Hasta La Motion!

When we first shared Alex Roman’s The Third&Seventh over a year ago, everyone was stunned by the photorealism of his CG worlds. With his latest commercial work, a spot for Grupo Cosentino’s Silestone brand countertops, Roman once again shows his passion for cinematography, lighting and texture.

Although this spot is 100% CG, the beauty of the shots distract the viewer from this amazing fact. Each composition is elegantly balanced: light counterweights dark, chaos challenges order. The sparse soundtrack creates a sense of lightness and wonder, and we are invited into a world that seems so real, so tangible, that we fully accept the glass-like shattering of grapes and peppers.

It almost doesn’t matter that the spot is purely digital. Sure, it’s an eyebrow-raising footnote, but Roman is simply using the tools he knows best to tell his story. He just happens to be pushing the envelope of commercial CG production while he’s doing it.

Posted on Motionographer

Gaspar Noé’s new film, Enter The Void, “will kick you in the balls”, as a colleague of mine put it. It’s a psychedelic visual ride that borders on inducing seizures; take the title sequence as a brief example of what I’m talking about. Most of the film’s effects came from the work of French visual effects studio, BUF, who also produced the film. Taking on almost 350 of the films shots over the course of 2 years, BUF added to and even rebuilt many shots to complete the spiritual and hallucinogenic vision of Gaspar Noé.

Check it

Posted on Motionographer

These all came out at the same time, so we thought we’d do a short and sweet round-up post showcasing everything!

First we have five new broadcast IDs showcasing MTV’s first creative collaboration with 55DSL. Inspired by a new series of streetwear designs based on the five senses — touch, sight, sound, smell, taste — with the sixth design representing 55DSL’s special 5.5th sense.

“Touch”, directed by Alex Trochut & Physalia
“Sight”, directed by ILoveDust
“Hearing”, directed by James Roper & Universal Everything
“Smell”, directed by Tei & 3DCG Director
“Taste”, directed by Yué Wu, DivisionParis & Digital Dirstrict

Last but not least, MTV also recently dropped 3 IDs for this year’s EMA Madrid spanish mograph powerhouse Dvein brilliantly handled the graphics for this year’s MTV EMA Madrid.

Update: Dvein just put out a press release filled with extra info, sketches, styleframes and cool stuff about the project. Download it here.

Pure awesomeness!

Posted on Motionographer

France continues to kill it in the music video world as seen in this latest piece of greatness, an un-offical video for The Thunderclaps called Tudor Petru. In collaboration with WIZZ, this animation collective (Remi Bastie, Nicolas Dehghani, Jonathan Djob Nkondo, Nicolas Pegon and Jérémy Pires) are still students at the powerhouse that is Gobelins.

Having worked with WIZZ on Jesus 2000 last year, they came in with their footage and camped out for two months to create one of the more captivating and energetic pieces of live-action and 2D mixed-media I’ve seen it quite sometime.

WIZZ has also recently joined Blacklist’s roster, so keep a look out for more great work from them!

“Todor & Petru”
The Thunderclaps ft Orifice Vulgatron, Ghetto, Shameless, Deadly Hunta
Judgement Day (Ejectorseat Records)
Directors: Remi Bastie, Nicolas Dehghani, Jonathan Djob Nkondo, Nicolas Pegon and Jérémy Pires
Prod co: WIZZ Design
DoP: Léo Chéron
Assistant: Guillaume Tomasini
Compositing: Philippe Valette
Flame: Micha Sher
Producers; Francois Brun, Matthieu Poirier
PM: Karine Takooree
Prod coordinator: Clara Delpierre

Posted on Motionographer

More whimsical fun from Sean Pecknold aka Grandchildren! This time it’s in-camera, in-sequence stop-motion from beginning to end for BBC Knowledge. If you like it, check out his previous spot too.

Some production photos and a bit about the process from Sean after the jump!

The spot has a very hands-on look, how much is in camera vs. post?
All of the spot is in-camera on a multi-plane table in sequence. The characters are either paper or clay. All of the backgrounds are painted. Even the natural elements, like clouds and stars, were a layer of animated paint shot in-camera. Because of the way the transitions worked from one thing to the next, we had to be careful because there wasn’t any time to start over, really. The only shot that isn’t fully in camera would be the mouse shot that we mirrored for the clone effect.

Any fun stories from production? Did you guys shoot an actual mouse?
During the animation, the studio was taken over by a couple rogue mice. It almost got us kicked out of the studio by the landlord. We tried to catch one of them for the mouse shot, but we couldn’t get our hands on the sneaky bugger. After that, we tried a few different animated mice. In the end what ended up working is walking down to the pet store and dropping two bucks on some mice.

We tried to shoot it on green-screen, but ended up building the shot around the mouse in his little plastic house. The thing about mice is they don’t like to stand still at all. Especially when you’ve got lights and cameras up in their business. We had to shoot for a couple hours to get the right moment. I hope the mice enjoyed their vacation from the pet store! I worry they may fall prey to snakes someday.

What was the brief or was it an open brief? How long was production?
The script was great. We tried out some techniques, and off to the races we went. The majority of the production took about three weeks once everything was approved.

Credits
Director: Sean Pecknold
Executive Producer: Aaron Ball
Producer: Brian Waldrop
Animators: Sean Pecknold, Britta Johnson
Paintings: Britta Johnson
Lighting Assist: Michael Ragen
Editorial and Color: Grandchildren
Art Assistant: Randy Bretzin
Sound Design and Mix: Justin Braegelmann

Agency: Three Drunk Monkeys, Australia
Exec. Creative Directors: Justin Drape, Scott Nowell
Creative Director: Noah Regan
Art Director: Matt Heck
Copywriter: Damian Fitzgerald
Agency Producers: Thea Carone, John Ruggiero
Group Content Director: Dan Beaumont
Account Director: Kristen Hardeman
Content Manager: Brad Firth

Posted on Motionographer