Avengers Visual FX

Avengers Visual FX:



I just finished recording 3 hours of training for the Explosive Train sequence so while I finish editing that… check out this amazing demo from ILM on the VFX work for The Avengers. 3 Hours of recorded training is probably 1.5 hours after editing out rendering and bad jokes. Stay tuned, it’s a big series.

Solar System Kaleidoscope, As Monokle “Swan” Video Explores Mystical Night Sky

Solar System Kaleidoscope, As Monokle “Swan” Video Explores Mystical Night Sky:

Monokle (aka Vlad, of St. Petersburg) gets a mesmerizing new video for his track “Swan.” It’s the work of Bucharest-born, 23-year-old artist Alina Anca, spinning the glitchy goodness of Monokle’s music into a magical study of pattern and outer space.
Anca’s own work delves into the esoteric and surreal, never without some youthful fancy – the kind of spirit that sets work apart from the mundane. She’s a nice foil to the album artist for this release, Argentinian Carolina Nino.
In fact, with a growing number of young artists exploding into these sorts of releases, I’m eager to see what musical-visual collaborations may emerge, particularly as these same creatives grow.
The music is out this week on Ki-Records.
Music: www.facebook.com/monokle

Crave (2012): re-blog from Art of Title





“His imagination is a dangerous place to be.”

The main-on-end titles for Charles de Lauzirika’s psychological noir Crave take what is at root a basic child’s toy to grim extremes. Wind-driven, humanoid whirligigs are torn apart and re-purposed into disturbing wooden mechanisms acting out vigilante fantasies from the film – images from a nightmare. The angular type stands out from the grit and grain as the camera transitions from grisly scene to grisly scene, each segment part of a larger, interconnected machine which could only be stopped by its own friction.
Director CHARLES DE LAUZIRIKA and main title designer RALEIGH STEWART discuss the creation of the sequence with us.
Can you give us a little background on yourselves?
CL: I was born and raised in LA and I was obsessed with cinema. I went to USC Film School, where I met a lot of great, talented friends, and landed a series of internships and low-level jobs at production companies which got me in the door. The most important relationship to emerge was with Ridley and Tony Scott and their company Scott Free. I started as an intern, became a script reader,...

RSS & Email Subscribers: Check out the full Crave article at Art of the Title.

Weekend Animation Break: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Weekend Animation Break: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12:re-blog from Create Digital Motion

Behold the power of sound and image. With people of a certain generation, you can stand in a room, and shout, “One, two, three, four, five…” and likely have them finish your countdown with the song from this animation. It has its own Wikipedia entry. It has music from The Pointer Sisters. It’s been covered by … a lot of people. The segment was the work of San Francisco director Jeff Hale, a psychedelic journey through a wonderland of numbers in the style of pop art-style album covers. (See the full sequence re-edited, since Children’s Television Workshop – now Sesame Workshop – didn’t include it.)
What you may not have seen was the 2010 remake, produced by the Italian animation studio Florence Animation, with music by Beirut’s Perrin Cloutier. It’s a pitch-perfect homage, and demonstrates how, in place of traditional animation techniques, we now have access both to low-fidelity techniques (stop motion, aided by computers and vastly cheaper photography equipment) and new digital motion graphics. Sure, the groovy 70s Sesame Street is gone, but we have all the tools to keep the spirit alive.
Read up on a whole history of this animation – and, perhaps, find other Muppet inspiration for your motion work. Hope you’re having a fine weekend, indeed.

La Poste – Digital District

La Poste – Digital District: Posted on Motionographer

A superbly executed take on the old trope of the unfolding book voyage.  Digital District, a French studio based in Paris, has taken the lighting to the next level while using engaging camera angles to highlight every detail that has been put into this spot.  The layout and animation flows smoothly around the piece with great attention to the thoughtful transitions.
Gotta say it again though, you should check out their Reel! It’s pretty fantastic.  This is definitely a studio to keep your eye on if you haven’t been already.

