London-based Up the Resolution have crafted some amazing creative in the form of commercials, music videos, and virals for clients both large and small. There is some really amazing work on their reel and there is also some great behind the scenes footage on their site.
Wow, crazy audiovisuals at Club Transmediale 2008 by Rishaug & Watz concert at Generator.x 2.0. It’s like my favorite classic 70’s graphic design come to life and set to music.
Radiohead has partnered with Aniboom and is currently holding a contest to create a 1 minute animated video using any of the songs off of Radiohead’s current album, In Rainbows. Robert Hodgin from Flight 404 decided to toss his hat in the ring with the beautiful bit of animation created with Processing above.
I saw Iron Man over the weekend and it was fantastic. It really was a great movie. Pure entertainment.
Something that jumped out at me was the closing credits. They were spectacularly designed and invoked memories of Tron from my youth. It was a testament to the amount of work put into the movie that they didn’t even stop at the credits.
The sequence was designed by Motionographer Danny Yount working for the really amazing motion firm Prologue. It’s a great sequence that makes you think future but calls on inspiration for the past. The combination of the two is what makes it classic.
You can watch it in high quality here.
Full Credits
Title designer: Danny Yount
Design & Animation: Ilya Abulhanov, Danny Yount, Alex Hansen, DongHo Lee, Dave Rinder
Compositing & Finishing: Anthony Mabin
Post Supervisor : Seth Kleinberg
Producer : Ellen Stafford
Executive Producer : Kyle Cooper
Help the Honey Bees is a collaborative project on the part of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for Häagen-Daz. Goodby contracted motion experts Psyop to animate a piece they call ‘Opera’, in order to raise awareness of the plight of the honey bee. It’s a wonderful project that encourages participation on actively working to solve the problem of the disappearing bees. A website was created along with the animation above. You can view the full credits on the project here and a higher resolution format of the video above on Psyop’s website. It’s nice to see a company like Häagen-Daz step forward to create a project like this.
Discovered via Computer Love
1st Ave Machine is an NYC based CGI VFX/Animation studio and production company specializing in advertising, music videos, broadcast and feature film. They are known for their hyper-realistic organic animation. The studio was founded by animation and live action director Arvind Palep and executive producer Serge Patzak.
The stills above are from a recent AT&T commercial. The realism of the graphics have to be seen to be believed. They are absolutely stunning. Amazing work.
I saw this a while back and forgot to post it. The wildly-talented Wyld Stallyons recently teamed up with doodler-extraordinaire, Jon Burgerman. They created an animation utilizing Jon’s unique characters to promote the release of his new book. It’s interesting to see his characters animated. We contracted Burgerman at Cactus, to cover the Own Your C ride vehicle with his characters. He was very easy to work with and is a really talented guy. Check out the animation and look into picking up a copy of his book.
You can view the animation at Wyld Stallyons website.
Dreamers Ink Aesthetics is one of those websites that just loads everything up front and kind of slams your compute with data. Be ready for it when you click the link. Also be ready for a lot of really great work created for the likes of Shilo and Brand New School. The work, which consists primarily of motion boards, comes from the mind of a talented designer by the name of Mitchel Paone who hails out of Brooklyn, NYC.
Shilo launched a new site this morning that appears to be their blog. It offers up an RSS feed of their latest work. The site is titled, ‘We Make It Good‘, which isn’t off the mark if you are familiar with Shilo’s work. Shilo is led by directors Jose Gomez and Andre Stringer.
They have been riding the bleeding edge of motion design for several years now and Jose is a very down to Earth all around nice guy. You can’t go wrong working with them from what I have heard from industry insiders. They are an Emmy award winning studio with offices now in New York, New York, and Del Mar, California.
Psyop has finished a follow up spot to their ground breaking Happiness Factory commercial from more than a year back. The original spot won almost every industry award imaginable. How they could even attempt to follow such an impactful spot with another that is equal in quality really warrants merit. The new spot is every bit as good as the first and is really incredible when considering how much work must have gone into it’s creation. I can’t think of many other television commercials that have been responsible for creating such a rich 3d environment.
