Hasta La Motion!

Happy Thanksgiving from Nathan Love and NBC! In collaboration with NBC Artworks, the studio, once again, resurrects their feathered friend, but this time, for a fun, holiday greeting. I was able to catch up with Creative Director and founder of Nathan Love, Joe Burrascano, where he elaborates:

“We found ourselves with a week of downtime and decided to have some more fun with the NBC Peacock. He’s quick to render, and with Thanksgiving coming up, we couldn’t resist. After giving the team a few hours to brainstorm on their own, Ryan, Anca and I sat down and conceived the story in about 10 minutes. The rest was 5 focused days of hard work and lots of laughs. In the end, it was all worth it – especially when working with the musical genius that is Drew Skinner. I always love seeing how his sound design pulls it together in the end. This time our feathered friend is wishing the world a very Happy Turkey Day, and we hope there’s many more to come.”

Posted on Motionographer

I recently watched this film, and while I have mixed feelings about the film itself, the title blew me away. Made by SFAUSTINA Design last year, it’s a typographical feast for the eyes. Some of the type compositions are reminiscent of the golden era of Hollywood in the 1940s (see above, where director’s name, film title, and main actor’s name appear on the same screen). The animation of the type hints at the key visual device that runs throughout the film (lights and reflections), which in turn relates a key element in the story. Catch the full interview with Stephen Faustina and watch the titles in HD, here.

Posted on Motionographer

With over 2,026,435 views of the official film on Dailymotion in the six days since its release, Pixels has really spread far and wide very quickly. We wanted to find out more about the film and had a chance to ask the creator Patrick Jean a few questions. Now working as a 2D and 3D artist at One More Production, where this film was made, Patrick is a 2002 graduate of Supinfocom and has also previously worked at the French VFX powerhouse BUF. Patrick’s original storyboards for the film are also below. Take a look!

What was your main inspiration for the concept for this piece?
I played all these games when I was young ! Most of them were on Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC or Arcade machines. Another aspect was to mix these two different universes: pixel art and reality. Two universes with different laws of physic. I was curious to see what would come out from this: would one of them eat the other ? I also got my main inspiration from late 80’s blockbusters, like Roger Rabbit or Ghostbusters. I think this aesthetic choice contributes a lot to the nostalgic feeling of it, and nicely fits the retro gaming theme.

This is a self-initiated project for you, right? Why did you choose to make it?
This is indeed a personal project, but I received a lot of help from french VFX studio OneMoreProd. To be perfectly honest it should have been a music video in the very beginning, but with the huge amount of CG work it represented I wasn’t sure to meet the deadline. That’s why we choosed to make a short movie of it.

Did you come to New York and shoot scenes specifically for previously storyboarded shots? Or was there a bunch of footage that was shot and then edited together, figuring out what to animate in each shot as the piece came together? And what camera gear was this shot on?
Everything was storyboarded and conceived before shooting. Then we went to NYC and shot on location in two days. I have to say my friend and Director of Photography Matias Boucard helped me a lot to get everything I needed. We used a Canon 5D Mark II. (I had a lot of “rolling shutter” troubles so I had to re-do almost all the camera movements in CG and camera mapping…)

How big was the team that did the visual effects and animation? Can you tell us a little bit about how you worked and what tools you used?
I did almost all the VFX in the movie. However I received help from the VFX company where I work (Flame artist and sound design for example). When I had all the footage in hand, I began by developping a tool for Maya to generate animated voxels. It’s C++ written and works nicely. Then everything was tracked in Maya Live and rendered in Mental Ray. The editing was made in Final Cut.

What other projects do you have coming up? Anything you’re excited about?
Well, I have been contacted by several major feature studios to develop the project further. Beside this, I have another short movie on tracks and lot of contacts with video and ad companies.

Thanks Patrick! Good luck with everything, and thanks for taking the time to chat with us.

