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The three founders of Mukpuddy started their studio in a New Zealand basement in 2002. Now they've got a tv series.

The post Mukpuddy’s Rare Feat: An Original Animated Series From New Zealand appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

'Trolls' director Mike Mitchell and co-director Walt Dohrn talk to Cartoon Brew about creative freedom, how Genndy Tartakovsky and Phil Lord helped out, and making cg look more handmade.

The post ‘Trolls’ Director Mike Mitchell: There Was No Mythology to These Things…I’ve Never Felt So Free appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

There’s never been a better time to composite your vfx/animation projects and do color grading -- for free.

The post Fusion Compositing Software Is Now Free And Available On Macs appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The surreal '80s cartoon classic recently rolled out an all-star reboot across the pond.

Today is bittersweet because we are presenting the final film in our 2012 Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival. But we are delighted that this film is an extraordinarily unique achievement in computer animation.

Snail Trail comes to us from Germany, where it was made by Philipp Artus at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. The film draws an ingenious link between two disparate things: the spiral of a snail shell and the concept of exponential acceleration (don’t worry, we had to look up the latter one too).

Mere description fails to do this film justice though. Snail Trail is an intensely visceral experience. Excitement and surprise abound in every frame, even as the film celebrates the mathematical order of the universe. The snail’s dynamic evolution in mobililty is eloquently expressed through a luminescent line that curls and stretches across the screen. Artus achieved the fading trail of images by projecting his computer animation with lasers onto a phosphorescent material.

The totality of Artus’s vision is startlingly beautiful. Snail Trail, quite simply, uses computer animation in ways that we have not seen before, and the results are astounding.

Click HERE to read an interview with the filmmaker Philipp Artus.

Today is bittersweet because we are presenting the final film in our 2012 Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival. But we are delighted that this film is an extraordinarily unique achievement in computer animation.

Snail Trail comes to us from Germany, where it was made by Philipp Artus at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. The film draws an ingenious link between two disparate things: the spiral of a snail shell and the concept of exponential acceleration (don’t worry, we had to look up the latter one too).

Mere description fails to do this film justice though. Snail Trail is an intensely visceral experience. Excitement and surprise abound in every frame, even as the film celebrates the mathematical order of the universe. The snail’s dynamic evolution in mobililty is eloquently expressed through a luminescent line that curls and stretches across the screen. Artus achieved the fading trail of images by projecting his computer animation with lasers onto a phosphorescent material.

The totality of Artus’s vision is startlingly beautiful. Snail Trail, quite simply, uses computer animation in ways that we have not seen before, and the results are astounding.

Continue reading for comments from the filmmaker Philipp Artus:

THE IDEA
In the animation a snail invents the wheel and goes through a cultural evolution to finally get back to its origin. The basic idea of the work is inspired by processes of exponential acceleration, which can be observed at different levels. Thus, the evolution of life proceeds at an extremely slow pace for more than 3 billion years, until it suddenly seems to explode in the Cambrian period. The tools of human beings progress relatively little during the Stone Age until there comes a rapid cultural development during the Holocene. Nowadays, a similar acceleration process is generated by the exchange of information through the Internet. From this perspective, the exponential spiral on a snail shell may almost appear like a miraculous wink of nature.

TOOLBOX
I rigged and animated the character in 3ds Max. Then I projected the animation with a laser on a phosphorescent material and recorded it frame by frame with Dragon Stop Motion. Finally, I did the post production with After Effects. It was a very time consuming process, but I like the unique style that it creates. It looks somehow digital but has also the feeling of a hand-drawn animation.

CHALLENGES
The animation is based on a laser sculpture, which has a somehow purer and darker feeling than the film. For me the challenge was to find the right tone for the film, to make it into something else than a mere copy of the laser installation. It took me some time to realize that I had to free my mind from the original character and to give space to an evolution. Finally, the film turned out much brighter and more colorful than I had imagined in the beginning.

LESSONS LEARNED
In the animation the snail goes through various metamorphoses. Working on the project was quite a similar experience: in the beginning I just wanted to do a normal animation with a snail. Through experimentation I then discovered the phosphorescent light trails, which add a unique sense of time to the animation. Later I had the idea to project the laser onto a 360° cylinder, so that the audience would have to walk around to follow the course of the snail. Finally, I created the film version, which again turned into something completely different from what I had originally in mind. Thus, the snail taught me the lesson to be fluid, to leave space for the evolution of your creations. Or as Bruce Lee puts it: “Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless – like water…”

INSPIRATIONS
My inspirations come from being in nature, observing animals and the way they move. The drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, Alberto Giacometti and M. C. Escher have also inspired me. As a kid I played video games a lot, which probably had an unconscious influence. I also used to do a lot of skateboarding and I love surfing – which might be an inspiration for the motion. The sound was influenced by various musicians, ranging from classical ambient drones to electronic post-dubstep beats. Aditionally, I had a very creative collaboration with the Portuguese musician Madalena Graça. Finally, the Vimeo community and the rapid change of our world through the digital era have also inspired my work.

