What’s not to like about this? To me, anyway, this is another one of those ‘tick-all-the-right-boxes’ kind of spot. Cocoe, the Madrid-based multidisciplinary design studio, was commissioned by Shackleton, to create this spot for the Spanish government, which promotes:
“Fondo de cooperación para agua y saneamiento”- a public institution dealing with water supply and sanitation tasks- is a project that meets one of the “millennium goals”: reduce the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe water and basic sanitation by 2015.’
It supports a humanitarian cause, carries a social message. (tick). Stylistically, it’s adorable, friendly and very accessible. (tick). Technically, it’s well executed, the animation of the characters, especially the little girl and her dog, simply delightful. (tick).
Just like the Story of Kakenya which was posted last week, pieces like this gives me hope, that as animators and designers, we can use our skills for the greater good! Keep ‘em coming, I’d say!
On Tuesday the 29th at NYC’s Envoy Enterprises, London-based art crew, Bare Bones (founded by Harry Malt), will be having their US debut show. After a few successful shows in London and three editions of their quarterly zine, they’ll also be introducing video for the first time.
Bare Bones is an non-commercial outlet for artists, photographers and image makers across the world. Spawned in London in the deepest plunge of the global economic melt down, it is a raw celebration of doing things for love and fun — a timely reminder how in times of hardship, art and creativity can and always will flourish.
This free paper is funded by it’s contributors and published quarterly. Each edition is launched with a show, featuring work from all the artists. Approaching their first birthday, they are having a premature party in NYC. With a break from their normal format, they will celebrate the cultures of both sides of the Atlantic.
Schedule
Exhibition and screenings: 6-9pm
After party (downstairs at Home Sweet Home): from 9-11pm
Featuring performances by Jugger-Nut and The Giggle Fits
Members:
ART:
Harry Malt*, Chris Bianchi, Neal Fox, Frank Laws, Hannah Bays, Robert Rubbish, Kate McMorrine, Stephanie von Reiswitz, Billy Bragg, LeGun, Heretic Print Studio, Leigh Fox, Lie-Ins & Tigers, Nervous Stephen, Simon Dara, Amelia Johnstone, Hanna Hanra, Matt Lambert, Peter Rapp, Kate Merry, James Pecis, Tom Jennings and Zoe Taylor.
PHOTO:
Niall O’Brien*, Jamie Daughters, Ross McDonnell, Brian Daly, Shane Deegan, Richard Gilligan, Jacob Lillis and Andreas Laszlo Konrath, Neil Gavin.
LITERATURE:
Michael Smith*, Richard Milward, Gary Fairful, Sebestian Horsely, SC Breen, Svetlana Graudt, Gavin Bennett, Jamie Putnam and Slavko Vukanovic.
FILM:
Matt Lambert*, Sean Pecknold, David O’Reilly, Andy Martin, Matt Smithson, Niall O’Brien, Ross McDonald and several more film makers to be announced.
I think at this point, it’s fair to say that OK Go has yet to disappoint us with their videos. The last one for “This too shall pass” proved just how painstakingly involved the band works with artists and directors alike. For such high demand concepts, it’s really amazing that they have yet to fail.
We caught up with Directors/Choreographers Eric Gunther & Jeff Lieberman for their newest stop motion / timelapse video for the track End Love. Eric was in Switzerland and Jeff in Berlin, both setting up installations. But they were kind enough to share some insight on the music video.
From the looks of the video it has one continual shot, how long did this take?
Technically one continual ‘take’ (some people get fussy over specific vocabulary) – we had to use three different cameras to deal with the enormous range of time scales, more on that below. All three cameras shot at overlapping times [so they could be combined] but the action did happen continuously, over a roughly 18 hour period; starting right before sunset and ending around 11am.
How many attempts did it take you guys?
We ran the thing twice, although the first one was basically a strong rehearsal – we didn’t get enough of it working by then to have used the take (we had to plan, choreograph, and shoot the whole thing in ten days).
How did you sync the singing in stop motion?
This was the toughest part! It came down to a combination of techniques. In the first section we go from real-time into 4x (meaning every 4 seconds recorded becomes 1 second of playback)… at speeds like 4x you can play the music at quarter speed, and have the singing lip synced just by listening to it and singing slowly… this starts to fail around 8x where the audio starts to become unintelligible.
