» Posts Tagged ‘animation’
Aside from the occasional distractions to be found on my phone and a lifelong love of Street Fighter II, I’m about as far from a gamer as you can get, which perhaps explains why I was completely unaware that developer Arkane Studios and publisher Bethesda Softworks were launching the new stealth action adventure game Dishonored next week. What did make me take notice, however, was the craftmanship of The Tales From Dunwall, a prequel webisode series, eerily narrated by Chloe Moretz over Daniel Licht’s haunting score. Comprising The Awakening, The Hand That Feeds, and In the Mind of Madness, digital creatives Psyop firmly set the tone of revenge as a cure to life’s woes which forms the spin of the game world narrative: More »
Open Source doesn’t always have the greatest reputation in the filmmaking community, often because many believe it means unsupported and infrequently updated — and sometimes they’re right. We’re going to be getting the first open source camera, but open source software has existed for filmmaking for quite some time and there are plenty of options out there that can produce spectacular results, like the 3D animation program Blender. The Blender Foundation has been working with talented people to make films using the software, and Tears of Steel is their 4th completely Open Source film. How open? They are releasing all of the materials for the short film completely under a Creative Commons license (free to reuse and distribute with attribution). The film is streaming, and also available as an HD download (which is the way I’d recommend watching). More »
There are animation schools where I suspect students who produce work which could be classed as merely “good,” are taken down to the catacombs never to be heard from again. This is the only logical explanation I can come up with for why students at French animation school Gobelins consistently create some of the most impressive shorts you’re likely to see across any form of filmmaking. The latest one to charm the pants off me is In-Between — the 2012 graduation film from Alice Bissonnet, Aloyse Desoubries-Binet, Sandrine Han-Jin-Kuang, Juliette Laurent and Sophie Markatatos — in which a woman’s life is plagued by shyness personified as an unwanted crocodile. More »
Have you ever noticed how parents seem to delight in terrifying their children? Whether it’s old wives tales of wind changes leaving their faces contorted or the devil stealing their souls post-sneeze, there are endless ways for adults to keep children in a perpetual state of fear. However, the cruelest has to be those moments before bed, when they’ll soon to be abandoned to a long, dark night with tales of cannibal witches or bone grinding giants stalking through their heads. Depicting the tragic story of a love triangle between a king, a princess and a page, Tytus Majerski’s atmospheric adaptation of Polish writer Janina Porazińska’s lullaby Once There Was a King, is cut from the same gruesome cloth that keeps nightlight companies in business. More »
Back in July we covered the release of Source Filmmaker,
Driven Creativity Competition USA: Offering a Grand Prize of $5,000 and an 8TB Thunderbolt Hard Drive
Hard drive company G-Technology is holding their annual contest for professional and amateur filmmakers (as well as photographers and musicians): The Driven Creativity Competition USA. Filmmakers can submit in the Short Film, Animation, and GoPro Active categories and will be competing for some great prizes, including a grand prize of $5,000 towards your next creative project and an 8TB G|RAID Thunderbolt hard drive. More »
Computer animation has come a long way in the past 20 years — to the point where hand-drawn animation is almost non-existent. Even most cartoons are digitally drawn and made to look like old fashioned paper drawings (how ironic — or maybe nostalgic?). Most animation starts from scratch, with new models and textures needed for every animation. But what if you didn’t have to start from scratch? What if you were an independent animator, and you could build off a world that has already been created for you? That’s the idea behind Valve’s Source Filmmaker. The tools they use to make cut-scenes and videos is being released completely free, along with the textures and models from Team Fortress 2. Here’s a look at what’s being released: More »
When we dig into the specs of the latest and greatest camera gear here at NFS our natural bias tends to be reporting how these affect the work of the live action director, but long before Nikon and Canon began considering video as a viable feature to add to their DSLRs, stop motion filmmakers were already busy at work with these cameras creating their films painstakingly frame by frame.
