These Days and Finger Industries are ‘Friends of Glass’

Dutch agency These Days along with Sheffield based animation house Finger Industries have produced this heart warming viral for Friends of Glass. The animation makes up part of a well conceived campaign to encourage the use of glass over plastics and so on, because of its ability to be recycled 100%.

Hank the bottle (Although he has had many previous incarnations) acts as spokes bottle, cheer bottle and vocalist (Sorry, couldn’t squeeze ‘bottle’ in there) for his own tune which spins the yarn of his own super resilient life story.

Creating a convincing and entertaining character to head up a campaign is no easy task and in clumsy hands this can result in a head-shaking cheese-fest. But thanks to some deft lyrics writing by Paul Van Oevelen at These days and sweet animation work by Finger Industries, the result is a character and viral that really ‘warms the cockles’.

Also, make sure to check out all the letters on the accompanying website addressed to various luminaries of the showbiz world. The agency really rinse out the schwarzenegger joke that makes up the backbone of the campaign, as well coming up with a few more gems. Trying to get ‘Plastic Bertrand’ to change his name to ‘Glass Bertrand’ certainly raised a smile in the Robson household…


Concept: Paul Van Oevelen (copy), Bram Van Looveren (AD)
Creative Direction: Sam De Volder
Design: Bert Beckers, Valentijn Destoop
Development: Geoffrey De Muer, Tom De Pauw, Greg Vandevyver, Kathy Van de Gaer
Strategy: Karin De Bruyn, Tim Willems
AM/PM: Sylvie Versteylen, Liesbeth Stevens
TV-Producer: Bruno Dejonghe
Music: Thierry Van Durme
Voice: Chris Brooker
Animation: Finger Industries

Posted on Motionographer

MK12 and Marc Forster: Swiss International Air

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Marc Forster and MK12 teamed up once again to create this meditative animation for Swiss International Air. I was able to chat with creative director and co-founder of MK12, Tim Fisher, and ask him a few questions:

From looking at this piece it seems like it was a pretty open brief. Could you describe the origins of the project?

Marc called up to the studio one day and asked if we wanted to collaborate on a short film with him that was being commissioned by SWISS.

Many of the key concepts came from Marc’s original writing for the project, which had a very personal and introspective tone to it. We started to work within a montage-based anti-aesthetic, which we felt was an appropriate metaphor for memory and thinking
processes.

It’s like a literal stream of consciousness. Or the visual equivalent of a lyric essay.

If I’m counting correctly, this is the 4th project that you have worked on with director Marc Forster. Being a company that is known for its collective mentality, how has it been working with an outside director?

Yeah, this is our fourth project with Marc. He’s really fantastic to work with. He’s got a brilliant mind and he’s really supportive of the people around him. He’s very family-oriented, in that he continues to work with the same group of folks on every film. They are an amazing and smart bunch.

We think we’ve created some of our best work with Marc and the gang- and we hope to continue to do so.

Something that I like about this animation is that one can see it’s roots in old MK12 work, yet it is a clear jump in the collective’s growth in production quality and aesthetic refinement. Do you find this to be true? What do you think is the next step for MK12?

We hope that every project reflects some level of growth from our studio. We’re pretty happy with this film and it’s creative production.

We keep on keeping on. We’ve got a couple of things coming up. We’ve got two in-house short film projects moving along at a glacial pace; both are somewhere in their own respective pre-production. We created some work for the The Beatles: Rock Band game that’ll be out in September. Otherwise, it’s summer road trips, BBQs, red beers and fun in the midwest heat.

Thank you, Tim, for taking the time to talk to us. I think I speak for a lot of people when saying that we can’t wait to see those future MK12 projects.


Brand: Swiss Airlines
Agency: Publicis
Creative: Martin Deneke
Director: Marc Forster
Production: Ping Pong Film
Producer: Peter Lehner
Director of Photography: Roberto Schaefer
Editor: Jay Nelson

Animation: MK12
Animation Production: The Ebeling Group

Posted on Motionographer

Tatia Rosenthal Interview (and Special Screening Opportunity)

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I recently had a chance to chat with director Tatia Rosenthal about her debut stop-motion feature film, $9.99. Check out the trailer and read the interview for details on getting a free ticket to a special screening of the film co-hosted by Motionographer in Manhattan on June 16th. We’ve just run out of tickets. Looking forward to seeing some of you there!

$9.99 is set to open on June 19th. You can visit the official site for more details.

