23.05.11

Slimtime

Filed under: Watch — Tags: , , , — Alex Amelines @ 10:56 pm

While his wife is under­go­ing slim­ming treat­ment, André goes on a dis­cov­ery tour of this very unusual center…

Directed at Supin­fo­com Arles in 2010 by Bertrand Avril, Pierre Chomarat, David Dan­gin and Thea Matland.

slim­time offi­cial website


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29.09.10

Manfred

Filed under: Watch — Tags: , , , , — Alex Amelines @ 11:19 am

One of the things I like most about Arjen’s work is the unpre­ten­tious­ness of his work, sim­ple basic rigs, rely­ing on a charis­matic illus­tra­tive style his focus is on the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion and the story itself. Min­i­mal and original!

Man­fred is an ani­mated short by Arjen Klaver­stijn, a free­lance ani­ma­tor who recently grad­u­ated from the Utrecht School of Arts in The Nether­lands with a Bach­e­lor of Art & Technology.


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08.07.10

Kaeloo: Prince Charming

Filed under: Watch — Tags: , , — Alex Amelines @ 9:38 pm

This ani­ma­tion is just deli­cious. A per­fect exam­ple of what hap­pens when good ani­ma­tion skills meets technology.

Moignon look­ing for a girl­friend on Face-de-Bouc, dressed in a beau­ti­ful princess, while Coin-Coin, a valiant knight, sets out in search of events and adven­tures. Fight epic sub-atomic explo­sions “should not touch the yogurt Coin-Coin…”

This episode was aired on CANAL+ on June 27, 2010.


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31.05.10

Happy Kingdom

Filed under: Watch — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Alex Amelines @ 9:49 pm

Pas­sion Pic­tures, have done it again! Well, more specif­i­cally Pete Can­de­land has done it with the direc­to­r­ial skills that brought us Rock Band cin­e­matic for The Bea­t­les, he’s recently directed this com­mer­cial for Coke Zero called ‘Happy Kingdom’.

The clip was pro­duced by Deb­bie Cross­cup from Pas­sion Pic­tures and the des­ig­nated cre­ative agency was Ogilvy Argentina, with the cre­ative direc­tion of: Gastón Bigio, Jonathan Gurvit, Javier Men­tasti and Chris­t­ian Camean.


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26.05.10

Out of a Rainbow

Filed under: Watch — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — ScanHEAD @ 10:58 pm

Lon­don 2012 Olympic mas­cots Wen­lock and Man­dev­ille were recently launched with a short CG ani­ma­tion, OUT OF A RAINBOW, writ­ten by Michael Mor­purgo, pro­duced by Barn­aby Spurrier and directed by Mario Cav­alli.

The mas­cots were devel­oped and designed by Iris Lon­don over an 18 month period, while the pro­duc­tion of the 3 min 45 sec ani­mated film was com­pleted at break­neck pace, from design and sto­ry­board to com­ple­tion and launch in just 10 weeks.

All pre and post pro­duc­tion was done in Lon­don, with Cav­alli design­ing the non-mascot char­ac­ters, work­ing with Teddy Hall on maque­ttes and Pete West­ern on sto­ry­board. Pro­duc­tion design and back­grounds were by Neil Camp­bell Ross, edit­ing by Richard Gra­ham, with final grad­ing and out­put at UNIT.

The ani­ma­tion was done by Crys­tal CG, the com­pany respon­si­ble for the Bei­jing 2008 Olympics ani­ma­tions and graph­ics, through their offices in Lon­don and Beijing.

Orig­i­nal score and orches­tra­tion by Tommy Hewitt Jones. Voice over was read by Simon Rus­sell Beale.

Within 48 hours of launch, the movie on the offi­cial LOCOG mas­cots’ site had already clocked up 750,000 unique hits, while the same video was the ‘most watched’ on YouTube world­wide in the same period.


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18.05.10

Two Inches to the Right

Filed under: Watch — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Alex Amelines @ 8:39 am

It feels unset­tling because is real and is close to all of us. This ani­ma­tion is a fol­low up to the award win­ning short ‘Blokes’ and was ani­mated by Matt Frod­sham depict­ing the word of Mat Lloyd’s poem. They are both tap­ping into major social issues here, so I am sure it will get all the atten­tion it deserves, and hope­fully it will spark some pos­i­tive reac­tion, some­thing that goes beyond the exchange of know­ing looks between the view­ers while they nod in agree­ment, but then do nothing.