British animator Lee Hardcastle is probably one of the most prominent stop motion directors — at least in the online space, his YouTube channel has clocked up nearly 24 million views — at the moment, building a growing army of fans for his original and re-imagined claymation work such as the recent re-telling of Gareth Evans’ action feature The Raid featuring claymation cats (warning: Hardcastle’s work is DEFINITELY not for kids): More »
Disney has released a 25-minute documentary following Pixar chief/director John Lasseter over the course of a day of work. I know, I know, this isn’t DIY/indie film at all, but come on… everyone loves Pixar. Except maybe the Cars movies, for which this is being released as a promo — the Cars films are, for me at least, a tad crass with their commercialism. And while the first part of the doc is mostly focused on Lasseter’s personal life, it does get into the group movie making/creative process at Pixar — which includes reviewing shots on an iPad on the way to work in what looks to be a custom Pixar app (note: driver required). I found it to be an interesting look behind-the-scenes, but if you only interested DIY filmmaking, feel free to skip this free 25-minute documentary: More »
The terrific crew over at Short of the Week has launched Short of the Week Presents™, a curated series of shorts premiering online. SotW helps with with online launch planning and by bringing media and industry connections to the table. It’s open for anyone to submit; here’s “A Family Portrait,” their first third curated launch (other than their own Thomas Beale Cipher), a deservedly award-winning rotoscoped film by Joseph Pierce: More »
As you know, this site is about DIY filmmaking and independent creativity, and few filmmakers are a better example of these pursuits than fellow 25 New Face M dot Strange, who self-distributed his animated feature We are the Strange in 2007. Now he’s back with a trailer for his new project, Heart String Marionette. More than just an atmospheric Tim Burton-esque trailer, the video also includes a call-out to an associated product that speaks volumes about forging an independent DIY career: More »
Joanna Lurie's Atmospheric 'The Silence Beneath the Bark' Mixes 2D Photo Textures with 3D Characters
With so much ongoing coverage of NAB, it’s easy to get lost in the technical side of filmmaking. I don’t want to give the storytelling side short shrift, however, so here’s the evocative and beautiful dialogue-free animated short “The Silence Beneath the Bark,” which was shortlisted for an Oscar this year. Joanna Lurie filtered and modified photos in Adobe Photoshop to create abstract, textured backgrounds, and then brought to life animated 3D characters. It’s easy to forget about the technical details and get lost in the fictional setting, however — as it should be: More »
I meant to post this months ago, but like so many stories on this under-staffed (single-staffed) site, it slipped through the cracks. Then the NewTeeVee article Forget Festivals, Go Online Instead re-brought it to my attention, and so here it is: if you haven’t already seen The Thomas Beale Cipher, the animated short directed by Andrew S. Allen and produced by Jason Sondhi (both from Short of the Week), here’s the 10-minute texture-tastic mystery in full: More »
Oscan-nominated Irish animator Ruairi Robinson directs this 13-minute short starring Where the Wild Things Are‘s Max Records, in which robotic home companionship comes with a price. Don’t be fooled by the smiling face: this isn’t G-rated. More »
The filmmakers behind Wallace and Gromit have created what is billed as “the smallest stop-motion animation ever.” Shot on a CellScope attached to a Nokia N8
“Umbra” is the latin word for “shadow”, and makes for a fitting title for Malcolm Sutherland’s enchanting short. Malcolm was recently selected to provide an animated promo for the Vimeo Festival + Awards, and I found the Canadian animator’s latest to be an immersive and otherworldly 5-minutes, worth watching more than once: More »
Last night’s episode of The Simpsons featured an opening directed by none other than street artist Banksy. In the opening, Banksy sends up the Simpsons’ long-standing practice of outsourcing their animation overseas to Korean production company Akom by portraying Asian laborers animating the sequence and manufacturing Simpsons schwag: More »
This DIY Russian “adaptation” of Michael Bay’s Transformers was shot in two hours and edited in a month. Despite it copying the worst Hollywood has to offer (the second Transformers was one of the least-entertaining action films I’ve ever seen, and I’m not the only one to think that — it has a 20% rating on Rotten Tomatoes), props to these guys. Presumably they will get paid effects work out of this demo, and in that regard it’s a good calling-card type of project. Remember when you used to need a room-sized computer to do this kind of stuff? Shot on a Canon T2i (known as the 550D overseas) and Nikon D5000, animated in 3ds Max. More »
Pixel art, along with its musical counterpart the chiptune, describes a game, video, or song produced on old computer equipment (or produced to seem like it was produced on old computer equipment). I suppose pixel art is no different from any revivalist pursuit, but there’s something uniquely funny about designing for a 192×160 screen (which is less resolution than the image at left) in an era of 1080p (and higher) resolution content. In an era of over-produced pop stars and slick but empty movies, perhaps that’s exactly the point! Simon Cottee’s 10-minute documentary on pixel art makes for an interesting follow-up to the retro-yet-high-tech short PIXELS posted here a couple weeks ago. More »
For whatever reason I’ve been featuring a lot of animated shorts here lately, and considering they’re averaging about 0.37 comments per post, why stop now? Patrick Jean’s eye-catching animated short PIXELS came out a month ago, but now there’s news that it is being adapted into a feature by Adam Sandler’s production company Happy Madison. Something tells me I’ll end up liking the original more… More »
Ben Howling: game changer. One Week Only: Get an Exclusive nofilmschool Discount on the Innovative Su…
Dave: I'm excited for this for one reason. As a hopeful VFX worker, I see this … Hollywood Betting Big on Massive Studio Expansions
V Renée: That was actually a real concern for the community, which is why NBCUniver… Hollywood Betting Big on Massive Studio Expansions
Robert: My initial reaction is fear. Hollywood Betting Big on Massive Studio Expansions
Chase: Very interesting. I wonder when if at any point it will become insanely "i… Hollywood Betting Big on Massive Studio Expansions