You may have already seen a trailer for a short film called K3LOID in the past years, it’s now finished and it’s very impressive. Spanish-based J.J. Palomo directed the short and his visual FX shop BLR VFX spent over two years developing it with the intent of turning it into a feature.
Palomo isn’t a complete unknown to Hollywood, he and his team have collaborated with Carl Rinsch several times and worked on the director’s breakout short, The Gift. (And K3LOID‘s concept art was provided by Aaron Beck, the concept designer for Avatar and District 9).
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In a not too distant future, societies of all countries come to rely on an intricate network of artificial intelligence devices designed to bring efficacy to man’s life. Yet, man continues to devour himself in useless wars. A strong political hierarchy now divides all powers into three factions, and A. I. devices rapidly gain ground as efficiency becomes a priority.
As social revolts grow worse everyday, authorities seek ways to control their citizens. They decide to carry out a series of tests that will determine not only whether some crucial powers can be transferred to non human entities, but also whether man is ready to yield those powers.
The world has become a cell for all man and women, who withstand and endure their lives, rather than living them. Machines might have found a solution.
From now on, you are set free.
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CREDITS:
Directed by JJ Palomo
Big Lazy Robot Crew :
Hugo Bermudez
Juan Civera
David Cordero
JJ Palomo
Leopoldo Palomo
Cautioning those who worship the material world … a greedy, violent and cinematic approach to Gesaffelstein‘s track Hate or Glory for their upcoming album Aleph in this music video directed by FLEUR & MANU.
“Temporary Zones” is the third installment in a series created by ODD NY (Office of Development & Design), a New York and Los Angeles based design and animation company, helmed by Executive Creative Director Gary Breslin, formally of Panoptic [whom, if you don’t know of them, killed it back in the day].
Following up on the previous subjects focusing on maps and also windows at night; this one explores the transitory nature of NYC architecture through the building and re-building of scaffolding across the city. On the one hand completely ubiquitous and banal, it’s easy to tune out the psychological presence of the ever changing and omnipresent fixture that is scaffolding. Up one day, gone the another, it’s the building blocks for a city that always has and always will be in a state of flux.
Director/animator Jeff Le Bars has an impeccable eye for composition and color, as his Emile Cohl 2012 graduation film “Carn” proves.
But the real magic of “Carn” is its story — an aspect of filmmaking most young directors struggle with. Built on a simple, fable-like structure, “Carn” ticks along with satisfying, grim precision until its fateful conclusion. The pacing, like the layout, is spare and artful, brimming with tension achieved through subtraction, not addition.
The music and sound design from Spectral Approche beautifully underscore the film’s emotional power.
Toronto based IAMSTATIC recently launched a montage of 3D stereoscopic work they did for Director Julian Jones’ Inside the Mind of Leonardo Davinci, a movie concerning threads of thought and the working processes of the genius inventor and artist. A total of 30 minutes of stereoscopic shots were designed and animated over an 8 month period. See more on the IAMSTATIC site.
The new behind the scenes companion video to BOX discusses the creative vision behind BOX and the technical process that made this revolutionary performance possible. The documentary contains interviews with GMunk (Bradley G Munkowitz), BOX‘s Design Director and Tarik Abdel-Gawad, BOX‘s Creative Director together with behind scenes footage from the making of BOX.
Madrid based Tavo Ponce has recently setup TA\VO creative studio. Tavo teamed up with Echolab creating this new Title project for TypoMad 2013, a typography focussed event held in Spain. The Titles allude to bezier lines, ink and the definition of a new creation. Great work!
Columbus-based Leftchannel has been plugging away for over 10 years, but it’s been a while since we’ve posted them on Motionographer.
Their recently launched opener for the 2013 motion Conference, which kicks off this Friday in Albuquerque, breaks that silence. It’s a delightful typographic romp seasoned with cute character work and a couple visual surprises that make it worthy of repeat viewing.
Leftchannel’s Creative Director Alberto Scirocco will also be presenting three sessions at motion 2013.
As a follow up to our earlier post regarding the debut of Bot & Dolly’s mind-boggling short, “Box,” (above) we’re sharing an interview with the team as well as a behind the scenes video produced with The Creators Project.
Behind the Scenes
This behind the scenes film contains interviews with GMunk (Bradley G Munkowitz), BOX’s Design Director and Tarik Abdel-Gawad, BOX’s Creative Director together with behind scenes footage from the making of BOX.
Interview with Bot & Dolly’s Tarik Abdel Gawad, Creative and Technical director on “Box”
Can you please confirm for our readers that none of the box visuals were comped in post?
Yes, this is a capture of a physical performance. The visuals are not added in post.
Where did the idea for this project come from? Was it commissioned?
Box is an internal project that grew naturally out the the intersection of art and technology at Bot & Dolly. We have a great interdisciplinary team of designers and engineers that made the project possible.
From the start, the exploration of classical magic fit with our creative process. Magicians have a long history of mixing technology with performance and the categories of classical magic were perfect inspiration for the geometric illusions in Box.
Can you tell us a little more about the robots? What are those robots normally used for?
The spec sheets on the Bot & Dolly website are the best source of information on our robots.
How did you work out the choreography between the performer and the robots?
Working out the choreography was a process of rehearsal and iteration. For mainly practical reasons it was actually me performing. I had the most experience operating the robots, and since this was an internal project, rehearsals often took place at night. Each robot weighs around one and a half tons so it takes awhile to get comfortable moving around them, and safety is important.
How did you track the movement of the surfaces by the projector? Was it all preprogrammed based on the robots’ movements?
The projectors and robots are all calibrated within the same coordinate frame. Bot & Dolly’s software, BDMove, makes its possible to synchronize graphic content with robotic motion.
What was the design process for this like? Where did you start? And did you need to test and iterate a bit before getting it down?
We would start with a category of classical magic and begin exploring limited narratives made up of only abstract geometric shapes and a single performer. During the animation phase we relied on quick hand drawings and moving blocks around a table to communicate ideas because it was nearly impossible to describe something just with words.
Choosing the right geometry was very important to creating the illusion of depth, and directly affects the robotic motion. The primary illusion is created by transforming the geometry of the physical 4’ by 8’ canvas mounted to the robotic arm, through projection.
In the first section, “Transformation”, we extrude the canvas into a cube. Later on we combine two canvases to form a larger hinging shape, which in return affects the robotic animation. We tried to make each section build upon the last, and we were always learning something based on what was just completed. By the end, we ended up with a very complex environment, the performer is inside of the projected volume, there are holes in the floor and line drawing on the back wall.
What was the most challenging aspect of the job?
The difficult part is that you don’t know exactly how something will turn out until you’ve seen it projected in the space. Even then it changes with the environment’s lighting, which is also synchronized with the graphic content and robotic movement.
Many software applications were used on this project in conjunction with BDMove. It’s a very collaborative process with a lot of creative control, so it takes a lot of time and iteration to get to the point where everyone is happy.
What’s next for you?
I’m not sure. One of the things I love about working at Bot & Dolly is that we tackle a wide range of problems, both on the creative and technical side. There are applications in a variety of fields for the technology demonstrated in box, which makes it hard to predict the next thing.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A. during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