Mat Lloyd says: “I wrote the poem on a can­vas with a marker pen the morn­ing after I was attacked.

The night before I was in my local park on the open­ing day of the skate park I’d helped get built, it was nearly mid­night. We’d organ­ised a DJ to play the day out in a mar­quee and I just popped out to take a leak. In my drunken state I was stum­bling to find a bush when I heard, and felt, a sort of ‘boink’ sound. I knew I’d been hit on the back of the head, and I knew it wasn’t with a fist. I don’t remem­ber much else other than being back at the mar­quee with a bleed­ing head…


Matt has kept an in depth step-by-step log about the mak­ing of the ani­ma­tion.

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13.05.10

Encounters 2010

Filed under: Watch — Tags: , , , , , , — Alex Amelines @ 9:10 pm

After an over­whelm­ing response for the 2009 fes­ti­val Encoun­ters Inter­na­tional Film Fes­ti­val, Bris­tol, has once again teamed up with YouSendIt, to accept fes­ti­val sub­mis­sions dig­i­tally. In a bid to decrease waste and make life a lot eas­ier for Film­mak­ers, with YouSendIt, film­mak­ers can upload an entry directly through the Encoun­ters web site.

Sub­mis­sions open 19 April and close on 30 June. This year sees the return of Ani­mated Encoun­ters and Brief Encoun­ters as the two com­pet­i­tive strands. Films under 30 min­utes of any genre are accepted, see the Encoun­ters Inter­na­tional Film Fes­ti­val web­site for full terms and conditions.

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05.05.10

Broken Antler: Twenty10

Filed under: Watch — Tags: , , , , , — BrokenAntler @ 11:08 pm



My new reel for twenty 10.

I always strug­gle to make reels. I start off think­ing that they’re going to be a load of fun and then slowly the real­i­sa­tion dawns on me that I’m my own worse client. To start with I’ve seen the work an unprece­dented amount of time and although I’m pleased with every­thing I’ve included, I also know where the prob­lems are — almost by time­code. I know what I’m capa­ble of. I know what I’d like to be capa­ble of and I never give myself enough time.

I had a sud­den rush to cre­ate this reel after a friend and col­league sent a link to my web-site and a promise of a new reel to a Warner Records executive.

Years gone past I would cre­ate a mon­tage of the pret­ti­est bits of my work to my favourite track of the month, but last year i made the deci­sion that I would reveal more of the work than try to hide behind a pol­ished promo of bits. I think when putting a showreel together it’s easy to view other people’s and feel ner­vous that you have not got enough good stuff to include.

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16.04.10

Meet Meline

Filed under: Watch — Tags: , , , , — Alex Amelines @ 5:49 pm

A lit­tle girl’s curios­ity is sparked by a mys­te­ri­ous crea­ture as she plays in her grand­par­ents’ barn.

Meet Meline is a hyper-realistic and beau­ti­fully short film is an inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tion by Vir­ginie Goyons and Sebastien Laban. It took 2 years to fin­ish. On their own they com­pleted all the pre-production includ­ing script, con­cepts, pre­viz, char­ac­ters, set design, sound research and the pro­duc­tion, which con­sisted in the 26 indi­vid­ual shots that form the 7 min­utes long of this film.

The sound design was a con­tri­bu­tion by Cedric Denooz and the music by Guil­laume Rous­sel. As a nice addi­tion they’ve cre­ated this insight­ful “mak­ing of…” doc­u­men­tary.


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05.04.10

André Bergs

Filed under: Interviews — Tags: , , — Will DuToit @ 11:50 pm

André Bergs is a Dutch ani­ma­tor cre­ator of the popular-gone-viral short ani­ma­tion Pivot, designed and ani­mated by Kevin Megens, Floris Vos, Arno de Grijs and Andre Bergs, it was nom­i­nated for best short film at the Dutch Film Fes­ti­val, won the “Best Local” award at the Play­grounds Fes­ti­val and was screened at the Anima ani­ma­tion film fes­ti­val in Brus­sels. André trained at the Hogeschool voor de Kun­sten Utrecht, he coaches a Maya work­shop on a vari­ety of sub­jects and runs his own ani­ma­tion Com­pany called Plas­tiek.


How did you and your team come up the con­cept and the unique style?

