Luís Azevedo: In this video essay we look at how Wes Anderson’s style has changed since making his first animation feature The Fantastic Mr Fox. Featuring films such as Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Isle of Dogs.
See also: The Art of Storytelling: Free online course from Pixar and Khan Academy
Mateusz Urbanowicz:
Just me making another DIY solution for my work. This time a stopwatch that counts time not in seconds and milliseconds but seconds and frames.
See also: Mateusz Urbanowicz’s incredible watercolour paintings of Tokyo storefronts
Directed by David Lewandowski. Previously: going to the store and late for meeting.
Stick around until the end of this video for some ads for the incredible goods on offer in the official store of Lewandowski’s channel: goingtothe.store.
The future of independent, artisanal, high-effort nonsense on YouTube is uncertain. I appreciate your choice to support this work with the purchase of my unusual merch.
Enjoy the intersection of luxury and comfort in this Japanese-style body pillow. The 160 x 50cm pillowcase is made from durable, silky 2-way tricot material.
Remember that time you watched that YouTube video? Why not commemorate the experience with a premium chess set carved in ethically sourced arctic mammoth ivory and rare meteorite alloy. Handcrafted by artisans specializing in these elements for a combined 38 years, this product reflects a dedication to premium YouTube memorabilia.
There are other more modest items too, like towels and pillow cases.
TechCrunch: Pixar’s previous Khan Academy courses include topics like virtual cameras, effects and animations, but this is the first to focus on the less technical aspects of movie creation.
A stylish animated short film.
See also: The most recent Nerdwriter video essay, AKIRA: How To Animate Light
Kaptainkristian: A look at the animated series that used vulgarity in language to reflect the reality of our lives.
“As a former child myself, I can tell you that awareness overpowers ignorance.”
See also: The Philosophy of South Park — Wisecrack explores South Park’s themes of politically correct (PC) culture, gentrification, advertising, social justice, safe spaces and narcissism.
Explore the origin story of Overwatch’s inquisitive transforming robot in our fifth animated short: The Last Bastion!
A short film by Mattis Dovier.
“After that, I always had the same strange dream. I could see myself lying on the floor, restless, with electronic cables springing out of my body.”
(via digg)
Short film commissioned by Channel 4’s Random Acts in collaboration with It’s Nice That
What happens when you take something normal and turn it into anime? This!
Vox: The GIF was invented in 1989. And since its beginning, the GIF has been used to make money. At first, GIFs were sold as placeholders for the web of the ’90s and early 2000s. But after web design became informed by professional standards, gifs lost their role as placeholders. Eventually they became tools of expression, turning snippets of video from popular culture into bite size communication devices. Today, a few big tech companies are trying to capitalize on this new use of GIFs, partnering with brands who want their content to be used as communication.
Mother’s Basement: Looking for a new SciFi anime to watch? Here are five more obscure shows that you can really sink your teeth into.
Hyper-Reality presents a provocative and kaleidoscopic new vision of the future, where physical and virtual realities have merged, and the city is saturated in media.
(via)
One vision of our AR future.
Thomas Lucas created these two second moments of depicting ways in which we might meet our ends in space. I don’t know how, but I really feel like this should be a series!
See also: The Philosophy of Rick and Morty
A quick look at Pixar’s approach to storytelling and character development.
Travel through a steampunk time machine back to 1930’s America in this fantastic animation by Alexey Zakharov that uses historic photographs with camera projection techniques to great effect.
(via Laughing Squid)
It’s a travel back in time with a little steampunk time machine. The main part of this video was made with Camera projection based on photos.
Behind the scenes on Thunderbirds 1965: a project to produce three new episodes of the classic television show Thunderbirds – exactly the way it was done in the 60s!
“Thunderbirds is a sixties view of the future and of America by people who had never been to either.”
3,378 backers pledged £218,412 on Kickstarter last year to resurrect Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s classic Thunderbirds using original voice tracks and retro filmmaking techniques.
