Simulated Explosions

If I knew more about coding I would love to get access to this technology.

Hunger

I saw this animation today on Dangerous Minds. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it. It's got a very unsettling plot line and the soundtrack is equally so, but what really interested me is the style of the animation. Created in 1974, it's an interesting example of early computer animation. It looks like very crude hand-drawn line drawings, but then the way the lines move is where the computer generation comes into play. All of the lines seem to explode and then reassemble into a different object or scene.

Hunger from National Film Board of Canada on Vimeo.

Loving Vincent: A Feature-Length Painted Animation

 From Kickstarter:

What is truly groundbreaking about "Loving Vincent" is that every frame of the film is an oil painting on canvas, using the very same technique in which Vincent himself painted. And what makes it a great story to experience is the intriguing, tragic, and inspiring story of Vincent Van Gogh himself.

The Miracle of Flight: A Cutout Animation by Terry Gilliam

While we're on the subject of Terry Gilliam, I thought I would post one of his great Dada inspired cutout animations.

Sarcastic Talking Masterpieces

One of the best things I've seen since the old Terry Gilliam 'Monty Python' animations.

Curious Alice, 1971

Why do anti-drug films from the 1970's always make drugs seem so... interesting... so beautiful???

EVERYTHING WILL BE OK - by DON HERTZFELDT

A student of mine showed me this animation today.

EVERYTHING WILL BE OK is the first chapter of a three-part story about a man named Bill. It was released in 2006 and the following year received the Sundance Film Festival's Jury Award in Short Filmmaking.

Grizzly Bear - gun-shy [Official Music Video]

1960's Stock Footage Gone Crazy

A new animation by Cyriak!!! Who cares who did the music. In this animation, he makes 1960's stock footage take on a very creepy life of its own.
Bonobo - 'Cirrus' (Official Video) from Ninja Tune on Vimeo.

TIM BURTON'S VINCENT: featuring Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven

Beautiful animation that makes my inner goth smile... Directed by Tim Burton and narrated by Vincent Price.

11 Months, 3000 pictures and a lot of coffee.

Amazing stop-action animation I found on This is Colossal.

Description from Youtube:

Started out as just a collection of snaps as I stripped down an engine bought off ebay. (To replace my old engine, which had suffered catastrophic failure). The snaps were so that I remembered how everything went, so I could put it back together again.

Then I realised it'd be quite cool to make it an animation. found some suitable music, rekindled my ancient knowledge of Premiere, storyboarded it, shot it as I worked on the engine (my poor DSLR got covered in engine oil), this was the result.

Remarkable Stop-Motion Walk Across America

I stumbled this today and thought it was worth sharing. A real technical achievement on a shoestring budget. Watch it full screen. Here is a google map that shows the route they took and the locations they filmed.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU

Wow! I saw this today and was amazed to see that they had outdone themselves. Their animated video called MUTO from a few years ago was great, but this one is even more mindblowing. Check out the website http://www.blublu.org to see more.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

RSA Animate - The Secret Powers of Time

1908 - Émile Cohl: Fantasmagorie

From Wikipedia:

Cohl made "Fantasmagorie" from February to May or June 1908. This is considered the first fully animated film ever made. It was made up of 700 drawings, each of which was double-exposed, leading to a running time of almost two minutes. Despite the short running time, the piece was packed with material devised in a "stream of consciousness" style. It borrowed from Blackton in using a "chalk-line effect" (filming black lines on white paper, then reversing the negative to make it look like white chalk on a black chalkboard), having the main character drawn by the artist's hand on camera, and the main characters of a clown and a gentleman (this taken from Blackton's "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces"). The film, in all of its wild transformations, is a direct tribute to the by-then forgotten Incoherent movement. The title is a reference to the "fantasmograph", a mid-Nineteenth Century variant of the magic lantern that projected ghostly images that floated across the walls.

Jiří Barta- The Last Theft

A few weeks back I posted a Nurse With Wound song that had a video which was a mashup of clips from the Czech animator and filmmaker, Jiří Barta. This is the original short film from which most of those clips come. I have to say, this film makes my inner goth smile... So light a black candle, sit back and enjoy.


The Last Theft- Part 1



Part 2



Part 3

Tim Minchin - Pope Song (Warning - Offense Possible)

Another great one from the musical comedian, Tim Minchin. This is his tribute to Pope Benedict XVI and the child rape he has helped to cover up and has yet to take responsibility for or do anything about.

Evening Music- Portishead- The Rip

From Portishead's Third album and their first in more than a decade, this song has one my favorite animation sequences from a rock music video.

Late Night Music- Nurse With Wound - "The Bottom Feeder"

I know I'm a creep. Call me a snob... But my favorite musician since I first bought "The Sylvie and Babs Hi-Fi Companion" in 1986 has been Nurse With Wound, AKA, Stephen Stapleton.


I've always been drawn to strange music, my first exposure to odd music was "Radioactivity" by Kraftwerk... But it wasn't until I heard Nurse With Wound that I found the music that I would later learn is termed sound collage. That is, music that doesn't necessarily have beat, meter or even melody, but is simply sound in time. Sampling and appropriation were a big part of sound collage and I later learned that the style has a rich history beginning with people such as John Cage, Luc Ferrari and even Frank Zappa.
Anyway, the video for this piece of music is great, even more so to realize that it was simply a fan-based montage video. The images are taken from films by a person named Jiri Barta; a filmmaker who I am completely ashamed to say that I have never heard of. I do need to research this person because I think his work is beautiful in the same tradition as Jan Švankmajer and the Brothers Quay.

Brothers Quay- Street of Crocodiles (1986)

While we are on the subject of stop-action animation. I'll post one of my all time favorites. The Brothers Quay create beautifully dystopian worlds that are one part Franz Kafka, one part Joseph Cornell, and one part Hans Bellmer...
Part 1

Part 2

Street of Crocodiles (1986) by Timothy & Stephen Quay.

And no, these are not the people who animated the Tool videos. That person badly ripped off the Brothers Quay.