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F5 RE:PLAY Film Festival: Batch Three

A little behind schedule on this one, as I’ve spent the last week packing and moving. This is the third batch of films created for the F5 RE:PLAY film festival. Our deepest gratitude goes to Ubik, Digital Kitchen, and Imaginary Forces for their participation.

Ubik “Voxel”

Digital Kitchen “Brass”

Imaginary Forces “The First Time”

Related posts:

Posted on Motionographer

Civilization by Marco Brambilla (featuring Crush)

civilization
Imagine stepping into an elevator and looking through a viewport that reveals your ascension to heaven or—if you’re on your way to the street—your descent to hell (appropriately enough).

This interpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy is precisely the experience video artist Marco Brambilla (director of Demolition Man) and Toronto-based studio Crush were striving for in Civilization, a video mural created for the new Standard hotel in New York City.

The entire mural uses over 400 video sources, including samples from several films—something Brambilla is well-known for in his work. This particular project came with some special technical challenges, though. Crush explains:

We began with exploring the idea of using a game engine to house the project. Seemed easy, map footage onto planes in space, attach a PC to the elevator and we can move up and down in the game environment all day. Unfortunately, once we started to collage the clips together in the Flame we knew the game engine idea wouldn’t fly.

We approximated that we would have 250 looped HD clips in the environment and our Flame could barely handle it (in the end it was closer to 500 looping clips). We compromised by locking ourselves into the idea that we would create a huge vertical canvas that we would scan up and down on once the elevator was in motion. The final piece was approximately 1920 x 7500 pixels.

Read on for a Q&A with Marco Brambillla and detailed notes from Crush’s Sean Cochrane about the technical challenges behind this project.

For commercial work, Marco Brambilla is represented in the US by The Ebeling Group.

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Passion Pictures’ Pete Candeland welcomes The Beatles to Rock Band

rockband
It was no surprise when I learned the new spot for The Beatles: Rockband was directed by Pete Candeland of Passion Pictures, director of The Gorillaz music videos and done the past two Rock Band openers (1 & 2).

The illustrations and designs are gorgeous, the transitions are seamless and the piece builds momentum to the very end. Not only does the energy of the piece build, but so do the complexity of the animation techniques themselves. We start off in an illustrated, cut out world and wind up in a fully immersing Psyop-esque jam fest. By the end of the video I had to keep rewinding to catch all the references.

Enjoy.

Posted on Motionographer

Modul: Diploma Project by Maxim Zhestkov

Modul

Young designer/director Maxim Zhestkov has just released his diploma project,  entitled “Modul.”

Explains Maxim: “I’ve tried to reflect the universe in infinite confinement. Pulsating energy and magnetism. Confrontation and the pursuit of something great, a goal that an observer can not understand not being involved in the process.”

Sound by Marcelo ‘Combustion’ Baldin.

Posted on Motionographer

Prologue: 2009 MTV Movie Awards

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Prologue has released a montage of their colorfully wacky package for the MTV Movie Awards, directed by Ilya Abulhanov (who also directed the recently posted OFFF 2009 titles).

The creators of the many awards show packages, including the MTV Music Video Awards and the last five Academy Awards shows, Prologue knows their way around a sealed envelope. Careful never to upstage the red carpet regulars who share the spotlight with their graphics packages, Prologue knows when to pull back—and when to shine.

As Prologue’s youngest creative director, Ilya brings a shoot-from-the-hip confidence that’s countered by crisp typography and well-composed shots. His palette is an unlikely mix of mustards, eggplants and oranges that works with the surreal vignettes and icon-headed figures that unify the package.

Posted on Motionographer

De Monsters

Monsters: 091 Tourists from Volstok Telefunken on Vimeo.

This is Monsters: 091 Tourists, just the latest of almost a hundred similar shorts made by Volstok Telefunken for a Belgian Show, “Man Bijt Hond.” The Monster films all feature silly, gross and joking Monsters animated over real live-action shots of people in everyday situations who interact with the drawn Monsters in unexpected and hilarious ways. Mix Candid Camera clips with 2 parts sick and twisted animation, shake and enjoy!

The Monsters’ own site is here.

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London: See No Evil June 4th at Bodhi

seenoevil

Attention Londoners: See No Evil’s next meeting will be meeting on June 4th, 7pm at Bodhi. David Wilson will be on hand to discuss his “We Got Time” for Moray McLaren, followed by an Open Screen Night. There will also be free Stash DVDs being handed out like highly addictive substances worthy of their namesake.

Wish I could be there! Fellow Motionographer James Wignall will be in attendance, though. Get there early. Space is limited.

Full details on the See No Evil site.

Posted on Motionographer