07.04.10

Maf the Dog

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

I have always been a big fan of the look of 60s Amer­i­can illus­tra­tion, with very sim­plis­tic fea­tures that tell o much about the char­ac­ter, a dom­i­nant colour on each scene, basic com­po­si­tions and very accen­tu­ated poses. This charm­ing short has it all and it’s all hand­somely delivered.

This short ani­ma­tion was com­mis­sioned by Faber & Faber to pro­mote the release of Andrew O’Hagan’s novel The Life and Opin­ions of Maf the Dog and of His Friend Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe.

Robin Davey designed, directed and ani­mated the whole short. The music is Bean Bag by Jeff Curry.

Robin says: “Draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from film titles and car­toons of that era and incor­po­rat­ing quotes from the novel itself, I pro­duced this minute long whistle-stop tour of Maf’s early life, trac­ing his jour­ney from an Eng­lish farm­house kitchen to the com­pany of the most famous woman in the world. The piece was con­ceived as a sin­gle sequence with­out obvi­ous cuts, using colour tran­si­tions to rein­force the sense of move­ment.”

A bit of advice: Select the HD ver­sion and play full screen, it’s worth it!


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30.12.09

Gil’s All Fright Diner: animated

Filed under: Watch — Tags: , , , — Alex Amelines @ 9:07 am

Dream­works Ani­ma­tion is work­ing on an adap­ta­tion of A. Lee Mar­tinez’s book Gil’s All Fright Diner for an ani­mated film. The cre­ative story team behind Kung Fu Panda (Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris) is already work­ing on it, and Barry Son­nen­feld will be direct­ing it.

Duke and Earl are just pass­ing through Rock­wood county in their old truck when they realise that they’re run­ning low on petrol, so they decide to stop in the next place they see: Gil’s All Night Diner located near a vacant ceme­tery. Soon they find out from the diner’s owner Loretta, that the place is repeat­edly attacked by zom­bies. See­ing that they are broke, Loretta offers them a job look­ing after the place and hope­fully solv­ing the zom­bie mys­tery, which they accept.

I for one, can’t wait to see a movie that involves a mon­ster with one huge eye.

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22.09.09

Animation In Process

Filed under: Watch — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — Jem Robinson @ 9:48 pm

Animation In Process by Andrew Selby
Ani­ma­tion In Process by Andrew Selby
Pub­lished by Lau­rence King Pub­lish­ing Sep­tem­ber 2009

New Lau­rence King title Ani­ma­tion In Process has finally hit the shelves of good book­shops across the world. The book fea­tures a range of ani­ma­tion from dif­fer­ent gen­res and gives an insider’s guide to the process behind the fin­ished work. It dis­cusses the notion of what is ani­ma­tion in the 21st cen­tury and looks at the plat­forms that mov­ing visu­als can be devel­oped for and screened on. I worked as the pic­ture edi­tor for this project and can hon­estly say that the end prod­uct is a great source of infor­ma­tion and inspi­ra­tion for any­one inter­ested in animation.

The con­trib­u­tors range from Oscar win­ning ani­ma­tor Suzy Tem­ple­ton to mobile device ani­ma­tors The Lycette Broth­ers, span­ning the globe and the dif­fer­ent facets of this fluid indus­try. Sketch­books are opened to the reader, screen­grabs are dis­played and clips of works in progress are vis­i­ble on the accom­pa­ny­ing dvd. Some of the images in this pub­li­ca­tion have never been shown before and give a real insight into how each indi­vid­ual works.

This book really attempts to go behind the scenes of the gor­geous, com­plex prod­ucts that some of the world’s best mov­ing image artists pro­duce and show just how the process behind the ani­ma­tion func­tions. Some exam­ple spreads are below and for more infor­ma­tion visit the Lau­rence King web­site.

'Ping Pong' from Animation In Process

‘Ping Pong’ from Ani­ma­tion In Process


'Once Upon A Time' from Animation In Process

‘Once Upon A Time’ from Ani­ma­tion In Process


'Madame Tutli-Putli' from Animation In Process

‘Madame Tutli-Putli’ from Ani­ma­tion In Process

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