What a year Edouard Salier and his crew at Digital District has had! From big work for Coke to indie music videos for Massive Attack, Edouard rises through ranks as one of the more prolific and versatile 3D-animation storytellers of the moment. In association with RSA, Atlas, his prequel to Splitting the Atom, is an evolution of this dark, post-apocalyptic world which builds on both its narrative and abstract, 3D aesthetic.
Artist: Massive Attack ‘Atlas Air’
Directed by Edouard Salier
Produced by: Edouard Salier, Svana Gisla and David Danesi
Production Company: Black Dog Films and Digital District Paris
CGI: Jean Lamoureux, Emilie Caudroit, Rémi Gamiette, Kevin Monthureux, Jimmy Cavé, Romuald Caudroit and Thomas Marquet.
2D: David Sapyyapy, Lou Menais, Vladimir Mavounia-Kouka.
Art & Compositing: Julien Michel, Xavier Reye and Damien Martin.
Record Company: Virgin Records
Commissioner: Svana Gisla
Special thanks to Henrique Vale, Aymeric Vin-Ramarony,
Filipe Jardim, Amandine Moulinet and Olivier Gajan.
Once in awhile, a piece comes along that speaks to you in so many different ways that you just want to listen, afraid that any written response will not adequately capture your sentiments. Personally, this is one of those times, so this will be a quick writeup…
Adam Gault and Stephanie Augustine continue their string of successes with another amazing personal project, Gettysburg Address – easily my favorite work of the year.
Along with an evocative reading by Mitch Rapoport and deeply layered sound design of Chris Villepigue, this subtly powerful illustration of Lincoln’s famous speech portrays a smooth ebb and flow between rich metaphors; each composition aptly reflecting a historical attitude as well as the content’s transcendence – one easily appropriated to the strife that exists in many areas of our current society as much as it did in 1863.
Motionographer Author Simon Robson recently caught up with Adam, who was kind enough to elaborate on the work:
“I’m glad you like the Gettysburg project. We’ve been plugging away at the piece for some time, so it’s nice to finally have it wrapped up and out there.
Words… Well, the irony is that when we decided to attempt this project it didnt really occur to us that the Gettysburg Address is one of the great speeches of all-time. It’s words… carefully chosen words that work really well on their own. The speech doesnt really need pictures. But once we started brainstorming we were determined come up with imagery that would compliment the words. We wanted to use simple and subtle metaphors that would give the speech context and create evocative compositions without trying to add meaning. Hopefully we’ve done the writing some justice.
The actual production process was pretty fluid, as these personal pieces tend to be. The assets are a mixture of photographs, hand painted elements, and digital illustrations. All of the animation was done in After Effects.
One of the challenges with the animation was to keep the motion interesting despite its slow pace. To combat dullness, we tried to keep things moving at all times, whether it was the textures inside the lines, or the drifting of the camera. We also setup the overall structure to move back and forth between light and dark compositions, and tried to make the transitions between the sections as surprising as possible.
The approach for the sound design was similar to the picture. The voice recording needed to be the main focus, with everything else complimenting it. I think Chris did an excellent job of getting it “just right”. His effects are subtle but still moving. They set the mood without demanding too much attention. The clinking of the rope on the flagpole at the end is so lonely and sad. It’s just perfect.”
Credits:
Read by Mitch Rapoport.
A collaboration with Stefanie Augustine.
Sound design by Chris Villepigue | songloft.com.
Design and Animation help from Carlo Vega.
Playgrounds describes itself as a festival for innovative and creative digital art. During the two-day festival in Tilburg, Playgrounds presents an impression of the latest developments in technology as well as creativity. The festival program offers an inspiring mix of inventive films, documentaries, animation, graphic design, artist talks, character design and performances.
Playgrounds was a joy and surely measures up to the big festivals in the world. Allthough the festival is held in a small town called Tilburg (South of The Netherlands) it’s speakers reflex bigness. From big directors like Pierre Coffin (Despicable Me) and Rex Crowle (Little Big Planet) to powerhouses like Mini Vegas and Zeitguised. Furthermore there were Nexus, The Blackheart Gang, Shy the Sun, David Wilson, our own Matt Lambert, Champagne Valentine, Radical Friend and BIF to complete it.
It was nice to see every speaker had their own style, their own story of success and their own piece of advice. The motto seemed to be, stay true to yourself, explore and make what YOU want!