Willow – Sweater (official video uses MadMapper)

Willow – Sweater (official video uses MadMapper):




While I have already seen examples of augmented reality used in videos before, I really enjoy how this one by Filip Sterckx exploits the idea further in many different ways, with many different angles, that constantly fool my eyes. At the same time the video is constantly reminding you of the fact that ‘this is an illusion’ with visual queues such as the embedded treadmill or the part where the singers legs are ‘buried’ into the stage to create the illusion that he is standing on the water.

Desmond Leung

Desmond Leung: Posted on Motionographer




Yes, yes, ink transitions are all very 2005, but Desmond Leung’s work reminds me of how beautiful natural patterns can be. Working with particle simulators everyday, it’s easy to forget that they’re simulating particles in the real world, and what we work so hard to create on screen can also be created with a paint brush and water. More videos on his vimeo.

Julia Pott: Belly

re-blog from Motionographer



Julia Pott: Belly:
Julia Pott (Hornet) is one of those rarities: an animation director with a unique voice who can actually make you feel something. The common denominator in her work is an intense yearning — an often funny and sometimes painful search for something intimate and real. Whether the subject is love or loss, Julia’s work feels like a confession from a best friend whispered from somewhere inside a massive pillow fort you’ve constructed together during a summer weekend.
After a long and successful run on the festival circuit, including stops at Sundance, Animafest Zagreb, SXSW, the Holland Animation Film Festival and the Hiroshima International Animation Festival (among many others), Julia’s animated short “Belly” has been released on the web.
Created for her thesis at the Royal College of Art, “Belly” is a touching animated short rendered in Julia’s disarming illustration style. Its cast of animal characters are poignantly human, delivering understated dialogue during a surreal rescue mission with a heart-wrenching conclusion.
We caught up with Julia for a little Q&A and a glimpse at the process behind “Belly.”
Who are you and what do you do?

I’m Julia Pott and I’m a British animation director living in Brooklyn.

Where did the idea for “Belly” come from?

The starting point for “Belly” centred around the cross-over period between going to sleep in back of the car at night, then seamlessly waking up in my bed the next morning. Then I got too old and heavy and was woken up by my parents, forced to trudge upstairs, brush my teeth and put myself to bed. I remember being acutely aware that I had had things pretty good for a while, and now it was over.
Growing up with a sister five years older then me, I spent a large period of my childhood feeling generally hard done by, ostracized and left out. I was so desperate to speed through the process of being a kid that I didn’t stop to appreciate what I would be leaving behind. Once it’s been given up, it’s gone. You can remember the sensation, you can feel it in the pit of your stomach, but you cannot get back there – hence the title, “Belly.”

Once I knew I wanted to focus on childhood I indulged myself in the memories of my own. As a kid I think we more willingly immerse ourselves in the uncanny, happy to feel inexplicably weird. We consume horror, gore and casual death. I was absolutely fascinated by the idea of sinking in quicksand, being beheaded, ghosts… As I got older, I grew out of my kid-like immunity to the spooky – not so ready to feel scared, not wanting to feel it at all, in fact.
The laws of physics are also much more ambiguous. It seems feasible to walk through walls, push your hands through your skin. In this way animation became the perfect medium for the subject matter – using the physics of childhood to externalise the inner turmoil of the characters – melting into the ground when you’re yelled at, pushing through your friend’s body if it’s a quickest way to get down.
Summer became the natural setting for the film because of this sense of possibility that comes with the season. So much of my childhood memories centre on the heat of summer, playing in the ocean and feeling like you might almost drown when a wave crashes over you, and going back for more anyway.

Character Development
For me, the film seems to collapse the mental division between childhood and adulthood. You’ve presented some themes that are universal, regardless of age: love, rejection, companionship, loss. Is all this just me looking too deeply into the film or were you aiming to hit some of those ideas?

No, this is absolutely the crux of the film. You can feel these sensations at any age. There is a line in, ‘The Hotel New Hampshire’ by Jon Irving that says: “You spend half your life being 15.”
So far, I show no signs of outgrowing 15. I can be in an awkward social situation, and I am a kid again, wanting to bury myself in the floor. A relationship can end, and it joins your childhood memories in your belly – another period of your life that you remember, even yearn for, but can never return to.