FILMMAKER WEBSITE:
Philipp Artus’s website

Funny well-timed animation and a cute concept in D. A. D. Digital Amusement Device by Brisbane, Australia-based Mark Osberg. He created the film in Flash and After Effects over 3 months.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: After Effects, Australia, Mark Osberg

The one and only Cyriak delivers yet another mind-bending visual experience with his brand-new short Cobwebs. If I had a list of favorite contemporary experimental animators, he’d be near the top.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: After Effects, Cyriak, UK

This smartly crafted book trailer for Patrick Ness’s YA novel A Monster Calls actually makes me want to read the book. The After Effects animation was done by Eric Guémise based on artwork by Jim Kay.

(via Super Punch)

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: A Monster Calls, After Effects, Eric Guémise, Jim Kay

Serbian animation outfit GlossyRey came up with Be a Vegetarian, which if not particularly effective at making its case for vegetarianism is at least cute. Pre-production artwork from this brief After Effects piece is posted on their website.

CREDITS
Production Company: GlossyRey Animation and Design
Story: Nemanja Zivkovic
Art Direction: Stanko Stupar
Art Direction: Nemanja Zivkovic
Animation: Stanko Stupar
Rigging: Nemanja Zivkovic
Music and Sound Design: Rajko Stupar
Special Thanks to: Marko Bugarski and Nemanja Saric

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: After Effects, GlossyRey, Serbia

Immerse yourself in the expressionistic atmosphere of Takuya Hosogane’s Assimilation. It was made using After Effects, Cinema 4D and iModeller 3D. As best as I can understand, the piece was sponsored by a brand of whiskey and presented during a week-long exhibition in Japan.

(via Motionographer)

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: After Effects, Cinema 4D, iModeller 3D, Japan, Takuya Hosogane

To be sure, there’s a cute voice track in this interstitial for British children’s channel CBeebies, but the piece as a whole is charming and delivers on all fronts, with sharp direction, design and animation (I love the run cycles of the brothers at the beginning). The piece, called “Sam,” was directed by Matthias Hoegg of Beakus, who also made a couple other shorts in the series earlier this year.

CREDITS
Directed, Designed by Matthias Hoegg
Animated by Amaël Isnard and Matthias Hoegg
3D Animation by Amaël Isnard
Additional Compositing by Leo Bridle
Produced by Beakus

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: After Effects, Beakus, CBeebies, UK

Baaa, an “experiment in ovine geometry,” was released today by the brilliantly creative Brighton, UK-based animator Cyriak.

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: After Effects, Cyriak, UK

Baaa, an “experiment in ovine geometry,” was released today by the brilliantly creative Brighton, UK-based animator Cyriak.

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: After Effects, Cyriak, UK

Bob Jaroc’s video for Black Moth Super Rainbow’s “The Sticky” was made by “modding a bunch of old b&w TVs, playing the separate parts from the track through them and taping the results,” plus some After Effects. Some readers on Boing Boing have pointed out that the circuit bending technique that Jaroc used is a variation of the Wobble Vision technique. Whatever Jaroc did, the results are mesmerizing.

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: After Effects, Bob Jaroc, UK

This Japanese music video for group_inou’s “Heart” by AC部 is pretty incredible. I can’t find any information in English about the directors, but they appear to be a Japanese collective comprised of three artists. If you know more about them, please share.

Some would argue that the video is incredible for all the wrong reasons—trippy, creepy, freaky!—but the unorthodox style works because the directors sell us their vision with complete conviction. In an animation world where everybody strives to make characters move according to established rules and principles, it’s refreshing to see animators betray every convention of the natural world—even if that vision is at odds with the “correct” way of animating. It’s always exhilarating when an animator establishes their own rules of movement and has the ability to execute those ideas with clarity and skill. AC pulls off that feat in “Heart.”

Below is another piece of animation by AC:

(Thanks, David OReilly)

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | 3 comments | Post tags: AC, After Effects, Japan

This Oxfam spot was plugged here a couple years back, but I only discovered it and couldn’t resist sharing again, along with some details about how it was made. The piece is by the British duo of Benji Davies and Jim Field, who operate as Frater Films and whose piece The Year of the Rabbit appeared on the Brew last month.

The PSA is anchored by a well developed visual concept that emphasizes the contrast between black-and-white characters and the colorful sounds they emit. The characters were animated in After Effects, while the sound patterns were made from rubber stamp prints that were colored digitally. Examples of the stamps can be seen on the Frater Films site. All aspects of the spot are smartly conceived including the sound and music design of Stuart Earl.

(Thanks, Gabe Swarr)

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | One comment | Post tags: After Effects, Benji Davies, Frater, Jim Field, UK

This short, Bedbug’s Odyssey is great fun. It was created in After Effects by Ned Wenlock, who had no story in mind when he started; he just completed one shot every day and made it up as we went along. Not bad results for not having a plan!