At this and slower speeds we used a variety of techniques – when it’s around 16-32x (where one minute recorded equals ~2 seconds of playback), we could take the rhythms of the singing and notate when each syllable should start – Eric was continually megaphoning out the cues to all the members, eg “five…. six… ok on eight damian begins saying ‘love’… seven… eight” – all this while also yelling out all the choreography cues! (Eric and I split duties during shooting where basically I managed camera and he managed choreography… was pretty crucial to be able to split those roles, too much going on).
At the slowest speeds even listening to a count becomes almost impossible – the sleeping bag scene is filmed at 512x, meaning every roughly 8 minutes becomes a second. A single line of singing took usually 45 minutes. To do this reasonably well, we filmed each of the band members singing their lines, and then slowed down the recordings to 1/512x. While they sat/slept (yes they really did sleep) in the sleeping bags, we played back the roughly 2 hours of film on a laptop in the park, where they could see where they should be with their mouths.
What software did you use, hardware/camera did you use… and how did you achieve playback?
We used a combination of three cameras. Most is filmed with the Sony EX3 which has hot-swappable data cards, so you can continuously record the entire 18 hours without stopping [hot swappable power as well].. this covers from real-time to 512x (and you can adjust the frame rate of recording as well to deal with excessive data). We used a Phantom high speed camera to do both of the high speed shots, the first at 500 frames per second, the second at 1500. (We used these on my show often so I was comfortable with them over some other options). Finally, the last shot pans off to the sunset, where we mounted a dSLR shooting one frame every few minutes for about a week…
Post processing was interesting! We cut the whole thing in Final Cut, using Motion for image stabilization since speeding things up like this tends to create an enormous amount of jitter (just as slow motion tends to smooth out shots). First we changed playback speeds, then worked on all the camera cutting to get everything in its proper speed, then camera work (we shot everything at 1080p to be cut down to 720p after image stabilization).
One of the aspects we were most interested in was making sure that pretty much anyone could do this at home, if they did the proper planning and spent the time. Besides the high speed camera, you can do all of this relatively easy – you just need to do some planning!
Any sort of technical issues you can share with us? framerates, shutter speeds, etc?
We went all over the place. Off the top of my head I think I can go through the framerates we covered (I’ll express them in ‘relative to normal 30fps, ie 1x is real-time, 4x means the recording is sped up 4x for playback, etc)..
Opening is 1x, suddenly into 4x for first verse – then slow motion (about 1/16x) for the lean, into 8x for the second verse, and 16x for the first chorus. Standing at sunset is roughly 10000x (about three hours in a few seconds), the candle scene is at 60x, the sunrise is similarly ~10000x, running around the park is 64x, the slow motion jump is about 50x, next verse 16x, chorus 1 out is 32x, chorus 2 out is 64x, and the out shot of the sun setting and rising accelerated from 64x to a max of about 170,000x (where a full 24 hours takes about 1/2 sec). In general, we were all over the place!
Thanks guys, and last comments for our reader?
You might want to see an earlier video where Eric and I first explored this idea, kind of an etude. All at 4x but let us explore the terrain and Eric (the subject) is a pretty sick dancer, in any time scale!
Directors: OK Go, Eric Gunther, and Jeff Lieberman
Producer: Shirley Moyers
Several days ago, we received the latest from MAKE: a knock down, drag out homage to film noir style crime dramas of old Hollywood, called Palm Springs. The piece was created for the Palm Springs International ShortFest, which runs from June 22nd – June 28th. Rather than opining on the merits of the work, we asked MAKE’s Director and Lead Animator for the opener, Andrew Chesworth, to summarize how the team of artists executed the piece, in detail:
“Palm Springs was created using primarily traditional animation drawn directly into Photoshop with Wacom Cintiq tablets. The idea was to achieve the aesthetic of classical animation but to do it in a completely paperless fashion. The creative workflow was near identical to that of traditional analog animation – starting with rough layouts buried in construction lines, and gradually working toward more finished scenes through a layering process of drawing. In several scenes, assistants in-betweened and touched up the drawings of key animators, and finished animation was passed on to the colorists who painted each frame of animation with the dry-brush styling.
3D animation was employed for a handful of inorganic subjects, such as the vehicles in the car chase, the ceiling fan in the office, and the movie projector. The modeling, animation, and rendering was all done in Maya. Mental Ray’s contour shader was employed to achieve the outlines on the objects, and the models were built very specifically to accommodate the line work to match the drawn designs. Hard shadow render passes, animated texture overlays, and a great deal of rotoscoped hand-drawn effects were composited onto the 3D elements to mesh them within the hand-drawn world as much as possible.