Style frames
The visual style is a unique mix of 2D elements and occasional live action footage, right? What were some of your inspirations for the visual style?  

Inspiration for the visuals and the subject matter went hand in hand. I went back to the shows from my childhood, re-watching 90’s kid’s TV like Eerie Indiana, Round the Twist and Goosebumps but also coming of age films that fell into this specific genre of loss, horror and humor: Harold and Maude, The Goonies, Twin Peaks, Stand by Me.
The film that resonated with me the most during my narrative and aesthetic development was E.T., with the two protagonists becoming so emotionally connected that when one becomes ill, they both deteriorate together. On the aesthetic side, endearing otherworldly creatures appealed to me – E.T., Gizmo from Gremlins – not real creatures and yet we feel this emotional warmth for them. They tapped into this spooky, childlike style I was trying to achieve.
With live action as such a heavy frame of reference I was compelled to incorporate it into the film, but not so much as it would overwhelm the visuals – it become a subtle addition – like moving collage.
The 2D animation aesthetic drew on this genre of 90’s coming of age film’s but also looked at animations that revelled in the medium – Silly Symphonies, the Fleischer Brothers, Estonian animation that embraced squash and stretch, playing with the line and taking something to its most ridiculous conclusion.

How long did you work on the project?

It was my thesis film from the Royal College of Art so production spanned from the end of October to June, so about 8 months. I spent three to four months developing the script and characters, and the end of January onwards was spent on production. It was my first completely original script, so a large majority of the first three months was spent berating my own writing abilities and cursing myself for thinking it wouldn’t be that hard to write a script from scratch.

Motion test
How did you pick the rest of your team?

Sound was incredibly important to the film. Dave Prosser had graduated the year before me and his film “Matter Fisher” had brilliant sound. I worked with his sound designer Joseph Tate from the beginning– geeking out over the best sound for ripping off limbs and sliding through bodies. (I believe Joe spent a lot of time standing in large vats of porridge to achieve the sensation.)
Finding the right voice over artists was a bit of a struggle for me, as I had these perfect imaginary voices ringing in my ears and to find that person wasn’t easy. Each part was auditioned for by 50 or so people, and for a while no one seemed to fit the bill. I lucked out with Oscar, who was played by Livvy, my sister’s… boyfriend’s… niece.
The relationship was mutually beneficial because I’d go round her house to run through the script, and then she’s build a giant wall out of pillows and we’d run into it as hard as we could. She’s bloody brilliant. Cornelius Clarke who plays Oscar’s monster was one of the kindest, gentlest people I’ve met – every line he spoke made me want to weep.
In terms of animation we have first-years from the RCA help us out for a week or so, and I was lucky enough to nab two of the best – Eamonn O’Neill and Ben Cady. I had some extra help from Robin Bushell, one of the members of my old collective, Treat Studios. The boy is an animation genius and can copy my drawing style to the letter.

What’s your favorite moment? Why?

Being a year since it’s completion, I still find myself in that period where everything about the film seems a little bit rubbish, but the more distance I get from it, the more aspects of it grow on me.
I think my favourite plot device of the film was repurposing the eerie sonar of a whale and giving it a new significance. It came to represent so much of what I was trying to say, encapsulating this permanent sense of loss in a literal haunting moan.

What was the most challenging aspect of the project?

At the beginning of the project I foolishly let myself be overrun with this sense of panic that this would be the last time, for a long time, that I would have full control over my own short film. “Belly” became the vessel for tackling every aspect of filmmaking I felt I was weak in.
I wrote a script from scratch, worked with live action, worked with a cast of actors, animated and composited a film (almost) entirely by myself. With previous films, I had always managed to sideline a lot of these tasks so this time around I didn’t want to shy away from anything. There were moments when I genuinely thought about packing it all in and moving to New York prematurely to avoid how hard it all was. I am, of course, glad I didn’t.
That being said, I think the biggest challenge was making something people might not like. Having worked as an illustrator and animator for a few years, my work had fallen into this genre of romantic love. I was comfortable there and had had relative success in it. I felt tapped out. Having gone back to the genre again and again, I was left going into my second year at the RCA uninspired and exhausted.
When I pushed myself to think harder about what it is I loved about animation and film and generally being a person, I became excited again. Once I knew what I wanted to make and was motivated to research it, play around with it and pull it apart (literally), I didn’t care what anyone would think at the end, I was just relieved to have reignited my love of the medium. So I guess I finally realized the old cliché that the biggest challenge also has the biggest pay off.