I especially liked the Talkshow between Fons Schiedon and David O’Reilly, what was meant to be a talk about inspiration, became a showdown of truly bizarre and sick works from all over the world. Movie clips, snippets of porn and pieces of animation were all wrapped into a humorous, often awkward, dialogue between Fons and David. The Art of ‘Wrongness’!
This years’ titles came out of the sick mind of animator/director/designer Fons Schiedon. With Post Panic on the production it turned out to be on of the most creative festival titles ever made. Wether you like it or not, they are a definitely a fresh, new approach. No slick 3D, no heavy sound design, skilled typography or layers and layers of post. It looks like a surreal movie, a part of a series you’ve missed. Fons cleverly hid the titles in the dialogue of the film.
I’m delighted that Old Fangs, which has been making the rounds on the film festival circuit, is available in its entirety online. The character designs and matte paintings are gorgeous, but what drew me to this film was that it made me nostalgic for watching short films in a theater setting – where the colors wash over your entire field of vision, the soundtrack completely envelopes you, and for an extended moment you are focused solely on the story of a young wolf gingerly seeking out his father. At over eleven minutes, it’s the type of film that might get scrubbed through amidst other internet windows, but I encourage setting aside a quiet moment to let the story unfold.
Old Fangs was directed by Adrien Merigeau and Alan Holly (who work together as Cartoon Saloon (of Secret of Kells fame). Adrien and Alan were gracious enough to take the time to answer a couple questions about Old Fangs… check it out after the jump.
How did the project come about?
Adrien: I was working for a couple of years on the feature “The Secret of Kells“. I had moved to Ireland for that. I stayed in Dublin before heading down to Kilkenny and met Alan there. A year or so later I got aware of a scheme that the Irish Film Board have for funding short animated films. It’s really great, perfect for 7-8 minute films. So I wrote a script based on an illustration idea I had, used some designs from my unfinished college film and applied for the funding with the help of Cartoon Saloon’s producer Ross Murray. We didn’t get the funding the first year, because the script i had written was too vague… I had left a big chunk of the film out because it was supposed to be experimental and spontaneous. So I tried to put it into words the next year and we got the money then. That was summer 2008.
I asked Alan if he’d do storyboards with me and we started in Berlin where I was living at the time. We both moved to Kilkenny again, and eventually we directed the whole film together there, in the Cartoon Saloon studio.
The Sundance description mentions “Merigeau and company set out to create a hierarchy free-environment, in which all creative forces are free to do what they feel is best. What results is a film that looks and sounds like all their friends.” Could you describe the creative process a little more? sounds like a lot of fun!
Alan: From the beginning we both really wanted the film to be spontaneous and for everyone involved to have an input in the project. There was a first-thought best-thought approach where almost everything that ended up in the final film came from someone’s first pass, there was very little reworking or labouring over things. I think everyone was really on the same page and so the whole production was really smooth. We worked really closely with a lot of friends on the film, from the animation to the music and acting. Everyone was encouraged to draw the characters or play the music their way or just to act as themselves, as opposed to doing things a specific prescribed way, so that the end result is a combination of everyones individual inputs and not something that could have been made anywhere.
Adrien: Yes we didn’t do model sheets for the characters or anything. The characters are pretty simple anyway so it was easy for the animators to draw them their way. It’s great to see animation bits looking and moving like their animator. For the voices too, Alan did a voice, our friend Rhob did another, and Paul Young, and John Morton. It won’t come across for most, but Old Fangs does move and look and sound like us, a lot. It’s like a memory of who we were and where we were at a specific time.
The layouts for a lot of the shots are so dramatic, almost like panels from a graphic novel. Was storyboarding a big part of the process?
Alan: We did the storyboards with a lot of live action films in mind, we were thinking quite realistically and just worked through the boards really quickly and what we did that week is what you see in the film.
Adrien: Yes we worked through them quite roughly and spontaneously, but our influences were a lot about strong compositions, like the works of Gus Van Sant, Yuri Norstein, Klimt… not to be pretentious, ha, but low key timing and framing were really important to us when we did old fangs. Also the work we did on the Secret of Kells naturally influenced us towards flat and graphic compositions.
How did the character design and style come about?
