More inventive stuff with square boxes.
To finish off the week some pure eye-candy, by animation duo Ubik.
Nothing more. Just to sooth your souls. 
It’s a stunning animation made for Motionographer’s recent F5 showcase festival.

Here’s a cute little idea.
Finnish animation studio Anima Boutique have developed a series of episodes called The Guys. They get people to send in their home videos, which they re-interpret, import their animated characters (The Guys) into the scenes and re-publish on their website. 
They’re all short, they’re all silly, so they all have potential to become your daily 10 seconds of nonsense.  On your mobile of course .

Here’s a great idea that breathes new life into the struggling format of the tv commercial. Get your audience to make it.
Not some competition where you ask people to create the whole film. That has been done before and generally only appeals to the more hardcore creatives. But get the public to submit small bits and pieces, so everyone can easily participate and the result is a collaborative effort. 

Belgian mobile provider Proximus are making a stop-motion tv commercial based on photos that people have uploaded. Not just any pictures; people get clear guidelines. Currently they’re running an animated storyboard as a tv ad, pointing people to a website where they can upload their pictures to match specific frames of the storyboard.

Genius! Lots of fun! Immediate result for the people who participate! A very well executed website. Very little brand pushing going on there. 
And if they succeed, they’ll get the world record for most locations/actors/directors in a tv spot.

I was checking it over the weekend and people have already gone out of their way to shoot great stills. Check out the scene where people ‘fly’ around the little park. Someone had some fun with that. 

The only thing I’m missing is some form of identifying the names/locations of the people that are submitting. And maybe leave comments. That would have turned it even more into a social event.

A few weeks ago, Berlin-based Irish animator David O’Reilly won the Gold Bear for Best Short at the Berlin Film Festival. I must admit  I was a little surprised. I’ve known his work for a while through an early music video and it’s fair to say he seems a pretty independent talent. Not really award-winning fodder. 
Yes, his winning film ‘Please Say Something’ is a heart-breaking representation of a typical love story. But O’Reilly treats it in such a clever, noisy and abstract way that I wouldn’t have put my money on him winning prestigious awards. Still, you can’t help but like it. It’s a really nice piece of film making. 

But O’Reilly is not just independent when it comes to his productions (detail: the film was made in his flat, with one computer); he also pushes the conformities of distribution.
PSS was originally released as 23 episodes of 25 seconds each through his own website. And now that he’s got recognition, he’s convinced his distributors Future Shorts (and who knows who else) to release the film online, i.e. for free, despite the fact that it probably blows up a few bridges with programmers / festivals /… and other people that could bring in money.
Instead he wants to prove that the web as distribution for (successful) animation has its place. Brave guy.

On his blog he’s asking people to embed and distribute ‘Please Say Something’. I love the film and I’m curious to see how his web-distribution experiment turns out, so I’m happily obliging. 

PS: Also, check out his Wofl 2106 piece, which was one of the few films that made you sit up at last year’s onedotzero wow+flutter programme.

Following on from the last post, here’s more French creativity in the video field:  a hilarious animation/music video called ‘Le Café’.
Made by Stephanie Marguerite and Emilie Tarascou. 
Music by Oldelaf.  

Time for that afternoon coffee.

Via @philtidy.

A lot of production companies are understandably a little nervous these days. Trying to keep up with the rapidly dwindling commercial budgets. Pondering whether they should bother making that 5K music video. Trying to make sense of ‘that digital thing’. 

So it’s inspiring to see the people at Paris-based Mr Hyde moving into interesting territory with the start of their online film festival called The Hyde Tube. Now, setting up an online video festival obviously isn’t that special, but the company are selling it as a talent-spotter place for agencies, labels,… i.e. their clients. 

I can see why they’re doing it.

It’s obviously a good way for them to spot talent and possibly ’sign’ them to the Mr Hyde roster. You know, let knowledge come to you, rather than you go and find it all yourself and all that. 

The festival aspect is fun and obviously a good thing PR-wise. 

But the thing I find most interesting is that they’re trying to position themselves as a quality brand. “If it’s not on here, it’s not worth watching”-type of thing. 
Social curating (i.e. you look at your peers to see what’s recommended) is highly effective, but I can see there being a place for this kind of stuff within the creative industries. Even the hottest creative director or art buyer with the fattest finger on the throbbing creative pulse, can’t see it all. The Hyde Tube seems to limit the amount of films/directors, so this selective curating model could well have some added value.
Especially as brands are gagging for video content and there’s more and more stuff commissioned on the lo-budget side of the spectrum. So new, keen (and cheap), creative talent is in demand. 