Anthony Cerniello: I attempted to create a person in order to emulate the aging process. The idea was that something is happening but you can’t see it but you can feel it, like aging itself.
Anthony Cerniello took photos of similar-looking family members at a reunion, from the youngest to the oldest, and edited them together in a video to create a nearly seamless portrait of a person aging in only a few minutes.
(via kottke.org)
Through scientific study and understanding, we deepen our connection to the natural world.
A collaboration between Kevin Dart, Stéphane Coëdel, Nelson Boles, and David Kamp.
Gallery 1988: Kevin Dart “Science & Nature”
Through scientific study and understanding, we deepen our connection to the natural world.
An insane remix of The Shining by Nick DenBoer and Davy Force.
Official selection TIFF40 and Sundance 2016!
See also: Star Wars v. Star Trek & Bartkira the Animated Trailer
Disney Research Hub: We present a method to continuously blend between multiple facial performances of an actor, which can contain different facial expressions or emotional states. As an example, given sad and angry video takes of a scene, our method empowers a movie director to specify arbitrary weighted combinations and smooth transitions between the two takes in post-production.
(via)
Co.Design: Microsoft Research, working with the University of Hong Kong and the University of Tokyo, has a remarkable new technology that it calls “Autocomplete hand drawn animations.”
Very cool!
How would these great book covers from the past look like when set in motion?
Perhaps a glimpse at our eBook future?
(via)
Iskander Krayenbosch:
Since the beginning of time people are fascinated by stories of hero’s. But did you know there is a fundamental structure that’s lies beneath all these tales of fantasy. Joseph Campbell, a famous mythologist, was the first to discover similarities within all ancient myths. He called it the Monomyth. According to him there are 17 stages in which every hero has to walk through one way or the other. In the hero’s journey 12 of these stages are visualized by using iconic blockbuster movies that follow the same structure of storytelling.
Lewis Bond: Fantasy and realism blend perfectly in the world of Miyazaki. Today we look at the genius behind it all.
Lots to appreciate in these films.
Stuart Brown’s five part exploration of the Cold War’s effect on video games.
Channel 4 is today launching a major brand redesign. Masterminded by 4Creative, Channel 4’s in-house creative agency, the new identity is brave, bizarre, and striking.
Shot by Jonathan Glazer, the idents tell the story of the channel’s blocks being discovered in caves, mined from the ground, and refined in labs. They’re natural, elemental curiosities.
“The idents present the blocks as kryptonite-like. They tell the story of their origin and how they have a powerful impact on the world around them. Just as Channel 4 does. It is a story that we shall build on.”
It’s Nice That: New Channel 4 identity by creative dream team of 4Creative, Jonathan Glazer, Neville Brody and DBLG
Two new typefaces have been designed by Neville Brody. The first is Chadwick, a rounded, warm, corporate typeface. Its forms are heavily geometric and designed for readability. The second typeface is Horseferry, an unusual, disruptive display text. Horseferry uses the basic forms of Chadwick, but blends in the blocks from the ‘4‘ logo.
“The broadcast media landscape is a much more complicated place than it was ten years ago, so there’s a need to stand out more than ever before.” — John Allison, 4Creative
The next world war will not be invisible.
After the success of STUXNET, a virus written by the United States to destroy Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, the U.S. government could no longer deny it was developing cyber weapons meant to do physical damage. With US companies and agencies under constant attack from state-sponsored Chinese hackers, it is only a matter of time before tensions boil over and more sensitive infrastructure is targeted. As more or our devices (cars, homes, etc) become connected, we will become more and more vulnerable to the physical threat of cyber warfare.
More stills on Behance
Equally awesome process video after the jump →
Hyperallergic interviewed Vancouver-based art director and motion designer Peter Quinn:
“PQ FUI toys is meant for those situations where you just have to drop in some Fake UI bullshit to make something look a pinch more interesting, adding a little sparkle, or just saving yourself 10 minutes.”
Nerdwriter discusses Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell after last week’s exploration of Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men. Both video essays look at the backgrounds of these films and what they reveal about their respective worlds.
Sockrotation 