Short film "Signs"

One step away from imagining what toys do when you leave the room - what do Road Traffic Signs get up to?

A Girl and a Dolphin

Here's something you don't see too often - a short cartoon from the heyday of Soviet animation (1979).  Love it.

The making of "Wanderland"

Hermanos Ingleso are Belgium brothers, and an electronic music duo.  I recently stumbled upon this deadly tune "Wanderland", but I was even more impressed with the video, which was recently awarded "Best Belgian Music Video 2010" at the International Film Festival Leuven. 

In fact, I liked it so much that I dropped the directors, Kristof Luyckx & Michèle Vanparys, a line and asked them a few questions!

God bless Vimeo - it makes it so easy to connect with film makers whose work you like :D (Interview below the video)

- What was your creative inspiration for the video?

Kristof:  The album artwork of Hermanos Inglesos contained birds (from encyclopedia books), so I took this as a starting point.

The title 'Wanderland' and lyrics like 'take me to your dreams' inspired me to find an idea so we could show lots of "dream sequences". Or in this case a psychedelic trip. I had the idea of 'birds doing drugs', and then letting them hallucinate and have a bad trip and then an overdose. But because the song is rather positive and sweet, we decided to soften the idea and make it more suggestive. Hence the "magic berry".

Michèle:  Kristof was going mad with the delirious drugged bird :)

I knew Hermanos  would find this maybe a bit too much, so we softened it down.

And afterwards I think this was a better thing for the storyline.. 

How did you go about planning and making it?

Kristof:  Hermanos Inglesos approached Michèle. We had about 1,5 month to make the video. We had creative freedom, the only thing they asked was to include the two musicians. But we spoke with Hermanos Inglesos about the idea/style before executing the storyboard. And after getting the storyboard/animatic approved, we continued designing and animating.

It was very low-budget (like most music videos), but we did this for our portfolio and self-promotion (and do enough commercial work to compensate).

Michèle:  Hermanos contacted me, because they had seen a little test movie on my blog and they liked the `girly sweetness` in it ..  but they had no idea what they wanted to make... "something with birds" ..!

They had almost no budget either, so we had to come up with a style that was easy and quick, also because of the short deadline..

So I called kristof, who i`d knew as a great illustrator and graphic designer/motion graphics animator ..

and he was immediately enthusiastic, even do we didn`t really knew each other and i don`t think he really knew my work.

Because I had no time to work on it and we had the deadline ahead he started with the main idea and made the main style of the movie..

- What motivated you to work together, and what do you think the ingredients for a valuable partnership are?

Kristof:  Michèle asked me if I had time and wanted to direct the video. We knew each other, but haven't worked together before. But it went very well, we both concluded afterwards.

Michèle:  I liked his graphic style, very minimal.  And i had never directed a movie by myself (exept my graduation project) 

so, with the deadline and the opportunity that we could make  whatever we liked, 

I thought getting someone like Kristof on this project would make it .. better :)

And  once we went to a guitar movie together, so i knew, he had my kind of taste in music :) very important if you work together!

Michèle and Kristof are both based in Ghent, Belgium.  Anticipating great things from both of them in the future!  Check out more of their work here:

http://www.kristofluyckx.be

http://www.michelevanparys.com/

CREDITS:  Music video for Hermanos Inglesos feat. MeMe (Wanderland).

Directed by Kristof Luyckx & Michèle Vanparys.

Design: Kristof Luyckx & Michèle Vanparys

Art Direction: Kristof Luyckx

Editing: Stijn Deconinck & Kristof Luyckx

Animation: Michèle Vanparys, Michélé De Feudis, Dries Bastiaensen & Kristof Luyckx.

Salad Fingers

Creator David Firth summarises the story succinctly: "Salad Fingers is a green man who lives on his own in a desolate shack in the middle of nowhere. He enjoys the feeling of different textures against his skin".

Salad Fingers did the rounds of the internet in 2005, but five years later it still makes my skin crawl.

Disclaimer:  These may upset children and the elderly.  (That's the actual disclaimer!)

Episode 1 - Spoons

Episode 2 - Friends

Episode 3 - Nettles

Episode 4 - Cage

Episode 5 - Picnic

Episode 6 - Present

Episode 7 - Shore Leave

Episode 8 - Cupboard

Creator's homepage

Trivia:  Music in the background is Boards of Canada!

Smile for London!

In January 2011, the London Underground will be using their advertising screens for a more worthy cause.  On weekday mornings, for two weeks, there'll be creative intermissions of film, art and animation.  The hope is that exhibiting "the best of London’s emerging and established artistic talent" in the dreaded month of January will lift Londoner's spirits when they need it most.

No cynical comments from me about this - having something beautiful to look at whilst avoiding eye contact with fellow tubers is fine by me :)

The great thing is that the creative work will all have been submitted by artists, filmmakers, and animators through Vimeo - meaning that anyone who wants has the opportunity to exhibit.  (Provided you submit before the deadline... on Wednesday!)  Some of the submissions (which must be 20 seconds, and silent) look pretty nice.


Photograph of Jesus (Excerpt) from Short & Sweet on Vimeo.



Technicolor Leak from Tripp/Jenna Watt on Vimeo.


so what? (20 sec) from bestbefore on Vimeo.

To check out more (or to submit something), see their vimeo page or website.

POGO

A few years ago on youtube I stumbled upon 'Alice' - a song entirely composed of sounds from the Disney film 'Alice in Wonderland'.  It was one of those moments where you feel you're experiencing something special.



Looking at his work is not only inspiring from a creative standpoint.  In these times of copyright/pirate warfare, Pogo seems to be giving massive corporations the finger, and getting away with it!  Read on...


