Paris-based Blackmeal loves Marvel so much, they decided to make an homage to the company’s 74-year history of creating inspiring characters and telling thrilling stories. We asked Blackmeal a little bit about the project:
Quick Q&A with Blackmeal
Was this a project for a client? Or did you do this purely out of love for Marvel?
It was just purely out of love for Marvel.
It looks like it is mostly traditional animation. Is there any CG involved? If so, how?
It’s hand drawn (frame by frame), but we cheated for some characters: Ironman, Cyclops and the end title were created in 3D (Maya).
Was it difficult figuring out how to portray all of the Marvel characters? How did you design each of them?
No, it was easy. We started with a basic idea: The world of Marvel can be explained with simple shapes.
Thomas Lecomte (animation supervisor) is amazing. He chose 11 characters and wrote a screenplay in a few days. After that, you cannot really explain … it just came naturally. Marvel inspires us.
What is your favorite moment of the spot? Why?
Our favorite is without doubt, the first explosion. This is where it all begins.
Credits
Design and animation: Thomas Lecomte
Art direction: Vincent Ben Abdellah
3D composition: Mael François
VFX: Donald Simonet
Editing: Matthieu Colombel
Sound: Mooders
Characters, cel animation & pop retro: Buck keeps on rocking with great new spots for Fruit Snacks, McDonald’s and MTV. Credits on the projects’ pages.
Once again, Tiny Inventions have outdone themselves. For their latest round in mixed-media animation, the Brooklyn-based directing team of Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata have created an animated dark comedy about the Zodiac Killer, in Something Left, Something Taken. The short examines the infamous, 1960′s serial killer from the viewpoint of a vacationing couple.
In this piece, Tiny Inventions leaves no stone unturned by combining stop motion, live-action puppetry, and hand drawn animation. The film also features a beautiful score that’s equipped with a charming voice-over and quirky musical breaks. Yet still, the real magic of the short comes not from the hand crafted micro-details, but from the overall quality of the work, as not only a film, but a labor of love.
For an extensive look in the creation of Something Left, Something Taken, see the Tiny Inventions blog here.
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.
The Story of Bottled Water, a new film by activist Annie Leonard and Free Range Studios employs the same clear and accessible style of their highly successful Story of Stuff film to explore the issue of bottled water for World Water Day.
Yellow Cake is a new short film by Nick Cross, an Ottawa-based animator who has worked for everyone from Nickelodeon to Spumco over the course of his career. He calls Yellow Cake a “lamentable tragedy mixed full of pleasant mirth.” Animated in Flash, with digitally painted backgrounds, the fine-tuned muted color palette, retro-styled animation and the symphonic, almost saccharine, music all work to lure you into a tale of adorable blue creatures who spend all day baking and then eating their own delicious yellow cakes. But soon the tide turns, and Nick’s film explores a modern parable of terrorism and war, addressing our own attention span in a devastating way.
1. Can you give us a brief run-down of your animation background, other shorts films you’ve done or commercial work that’s been notable in developing your own films?
A. I’ve been working in the commercial animation world since 1996, mostly working on children’s television programming. Since two of the things I enjoy the most is drawing and films, animation was a natural fit for me. However, since I never went to animation school, working in animation was a good education and grounding for making my own animated films later. I made my first film in 1998 just to sort of learn animation, and I’ve been making films ever since.
2. What was the specific inspiration for Yellow Cake?
A. In 2003, while I was working on my previous film, The Waif of Persephone, there was a lot of talk in the media about Iraq purchasing yellow cake uranium. It was talked about so much that it was eventually just referred to as yellow cake, which I thought was pretty funny since they were speaking in such ominous tones about a tasty dessert treat. I just kept thinking about it, forming the story in my head until I finished Waif of Persephone in 2006, and then I jumped right on to working on Yellow Cake.
3. I know that you’ve mentioned that you’ve worked on this film (off and on) for almost three years. Even then, at over 8 minutes, how did you ever find the time to make this all on your own?