What’s next for you?

I moved to New York last October and signed to the Manhattan-based production company Hornet. It’s the first time in my life I feel like a proper person — possibly because living in New York makes me feel like I’m living in a movie and everything I do should be set to the When Harry Met Sally soundtrack.
I have spent the last year travelling the festival circuit with “Belly,” and the highlights have to be seeing it play at Sundance and SXSW. With all the moving about I have yet to really settle into Brooklyn life, and I am keen to stay put for a while. I am currently finishing up a Random Acts film, which will air in a few months on Channel 4. After that, I want to start writing again, developing a script for TV or film. I’ll be working on my first live action music video in September, potentially with a lot of pastel glitter.

Pop-Up Video: Tesla, Synesthetic Hallucination, and Augmented Book Science

Pop-Up Video: Tesla, Synesthetic Hallucination, and Augmented Book Science:

Nikola Tesla in Sound and Light from Marco Tempest on Vimeo.


Nikola Tesla in Sound and Light from Marco Tempest on Vimeo.
Digitally-enhanced magician Marco Tempest is back, here with a poignant message about the magic of science – the leaps of faith, and leaps of showmanship, required to turn scientific imagination into reality. Any opportunity to celebrate genius scientist Nikola Tesla, unjustly unsung relative to his extraordinary accomplishments in electricity and thinking, is a good one. Here, too, we find a behind-the-scenes look at how carefully-calibrated projection mapping brings a pop-up book to life. Some of those close-ups in the video at top are unforgiving (it’d work perfectly in a theatrical setting). But the integration of the book, Marco Tempest’s sleight of hand, and digital animation can be spellbinding.
And because Mr. Tempest is of the mind that being more open makes the magic more effective, not less – a bit like science itself – he shares all the how-to details.


Making of "Nikola Tesla in Sound and Light" from Marco Tempest on Vimeo.


Making of “Nikola Tesla in Sound and Light” from Marco Tempest on Vimeo.
Full details, plus the TED version:

Created and Produced by Marco Tempest

Script: David Britland

Art Direction: Kevin Blanc

Motion Design: Alain Renold

Pop-up Design: Peter Dahmen

Music and sound design: Michael Ricar

Custom software development: Enrico Viola

Arduino Tech Wizard: Manuel Rueda Iragorri

Pre-visualization and production mascot: Signe Fleischmann

additional still photography:

Carmen Kam

(Bonus points to anyone who knows to what my headline refers. Or, at least, you’ve established you’re my age.)

Artisan / UVA: Sprint “The Dream”

Artisan / UVA: Sprint “The Dream”:





Do androids dream of electric sheep? Do cell phones dream of interactive on-screen cinema experiences? Artisan (part of UVA) used their in-house content mapping framework, d3, to create a stunning cell phone warning. The making-of that shows off the practical effects they filmed is particularly impressive.
Hat tip to creativeapplications.net.


Team Sprint – Campaign Credits:

Client/Ad or Campaign: Sprint’s “Dream” Cinema PSA for NCM Theaters

Agency: Team Sprint – Leo Burnett & Digitas

Chief Creative Officer: Susan Credle

Creative Directors: Michael Boychuk, Kevin Drew Davis, Mark Moll

EVP, Executive Director of Production: Chris Rossiter

Producer: Bryan Litman, Amanda Riley

Account Team: Vanessa Mackey, Julie Holton and Melissa Wolf

Production Company: Artisan

Director: Artisan and Chris Turner

VFX/SPX: Artisan

Editorial: Trim Edit

Editor: Paul Hardcastle

Director of Photography: James Medcraft

Sound Design: Scanner
Posted on Motionographer

Motionographer Classic Quickie: Inside 1980s ILM

Motionographer Classic Quickie: Inside 1980s ILM:

Motionographer Classic Quickie: Director Gavin Rothery hosts a great review of groundbreaking analog VFX techniques with a series of videos peeking inside 1980s Industrial Light & Magic.
Posted on Motionographer

Motionographer Classics: Prince of Persia

Motionographer Classics: Prince of Persia:

 We’ve been playing with classic quickies for a while, since not all inspiration has to be the latest and greatest. A couple months ago, Jordan Mechner released his game dev journals, videos, and even original Apple IIe source code from his 1989 gaming classic Prince of Persia. It was one of the first computer games to combine arcade action with realistic animation and cinematic storytelling. The characters were animated using rotoscoped references of Mechner’s brother climbing and leaping around a parking lot.
Watching these videos, there are two things I can’t get out of my head. The first is how visceral the animation still feels through just a few limited pixels. The second is the fun, hands-on nature of the old video tapes. They remind me a lot of my early days in motion graphics where we would often run to the roof to quickly shoot some silhouettes or sloppily shoot some splashes or ink splats with a miniDV camera. These days, most people are probably using a dSLR for run and gun shooting, but I think motion graphics still allows for that kind of tactile experimentation.
For more info, check out The Verge’s article on telling stories in 48 kilobytes or less.

Posted on Motionographer

Benjamin Ducroz: Points in Space

Benjamin Ducroz: Points in Space:

POINTS IN SPACE from ducroz on Vimeo.


Benjamin Ducroz mixes materials like plywood, thread, nails, printouts, and watercolor with his 3D animations to create film such as Phosphene and Press+. His most recent film, Points in Space, uses 1,050 individual a0 sized frames with long exposure photography to explore the flowing movement around Melbourne.


MAKING OF POINTS IN SPACE from ducroz on Vimeo.


 points in space

director : benjamin ducroz

sound : singlesignal

producer : ashlee arnold

assistant animator : hamish storrie

volunteers : amber chou, radhika chopra, jane smith, toby feldman

year : 2011

duration : 1″13
Posted on Motionographer

Emil Sellström: MTV Night Video 2012

Emil Sellström: MTV Night Video 2012:

เจ๋งมากๆๆ โดนสุด This is so cool! Visual Music and Everything so FRESH! so NEW!


MTV Night Videos 2012 from Kungen & Hertigen on Vimeo.

Classic Quickie: Chris Casady’s FX for TRON (1982)

Classic Quickie: Chris Casady’s FX for TRON (1982):



My work on TRON 1982 from Chris Casady on Vimeo.


Motionographer Classic Quickie: Chris Casady’s effects animation for TRON (1982).
Read more about Chris’amazing work in this short retrospective.
Posted on Motionographer

Mike Ko: iphone Diorama

Mike Ko: iphone Diorama:





Cute iPhone diorama graduation project by Mike Ko.
Posted on Motionographer

Punga: Nokia “Traffic”

Punga: Nokia “Traffic”:



Nice mix of dimensionality and bold colors in this Nokia spot by Punga. Check out their previous Nokia spots as well: Smart Data, Ovi Maps, Maps 3D, and Ovi Suit.

Nokia “Traffic”
Director: Facu Labo

Executive Producer: Patricio Verdi

Line Producer: Eva Amuchastegui

Art Direction: Rodier Kidmann, Juan Casal

2D/3D Animation & Compositing: Cesar Pelizer, Juan Casal, Facu Labo
Modeling: Franco Vecchi, Guido Lambertini, Ago Carrera
Music / Mix: Daniele Carmosino
SFX: Alex Sidiropoulos
Posted on Motionographer

Count on Me

Count on Me:




More beautiful animation from Gentleman Scholar in their personal short “Count on Me“
Posted on Motionographer

World’s first Twitter animation?

World’s first Twitter animation?:

Fantastic Twitter-based animation for Smart Argentina [Hold down J to animate]
Posted on Motionographer

Volvo “Sloths” super CUTE!

Volvo “Sloths”:

PUNGA for Volvo: Sloths (via Cartoon Brew). Update: More info on this great little spot from director/animator Gabriel Fermanelli.