Pogo (Nick Bertke) is an electronic music artist living in Perth, Western Australia. He creates music by taking chords, bass notes and vocal samples from a film, and sequencing the sounds together.  This sampling-and-remixing method of making music was first made popular in the 90's by House music producer and UK Garage influence Todd Edwards, but Pogo brought a new dimension to it by creating awesome electronic tunes from children's cartoons.

'Alice' is his most famous track (it's gotten nearly 5,000,000 views on YouTube) and since then Pogo has worked his way through the Disney films, producing tracks from 'Mary Poppins', 'The Sword in the Stone', 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang', and most recently 'Snow White' ('Wishery').




Interestingly, off the back of this "plagiarism", Disney/Pixar, contacted him and commissioned him to compose a track from their film 'Up'.  The condition was that he remove his previous Disney mixes from public view.  Nick adhered, and produced 'Upular', plus two more commissioned mixes from 'Toy Story' ('Toyz Noize' and 'Buzzwing').  When his contract with Disney ended, the old Disney mixes were made public again ;D  Which is great, because personally I think these commissions pale beside his self-inspired work.  (I quite like this one from TV series 'Dexter').



Not everyone is as sympathetic as Disney though.  When Pogo released 'Bangarang' - featuring footage and sound samples from 'Hook', Sony Pictures Entertainment freaked out.  Pogo responded, saying:

"My work serves as free viral marketing to the organisations that own the films I sample from. It's high time the music industry pulls its head out of its ass, and realises that today's remix culture is an asset, not a liability. To shoot down the potential here would be utterly illogical."

He removed the video, but several YouTube users protested by uploading their own, previously saved versions of it (the same had previously been done for 'Alice').  Amazingly, the outcry was loud enough to convince Sony that they had made a mistake, and 'Bangarang' was returned to YouTube within weeks.



Another commission came Pogo's way in the form of 'Pirates Of The Caribbean'.  He regards the mix as one of his best, but Jerry Bruckheimer Films decided they want nothing to do with it.  On his blog, Pogo says:

"The sad reality is, Swashbuckle was contracted work. I’d literally have to start saving the money that Disney would sue me before making the decision to upload it. But who knows? It might just come to that. My music is my mark in this world. If I have to pay to watch it entertain millions of people, then so be it."

What a cool guy.

He continues to inspire fans, who often make tribute videos to him, which he acknowledges and applauds on his blog.



And want to hear something that will make you sick?  He was born in 1988.  I need to find some more late bloomers ;)

I highly recommend checking out his website, where all of his tracks are availbale for download as mp3s.

"The Adventures of Mark Twain"

Spooky and little-known animated film about Mark Twain and his journey towards death.

Mark Twain lived as he died - with drama.

He was born on 30 November 1835, exactly two weeks after a comet called Halley's Comet's came closest to the sun.  This comet only orbits the earth every 75 years, and Twain died in 1910 - the day after the comet returned.

The strange thing is that Twain predicted his own death.

"I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it.... The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together."

This quotation formed the basis of a little-known stop-motion animation, "The Adventures of Mark Twain".   The 1985 film tells the story of Twain as he attempts to keep his "appointment" with Halley's Comet.

Traveling on an airship with three of his literary characters (Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Becky), sketches from works such as "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Diary of Adam and Eve" and "The Damned Human Race" form the basis of the film.

Watch the film here on youtube:  (go to the end of the page if you just want to see the most interesting scene.. starring Satan).

The freakiest scene in the film comes from "The Mysterious Stranger" - Twain's final, unfinished novel. The novel addresses his ideas of the "Moral Sense" and the "damned human race".  It involves the character of Satan.

Disney and Dalí make movie

When I first read about this I presumed it was a joke! But in truth, in 1946, Salvador Dali and Walt Disney started to make a cartoon together.

Choosing a Mexican love ballad as the theme, the pair created drawings, paintings and storyboards for a film which, had it been completed, would probably have been an amazing surrealist fairytale. But after a few months the infant film was shelved. Disney's studio stated financial trouble as the reason.

Dalí had already made two short films with Luis Buñuel, and was working on Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound", when he approached Disney at a Warner Brother's dinner party. He held Disney in high esteem, stating: "I have come to Hollywood and am in touch with the three great American surrealists - the Marx Brothers, Cecil B. DeMille and Walt Disney." Dalí believed he and Disney could create "the first motion picture of the Never Seen Before."

Though the collaboration might seem strange today (the current Disney empire is far from subversive), Walt Disney was actually a progressive innovator. Six years previously he had made "Fantasia" - a groundbreaking series of beautiful animations set to classical music. Like many things that are ahead of its time, it wasn't received well, and was a massive commercial failure. I suspect it was partially due to "Fantasia" that the company's execs decided to pull the plug on the Disney-Dalí collaboration, after a mere 15 seconds of footage had been created.

53 years later, when "Fantasia" had been hailed as a work of genius, and was being remastered, Walt Disney's nephew Roy Edward Disney, unearthed the dormant Disney-Dali project. He decided to bring it back to life, and a team of Disney animators finished what Dalí started. The result is "Destino": the six-minute journey of a beautiful ballerina through a strange desert land.

Researching this has opened a kettle of fish on Disney himself, but I'll leave my findings on him for another post!

Thanks to Rosa Maria at http://blogillustratus.blogspot.com/ for making me aware of "Destino".

"DESTINO"



DALÍ'S DREAM SEQUENCE IN "SPELLBOUND"

Banksy sings "The Simpsons"

Last night, the couch-gag opening of "The Simpsons" was storyboarded and directed by none other than Banksy.

Progressive or commercial? Hard hitting or heavy handed?  You decide...