If you haven’t already watched Matthias Hoegg’s latest short, “Upstairs,” now is a good time to sink your eyes into it. If you’ve already seen it, watch it again. It rewards repeat viewings.
The short looks at the ways our imaginations run wild when given the slightest bit of sensory input — and how sometimes we don’t want to know the truth, even when it’s attainable.
Hoegg has a knack for crafting clever visual systems that act like narrative engines, pushing stories forward with a language of design. His characters operate in a playful space between iconography and naturalism that makes for unique, memorable experiences.
“Upstairs” was created for Random Acts on Channel 4 through Not To Scale.
“Thursday”
Also make sure to check out Hoegg’s BAFTA-nominated “Thursday.”
Using the same camera perspective trick employed by weareom for their “Chop Cup” viral (or sidewalk artist Julian Beever or Salvador Dalí or countless others, I’m sure), Google worked with 1stAveMachine’s Aaron Duffy to craft a series of elaborate analogue vignettes to tout the features of its Chrome browser.
Some of the ideas work better than others, with the obvious crowd-pleaser being the Speed demo. The subtext for all the vignettes is a celebration of DIY ingenuity, of making something seemingly simple through the complex combination of unlikely components. In many cases, the machines are human-powered, with hand-turned cranks and puppeted objects supplying the “animation.”
Mostly, though, the message is one we don’t often hear among the nerdified banter of browser battles: Surfing the net should be fun. It should be unexpected, but not because your browser crashes or because you contract a nasty virus.
1stAveMachine – Production Company
Aaron Duffy – Director
Sam Penfield – EP
Jennifer Brogle Jones – Producer
Claire Mitchell – Head of Creative Development
Jennifer Stratton – Production Coordinator
Bob Partington – Art Director, Fabrication
Nathan Asquith – Fabrication
Peter Erickson – Fabrication
Carlos Ancalmo – Storyboards & Design
Mario Romeo – Assistant Director
Vi Nguyen – Technical Director
Daniel Roman – Compositor
George Vincent – Compositor
Jason Tsang – Compositor
John Laughlin – Compositor
Kathleen Tobin – Compositor
Lily Feng – Compositor
Ryan Hooks – Compositor
Sohee Sohn – Compositor
Ralph Scaglione – 3D Tracking
Val Gnaedig – Costume
Patrick Scola – Documentation
Emery Wells – Colorist
Agency: BBH New York
Calle Sjoenell, Pelle Sjonell – ECD
Aaron Royer – Agency Producer
Steve Peck – Art Director
Jared Elms – Copywriter
Emilio Gomariz, a Madrid-based art director, created and colored 22,655 empty folders in OS X to create an engaging type-based animation.
This video adds to the tradition of using the OS and/or software applications as media for animation. For other works in the same spirit, continue past the jump.
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.
