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Tonight in New York City is the second annual Vimeo Awards. I was one of the judges in the animation category, and one of these four nominees in the category will receive $5,000:

Little Boat by Nelson Boles (US)

Les chiens isolés by Rémi Bastie, Nicolas Deghani, Jonathan Djob-Nkondo, Paul LaColley, Nicolas Pegon, Jérémy Pires, Kevin Manach (France)

Umbra by Malcolm Sutherland (Canada)

Cross by Fabian Grodde (Germany)

Tickets are sold out to the award ceremony, but there are still tickets left to the Vimeo Festival which takes place tomorrow and Saturday, and offers lots of interesting talks targeted toward short filmmakers. Vimeo is offering a special deal for Cartoon Brew readers. For a $40 all-access pass to the 2-day festival, go to Ticketfly and use the discount code “brew”.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Canada, Fabian Grodde, France, Germany, Jérémy Pires, Jonathan Djob Nkondo, Kevin Manach, Malcolm Sutherland, Nelson Boles, Nicolas Deghani, Nicolas Pegon, Paul LaColley, Remi Bastie, Vimeo

Todor & Petru is an unofficial music video for The Thunderclaps’ “Judgment Day” made by Gobelins students Remi Bastie, Nicolas Dehghani, Jonathan Djob Nkondo, Nicolas Pegon and Jérémy Pires during an internship at Paris-based WIZZ.

I’ll admit that I dismissed the piece as nothing special the first time I watched it, but I was quite impressed the second time around when I paid closer attention and realized what they were actually doing. The combination of drawn animation (Flash?) and pixilated live-action is mixed together very smartly. It’s done in such a way so that the piece has the cinematic bravado of a computer animated film while retaining the organic and expressive design qualities of drawn animation. It’s a worthwhile experiment that merits further exploration, and pushes Todor & Petru beyond the typical combo of 2D animation over live elements.

Their Vimeo account also features this earlier piece that appears to be a test or development for Todor & Petru:

(Thanks, DVO and Rohit Iyer)