Speaking of money, the unusual thing is that The Hyde Tube are very open about finances. In their own words: 

Clients will contact The Hyde Tube in order to pass on a project to a specific director, who is then free to decide whether or not to accept it. If accepted, the director will write a treatment or make an animated test within 3 to 5 days. For this work you will receive approximately 500€.

If the client is happy with the treatment and decides that the director will make the film, The Hyde Tube will connect the director with the client, and Mr Hyde or one of its affiliate studios will oversee the production until the film delivery.

The director’s fee will be 10 percent of the budget, the first half payable on the first day of production and the rest upon delivery of the finished film.

Open. New. Creative.
It’s not perfect, but I’m definitely going to keep an eye on it.

Call to all music festivals: from now on we expect your line-ups to be like this one for the Bonnaroo festival. No more print ads and flyers, we want animation!

Directed by Elliot Jokelson at Ghost Robot.

Just to offset the 2 previous, rather serious posts, here’s a rather serious, but intriguing film, called Morituri Te Salutant. 
Animated and directed by Niko Stumpo aka Abnormal Behavior Child.
Made, you know, just because he felt like it. 

Via Submarine Channel 

Following on from the previous post, I’m finding out that the fashion world is embracing the world of film-making in the most creative way. 

I already mentioned SHOWstudio, who have a great collection of fashion-inspired films. But what about JCDC versus Logo, a brilliant piece of animation made by French agency Four H, for the new Spring/Summer collection of JC de Castelbajac. Amazing stuff.

And what about Viktor & Rolf, who skipped their show at the Paris Fashion Week and instead created this online environment, including a full 9-minute catwalk video, featuring only 1 model (direct link via SHOWStudio)? Full creative control, plus making the ‘catwalk’ accessible to all fashion-fans. The fashion world has all of a sudden become quiet a bit more interesting to me. 

And production companies should take note, because it seems that the fashion world has a bit of money to spend. 

The header of this blog contains a few words that consist of more than 2 syllables, but the guys from design studio Zeitguised know how to describe things properly. Check out the title and explanation to their new piece ‘Peripetics’. More importantly: check out the film itself. It’s weird and wonderful and even though I’m not always a fan of abstract work, this is amazing to look at. 
A few years ago, I had the chance to work with Zeitguised on this mobile content project for which they created some ‘visual haikus’ and since then I’ve always followed their work. They’re one of the most intriguing design/animation units around; very technical, but there’s always this enthralling element of humanity and outlandishness in there. 
And if you describe yourself with ‘Breaks stuff, puts it back together and sells it for less’, you can do no wrong.  

One of the most intriguing artists that has used, abused and appropriated the www with freshness and creativity is Han Hoogerbrugge. Artist, animator, designer, interactivist, call him what you want, but he’s always been intriguing, if only for his constant consistent attire of pin-striped suit.

And this week seems to be Hoogerbrugge’s week.

If you happen to be in Rotterdam, go check out his interactive installation ‘What You Say Is What You Get’, commissioned by the Boymans van Beuningen museum. He’s been developing a keen interest in installations recently and this is a next step. 

And then there’s the release of ‘Modern Living’, a book-cum-DVD all about Han and his wide range of work. A monograph as they say. It’s been a while in the making, but it’s all yours now. Check out Submarine Channel for more info.

And if you like the darker side of Han’s work, you should visit his new project, Prostress 2.0, an intriguing series of  ”Daily fresh servings of professional stress”. Different, as they say. 

I like the man. 

Reading the words “audio-visual” and “experiment” in the same sentence always makes me a bit cynical and respond with a sentence that includes the words “moving” and “wallpaper”. But the Advanced Beauty project, conceived and curated by London-based digital design studio Universal Everything is well worth a look.

One: because they’re setting creative parameters to their artists. Technical as well as creative. And in my opinion, limitations are always a good thing in an art-type project like this. 

Two: because they’ve created their own platform. Where normally this kind of work would end up in festivals like onedotzero and, if they’re lucky, on a DVD that sells a few copies in the ICA to fellow artists and some agency creative directors, these guys have taken it in their own hands and distribute the work through a podcast. This way, they must reach people that they wouldn’t reach normally. And the DVD will follow later, which I guess will make them some money. 

And three: because I think some of the work is actually quite good. Especially the film by UV & Minivegas, which put a smile on my face. I’m actually looking forward to seeing the rest of the series.