You can watch the new spot here and even download an HD version.
Here is some of John Whitney’s 1961 showreel entitled “Catalog.” John worked on films of numerous categories and collaborated with some pivotal players in the film & design industry, including Saul Bass on Hitchcock‘s “Vertigo” title sequence. It might not look like much to us now, but 40 & 50 years back this was a pretty big step in the direction of what most of us refer to as motion graphics or oscilloscopy. John had a pretty unique sense of creativity, not only in his output, but in his production techniques as well. He used a mechanical analogue computer that he invented to do most of these animations. It’s kind of amazing to really see where these sort of things start up and gain their momentum. I constantly try to remind myself of the importance of somethings original meaning and how people can come together because of it. These combined endeavors can affect, not only each person’s ambition, but the industry’s as a whole. These rare collaborations between artists and designer go unseen and nearly unrewarded for most. When I find little pieces of history like this, it makes me feel like the world is a giant place and there is truly no limit to information and creativity.
Dvein has been making some design headlines as of late and now they have a website online. Dvein is a motion and interactive studio based out of a city I am dreaming of one day residing in, Barcelona. They provide art direction, design and animation for cinema, broadcast and music videos. They are also capable of storyboarding and co-developing at the conceptual phase. They consider themselves an open minded studio in an open minded city and are down to get in on at the proposal level as well. There work shows some amazing talent and their website is also very intuitively designed.
I noticed over the weekend that the all-powerful Buck had updated their website. They have also put together their reel for 2008 and it is absolutely marvelous. I put Buck down in a top 3 list of motion graphic agencies that we should consider using last year for our Own Your C campaign at Cactus. Unfortunately I didn’t get to work with them personally, but they ended up being selected by our other Art Director and actually agreed to work with a fairly low budget because they believed in the campaign. They showed a kind of integrity that is a rare thing in business. They really got behind the message that was driving the concept and gave it all they had. The end result was absolutely spectacular and everyone who had the chance to work with them thought they were far and away some of the nicest people they had ever had the opportunity to work with. Our office is still littered with the stickers and postcards they sent, and the spot they produced is arguably the best spot Cactus has ever been a part of.
They really stand firm behind good design and from what I have gathered, and took their name from one of my favorite people of all time, Buckminster Fuller (AKA Little Bucky). If you haven’t yet experienced their work, spend a little time at their site because it is impossible not to come away inspired. If you haven’t noticed, I am a fan.
Nervo has created a series of e-cards for online brand Let Us Kiss. That is all the detail you can gather currently from the description of the project. The real nugget here is the motion graphics for the e-cards as they are all unique and totally compelling. I would love to see these on television. The visuals are stunning to say the least. You can also view stills of the animation at Nervo’s Flickr account.
Wow, there is some pretty amazing new work up at Pleix Films.
Local Denver Motion Graphics Designer, Adam Expinoza has updated his site with some nice work. He has become quite popular in a City where the motion industry has been somewhat lagging. Local agencies have been using Adam as their secret weapon for a while now and he has been booked pretty solid lately. If you want to net him for your next project, you may find yourself on a waiting list.
If you have been wondering where some of the exceptional motion/broadcast work has been coming from for Nike lately, it appears that a share of it has been coming from Broadcast Agency, Small Deer. There is some exceptional work up at their modest website. It’s worth browsing through and probably calling them if you are in the market for a good motion agency for your next project.
Life Long Friendship Society is killing it right now. They are a Brookly-based motion agency, who does a little print on the side but they really defy any and all explanation. They have been working with a lot of large agencies as of late, as you can see by this brilliant new spot produced in partnership with Goodby Silverstein. They have been on my radar for some time already and a writer I often work with at Cactus has really latched onto them as something special. We have them high on our list in the creative department at Cactus as someone we would like to work with in the very near future. They are really mastering their craft as of late and their site has had a continual stream of new work on it. All of it is original and enjoyable.