A. Over the years, I’ve developed a pretty streamlined production method through trial-and-error. Working almost entirely digitally now saves me a lot of time; I draw right into Flash with a Cintiq tablet and paint all of the backgrounds in Photoshop. I think that I could have made the entire film in just a few months if I didn’t have to keep putting it on the shelf to do commercial jobs, but such is the life of an independent filmmaker.
4. Did you deliberately use a few visual cues from well-known photographs from history? We’re thinking of the famous Napalm Girl photo and the Orwellian / They Live references in the town… Are there any others we might have missed?
A. Yes, definitely. I think that photograph from the Vietnam War really encapsulates the horror of war, so I couldn’t help referencing it. Also, 1984 is my favorite book so I couldn’t help but put some Orwellian imagery in there. The only other overt reference that I put in the film is to the Disney short, The Brave Little Tailor. When all the cats are freaking out near to the end of the film is based off of the montage of the villagers yelling “Seven in one blow!”.
5. The ending of the film leaves the fate of the little blue guys a little bit up in the air, cutting right to cartoons, music, sports and a final test pattern before the film ends. Watching the film leaves the audience itself a bit complicit: we’re all cats, aren’t we? Is there a call to action there?
A. It’s not really a call to action, it’s just sort of my thoughts about how we as a society view war. We are interested up to a point and then, since it doesn’t really affect us in our everyday lives, we get distracted and kind of forget that there is even a war still going on.
Thanks, Nick! Good luck with the film on the festival circuit and with the release of a DVD collection of your work. We’re looking forward to that.
We should also mention that Nick is one of the creators of the pilot for Angora Napkin which premiered at the Ottawa International Animation Festival a few weeks ago.
Check out these three recent projects from the Brazilian Birdo Studio: Sempre Livre is a poppy, colorful Flash animated spot that was made in just 2 weeks for agency Samurai. Birdo, designed, directed, animated and handled the script as well and said they’re “proud to be able to make a commercial for sanitary napkins completely free of blue liquids!” Amen to that.
Pode Acreditar (You Can Believe) is a fun cel-animated music video, with comical and fantastic drawings appearing over the live-action shots of Marcelo D2 and Seu Jorge. In concept, it can be compared to the D.A.N.C.E. video, the Kid Cudi video or any of the many VH1 and MTV promos like this one from Click 3x that have used the same idea. Yet the personal drawing style and execution here don’t make it seem derivative at all, after all, it’s just a technique and a process.
Finally, the 33rd São Paulo International Film Festival is a collaborative project directed by Amir Admoni with characters designed by the world-renowned graffiti artists Os Gemeos. Birdo handled character animation for the festival opener.
Three cool, new, diverse projects from a small and very capable character animation studio. Fly high, Birdo, fly high!
This one’s got a bit of the old ultra-violence, so be fore-warned. It’s all in a good bit of fun, though. No-one truly gets hurt. Videogioco, which means videogame in Italian, combines 2D drawings and flipbook-style action with a stop-motion filming process for a really unique, new take on a cartoon, action fighting sequence. The character (well, really just a part of him) moves across the paper getting stabbed, cut, hit, swallowed and kicked through the air only to be finally re-united with his body for a closing punch. The ending loops back to the beginning scene, starting the whole process, and cycle of violence, over again. Brilliant! Kudos to the makers of this amazing short.
Animation and Concept by Donato Sansone
Sound Design by Enrico Ascoli
Dominoes by Wyld Stallyons is great new short film for the World Wildlife Fund that aims to encourage people to become activists for environmental change. The simple premise is well told through the metaphor of a domino that individual characters use to send their message. Great illustration, character design and animation and a lovely soundtrack top it off.
Yann Benedi and Céline Desrumaux animated and directed the film for Wyld Stallyons in just over three weeks. Céline was one of the film-makers who made Yankee Gal at Supinfocom in 2008, and Yann Benedi made Gary there in the same year. Both films are worth checking out if you haven’t yet seen them.
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 