In 2008 I was asked to make a short ani­ma­tion on a Dutch poem. The pro­duc­ers at ilLus­ter gave me com­plete free­dom to exper­i­ment, and what fol­lowed was a gritty short where I exper­i­mented with a low-poly style and ani­mat­ing on dou­bles. (you can view that short here).

It was a very rough exper­i­ment, but it did show that a 3D low poly style can actu­aly have a more ‘real’ feel­ing than some more real­is­tic 3D ani­ma­tions. When ilLus­ter sent me the sce­nario of Pivot, we imme­di­ately agreed that this kind of story could work realy well with the low-poly style. I then asked Arno de Grijs, Floris Vos and Kevin Megens if they’d like to work on it with me, and take the con­cept and style to a higher level.


Where do you get your inspi­ra­tion from when work­ing on a film like this?

We had a cou­ple of evenings where we would all bring in visual inspi­ra­tion from illus­tra­tions, photo’s, ani­ma­tion and films. This was really help­full to think and talk about the direc­tion where we were going with the film.

Big inspi­ra­tions were old films, like ‘M’, the ‘third man’, and ‘das cab­i­net des Dr. Cali­gari’. Graph­i­cally the work of Saul Bass, Oskar Fischinger and the Hell­boy comics were a big inspi­ra­tion. All in all we col­lected around a thou­sand images and movieclips for inspi­ra­tion, so the pool of inspi­ra­tion was very deep.


How big was the team?

The core of the team con­sisted of four peo­ple. Arno de Grijs, Floris Vos, Kevin Megens and myself. We share a stu­dio in Utrecht and man­aged the project as a team. The music and sound­de­sign was made by Alex Debicki. Fur­ther­more we had tech­ni­cal assis­tance from our intern Bram Vleugel. And when time was get­ting tight, Patrick Chin helped us out with some char­ac­ter ani­ma­tion. So all in all seven peo­ple put their backs into it.


How long was it in pro­duc­tion for?

Half a year from start to end. We had a strict dead­line, since it was planned to be pre­miered at the Dutch Film­fes­ti­val. And of course we didn’t want to miss our own premiere.


How did you end up as the direc­tor of Pivot?

We had a big bat­tle royale where the last man stand­ing would be boss over the rest. And I was the one who faught the dirtiest.

No, really we picked up the project very much as a team. I was respon­s­able for the film as a whole, but vir­tu­ally all the choices made, were made by the team. And all the con­flicts of ideas and dis­cus­sions we had really brought out the best in the film.


What tools did you and your team use when mak­ing Pivot?

The sets and char­ac­ters were made in 3D stu­dio Max and Cin­ema 4D. We then imported them in Maya, where we did all the rig­ging, ani­ma­tion, effects ‚light­ing and cam­eras. The final com­posit was done in After effects, and the edit in Premiere.


Do you have any sug­ges­tions for other aspir­ing ani­ma­tion film­mak­ers on how to pro­duce a high qual­ity film like this?

We spent a lot of time on the mood­board, sto­ry­board design and R&D phase. Allthough it made the actual pro­duc­tion time a bit tight. It really did pay off in the end. We had a very clear image of where we were going with the film, didn’t have to make big adjust­ments on the shots from the sto­ry­board and knew which effects would work, and which would not. So we had a very clear path to fol­low, this way every­body was on the same page and we could really pick up the pace in the production.

As a film maker myself I know that it’s tempt­ing to start mak­ing the film as soon as pos­si­ble. But the time you spend in the begin­ning will defen­itly pay itself back later on. So take your time at the start, and know where you’re going before you actu­ally go.


I under­stand the film has been get­ting some pos­i­tive feed­back around the world at var­i­ous ani­ma­tion fes­ti­vals. Where can peo­ple look out for it?

We’ve had some great feed­back on the film from a lot of peo­ple and fes­ti­vals. On Vimeo the views even passed the 160.000, wich is pretty awe­some, and it’s really nice to see all the extra effort we’ve put into it being picked up and appre­ci­ated so much. For now I know for sure that the film will be played at:

  1. Pivot Offi­cial website.
  2. Plas­tiek André’s Company.
  3. Soul­base Floris Vos.
  4. Art­ib­ite Kevin Megens.
  5. Alex Debicki Music production.
  6. il Lus­ter Distribution.

A pro­fes­sional ani­ma­tor work­ing in the games indus­try, since 1999 Will has been ani­mat­ing for sev­eral major game titles in South Africa, Eng­land and cur­rently Denmark.

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