Adrien: I never got to finish this college film which was terribly frustrating. But the main theme and designs i really cared for, so a lot of that went into Old Fangs. The characters shapes are simple, but the animation is very quiet which gives them somewhat of a realistic feel I think which is nice. The choice of having animal characters made sense for the story, especially the theme about growing up away from your roots. For the backgrounds, we did everything on paper with coloured inks, and it was really great not to do much computer work on them. Overall, the style came naturally from how we like drawing.
How was working with your parents on the sound? I love the contrast between the voice acting in the boys vs. the father.
Adrien: Ha. Working with my parents was great, both very natural and very strange. We couldn’t really tell them what to do, because well, its hard to tell your parents what to do. And we also wanted them to work like everyone on the film, just for them to do what they felt was best. So we gave them simple directions at the start and they gave us the finished track at the end of the production. They had a lovely approach to the writing, they made the sound effects a part of the musical composition, and they were quite good at it because they come from contemporary music, so sounds are what they do best.
Alan: Paul Young did a really nice job for the father, he brought some experience and drama to it, which was a nice contrast to everyone else’s low key performances, we treated his voice a little too.
Obligatory nerd questions: what tools did you use? how long was the entire production process?
Alan: basic stuff, pencil, paper, inks, then Photoshop, After Effects and Avid, thats pretty much it.
Adrien: and it took about 10 months from storyboards to the end of the edit. We were a bit tight with time though because the film ended up being 11 minutes instead of the production budget’s 8 minute plan. But it was pretty smooth overall.
What are you guys up to now?
Alan: We’re working on a new short now which is great to be doing again. It’s over a year now since we finished Old Fangs so it’s going to be really nice to work with the same team again. We’ve just set up our own studio, a music video for a friend of ours Jennifer Evans. We’d been chipping away at that on the side for a while so it’s going to be great all work full time on a properly funded production again.
Adrien: Alan’s film is funded by the same scheme, only the tables are turned now and the film is his story and script. It’ll be really cool, I can’t wait to start production. I’m also working on Tomm Moore’s next film called Song of the Sea as art director which is really interesting.
Upcoming screenings of Old Fangs are available here, including Toronto, London, and Sweden. Big Thanks again to Adrien and Alan for giving us a peek into their process!
made by
Adrien Merigeau
Alan Holly
Ross Murray
Rory Byrne
Martine Altenburger
Lê Quan Ninh
Laurent Sassi
Alan Slattery
Jonas Hoffman
John Morton
Paul Young
Rhob Cunningham
Robbie Byrne
Sean Mc Carron
Tomm Moore
Fabian Erlinghäuser
Since posting a few months ago, the growth of One Day on Earth has been nothing but impressive. This online community has been joined by the United Nations (who are helping facilitate the transportation of footage back from 100 developing nations with low internet bandwidth from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe), Vimeo, and over 50 non-profits with the goal of filming in EVERY country in the world during the 24-hour period of 10/10/10.
The results of this project will be a shared archive of video — downloadable for non-commercial use by participants for creative and educational purposes — a feature film, and a community of filmmakers and inspired citizens dedicated to exploring our global identity via a shared media event.
Sign up here, grab a camera on Sunday and take a few minutes to make something and be a part of history.
With each project, David Wilson continues to be one of the most interesting mixed-media directors to watch right now. Convinced he doesn’t sleep, we’ve seen him tackle a diverse range of the some of the most labor-intensive animation techniques in his short career. With his trademark “breathing new life into historical animation techniques”, David’s latest returns to that of 2D to create a hypnotic and painstakingly methodical journey for Japanese Popstars’ ‘Let Go’.
I first saw the work of Sam Mason a few months ago with his graduation film, Wild Robot; a surreal, psychedelic sci-fi piece inspired by Zardoz and Le Planete Sauvage. The marriage of lo-fi shop materials (the hero being a painted tangerine) combined with CG elements tracked somewhat crudely into scenes creates a unique, tactile authenticity.
A few months later, Sam’s at it again. This time, with the fitting support of Colonel Blimp and Blink Ink, he delivers another hybrid world of miniatures, live-action and animation for Badly Drawn Boy. The presence of human touch and hand-crafted approach joins the rank of the continuously refreshing work that boldly thumbs it nose at its slick CG contemporaries. Despite budgetary restrictions we are still making interesting and innovative good work.
I can’t describe this piece from Daily Planet Productions in better words than the title can. Nerd out and enjoy the flow of motion graphics inside jokes.
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.