Compositing was all done in After Effects, where additional treatments were placed over the drawn elements to achieve a more analog aesthetic. Subtle texture overlays, diffusion filters, and in many cases film grain and noise were added to conform the elements.”
For more, check out the Q&A and behind-the-scenes artwork that went into creating the opener here.
We saw this beautiful cel-animated and aquarelle-painted music video by Irina Dakeva for Breakbot recently and wanted to find out more about the production process she used. You can tell immediately that it’s a real analog and painted work. It’s got a real energy and kinetic style of painting that is entrancing. The inventive transitions and constantly-shifting color washes go hand-in-hand with the bouncy, French pop-disco track.
A.F. Schepperd’s tripped out video for Blockhead is nothing short of an incredible feat. Anthony acting as Director and the only animator said that he created the entire project just under 5 months, only working within Flash.
His previous work for Ape School really grabbed our attention. This time around, he’s really outdone himself.
Directimated by A.F.Schepperd
Commissioned by Ninjatune Records
Music by Blockhead
Now, a quick return to the lo-fi, funny, flash animation genre, Red Medusa made these 40 spots for Hrusteam snacks, a brand that’s apparently owned by Pepsi.
Here’s my favourite two, but do check the rest of them out, and pick your own favourites! Sure to make a dull day pass quicker…!
It’s a shame I don’t read Russian, I would love to explore the Red Medusa site and actually understand what I’m reading…
Thanks Igor for the help, and Ken McLean for the tip!
Production – http://redmedusa.ru/
Sponsored by PepsiCo, Hrusteam brand
Produced by Egor Yakovlev
Designed by Boris Kravchenko
Top Blacklist director, Pistachios, has partnered with with co-director Aaron Kisner and the Vital Voices Global Partnership to bring us The Story of Kakenya. The piece chronicles the real-life and inspiring story of Kakenya Ntaiya: a young girl who —throughout her childhood— escaped dogmatic African traditions toward women by pursuing a higher education and fulfilling her dream of becoming a teacher.
The style does not deviate too far the signature Pistachios aesthetic. The look is abstract, graphic, and sparse, which recalls the emblematic patterns and geometric taste of African design that has become globally acknowledged.
Nexus Production’s director Johnny Kelly just made this short film for YouTube Play, an exhibition that YouTube and the Guggenheim Museum in NYC are calling “a Biennial of Creative Video” and which you can submit or nominate your own non-commercial work to right now; submissions are open until July 31st. Johnny’s piece is top-notch, encapsulating the Youtube experience in life-size sets which reference famous art works and also run the gamut from wood-grain explosions to rocky caves to circuit-boards and geometric cityscapes, all using the familiar Youtube play button as a central motif. Johnny explained his idea in the press release from Nexus:
“I wanted to try and capture that down the rabbit hole feeling you get when watching YouTube – you start by watching something innocent like a music video, then another video catches your eye and before you know it you’ve spent your fourth hour watching videos of pandas playing pianos. From a technical point of view, it was a challenging animation assault course, with much head-scratching and figuring out along the way. I was very fortunate to be surrounded by brainiacs like production designer Graham Staughton who always had an inventive solution to any problem we came up against.”
The NY Times ran an article on the exhibition yesterday as well, which had an interesting alternative viewpoint expressed by Robert Storr, dean of the Yale University School of Art, which is well worth considering:
“It’s time to stop kidding ourselves,” Mr. Storr added. “The museum as revolving door for new talent is the enemy of art and of talent, not their friend — and the enemy of the public as well, since it refuses to actually serve that public but serves up art as if it was quick-to-spoil produce from a Fresh Direct warehouse.”
We’ll see what the Guggenheim and Youtube eventually pick to include in their show, but if they’re already onto Johnny Kelly, I think it’ll be well worth checking out. Here’s an interesting making-of video if you want to see more.
Credits:
Client: Google / YouTube
Title: YouTube_PLAY Call Out Video
Length: 38 seconds
Client: Across The Pond Productions | Creative Lab EMEA – Google
Executive Producer: Rachna Suri
Production Company: Nexus
Director: Johnny Kelly
Executive Producer: Julia Parfitt
Producers: Liz Chan & Beccy McCray
Animation: Nexus Productions
Compositing: Alasdair Brotherston
Director of Photography: Matthew Day
Production Designer: Graham Staughton @ We Are The Art Department
Stop Motion Animator: Matthew Cooper
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.
We saw this beautiful cel-animated and aquarelle-painted music video by 