Credits:
Directed by: Patrick Jean
DOP: Matias Boucard
Line Producer: Benjamin Darras
Location Manager: Kris Arthur Gray Cedras
3D and SFX : Patrick Jean with some help from Pedro Gomes, Grégory Lanfranchi, Philippe Palmieri
Color grading : Hervé Thouement
Sound design: Benoit Cauet, Nicolas Vitte
Music: Nicolas Vitte
Produced by: Benjamin Darras & Johnny Alves
Production assistant : Christ Zotokas

Posted on Motionographer

Gabe Askew’s new video for the song “Ten By Ten” by Bluebrain is a really interesting and well-executed piece, and quite a departure from Two Weeks, the unofficial Grizzly Bear video that he put out last year. “Ten By Ten” is skillfully orchestrated and very graphic – clean and elegant. It’s especially impressive, considering Gabe completed this almost completely on his own with no budget. And the new direction shows that he is still exploring and expanding his craft. Kudos.

Read on for a Q&A with Gabe about this piece. (Sorry folks, link fixed now.)

Posted on Motionographer

Lucky is a film that was made for Twenty120 earlier in the year. Attentive readers may already have seen it, but it’s really too gorgeous and haunting to let it slip by and not give it its own full post. Its creator, EB Hu is a Director and Motion Designer based in London. We previously featured another non-commercial short of his in 2007: Josie’s Lalaland. High time then to catch up with EB and find out what he’s up to:

Q&A:
What was the inspiration behind Lucky? How did you come up with the concept for the film?
I wanted to create a short some time ago after I saw images of Japanese Whale hunting. There is a extremely haunting picture that features the corpses of a mother whale and her cub. Then comes the occasion that I was asked to think of something around the theme “Good Luck”. When I put the images of my cat against the whale hunting, I felt the irony behind. Our pets have luckily adapted to human world, while the wild animals are unluckily being hunted. On the other hand, our pets have unluckily lost their sense of freedom while begging us for food. The real lucky ones would be those wild animals that escaped our chase.

What was the process like in actually making this? The Twenty120 shorts aren’t funded, so you have to make the time to complete them on your own, right?
Before Twenty120 ’s calI, I already had the initial idea and had done a rough animatic. Once I was commissioned, I felt the topic would match my short very well.
At the time I was still assigned to my full time job, so I had to work my own stuff after work, but who doesn’t? I teamed up with my workmate Simon Graham. We usually spent few hours after work on building senses. Though we were using our own time, I still managed to set a deadline on the project which we had to stick to. The process spread into a 2-and-a-half week period, which went down pretty well according to my original art works and animatic.

We posted your short Josie’s Lalaland a few years back, and Philip Sheppard worked on the score for that as well. Each of them are so evocative and melancholy, how did you collaborate with him? Did you have the track first or did he score it to your picture?
I was lucky at the end of the project that my producer Joe Marshall found our mutual friend- musician Philip Sheppard – was willing to lend his instrumental talent on my piece, once more. Based on my rough animatic cut, Phil captured the atmosphere and recorded his piano playing, and I finalised the edit based on his music.

Can you give us a little background into your work history? How did you get involved in Motion Design and what have you been working on recently?
I started my career in Shanghai as a 2D & 3D animator. In 2004, I decided I need to find time to do more of my own concepts, so I left for UK, to study my MA degree. Upon graduation, I first briefly joined BskyB’s sport team and then BBC broadcast, lately Redbee Media. From 2008, I was represented by Redbee as a director until I left earlier this year. Now I have set up my own studio called MIE with my partners. We started up with a series of viral ads for Spinvox and some pop promos for Zero7. We recently finished George Michael’s new Christmas single promo called December Song, which is due to be released on 13th Dec. The final piece can be seen here.
Here is some additional art from December Song:

Lucky Credits:
Production Company: MIE
Direction and Design: EB Hu
Music: Phillip Sheppard
3D modelling: Simon Graham
Animation: EB Hu and Simon Graham
Producer: Joe Marshall

Posted on Motionographer