit and The Cat Came Back.

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There's also more experimental films like Two Sisters, and Mindscape.

Great news for film buffs and Canadians alike.

Aniboom Awards

The winners have been announced with the top prize of $25K going to Sebastian's Voodoo by Joaquin Baldwin (note, the $25K is for a development deal with Aniboom). I really liked the winner, unlike some of the others.

Xtra! Xtra! Read All About It!

With subheading: if you can type, then you can make movies.

Similar to Go!Animate, which I talked about earlier, Xtra Normal (currently in beta) provides a very simple interface through a web browser to a virtual animation studio. In the case of Xtra Normal, the tool provide three dimensional sets and characters that look like Lego people (at least some of the characters do).

The bonus is the text to speech engine that provides the capability to add spoken dialog to your movies. There's a number of voices in different languages available (male or female; english, german, french, etc.), but I could only get one of the voices to work.

I really like the simplicity in the interface, especially the drag and drop part of adding camera cuts or animations directly into the script itself (wish other engines worked this way). Want to add a cut to a character's face just as he's about to deliver that emotional monologue? Now you can do it by adding the camera icon directly before his Oscar worthy text and choosing which angle to put the camera at to catch the virtual tears as they fall.

Just for fun I put this together in about 20 minutes:



Worst Nightmare.

Web 2.0 Animation

Go!Animate is upon us. Now anyone can create, animate, and share their creations.

It's so simple even I made one (which will likely piss somebody off)!

Try direct link now!

Try embed below:


NewTeeVee post.