Omozoc created this terrific stop motion animation from 1,667 photographs!

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Mike Winkelmann (homepage, behance) animated a few illustrative seconds of the immediate future: "ZUCKERBORG'S NIPPLE FREE TECHNO-UTOPIA"

ZUCKERBORG'S NIPPLE FREE TECHNO-UTOPIA #everydays pic.twitter.com/nPGlLkemie

— beeple (@beeple) October 9, 2019

Here's another, starring that darn mouse.

DISNEY PLUS #everydays pic.twitter.com/IhUV9dAama

— beeple (@beeple) October 8, 2019

Embedded below is a short movie he made in 2015, "Zero-Day" Read the rest

Film editor Andrew Saladino of the Royal Ocean Film Society analyzes the exquisitely engineered airships in the films of Hayao Miyazaki. Read the rest

Over the years, there have been numerous proposals by the likes of MTV and HBO to bring Peter Bagge's seminal comic Hate to the screen. Here is a 1996 pilot short, directed by Steve Loter. While the art looks great, the voices are just... wrong. SO WRONG. Yeesh.

(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Mike Lake's mashup of Lizzo's "Truth Hurts" with "Scales and Arpeggios" from Disney's 1970 animated feature "The Aristocats" is plain fabulous. Lizzo plays the scene far better than Eva Gabor ever did. (via Kottke) Read the rest

[[You may know Richard Littler from the astounding dystopian alternate fiction/bleak humour series Scarfolk (previously). He's been working on an on-again/off-again animated series that is, at long last, on. I was honoured to be offered the opportunity to launch the series here today!]]

Dick and Stewart is a series of short animations set in either Britain’s dismal past or the Britain that’s soon to come. It's hard to tell nowadays, isn't it? Either way, just imagine what it would be like if children's TV programmes were written by George Orwell or Franz Kafka. Or the government itself. Read the rest

Snoopy has been a NASA mascot for more than 50 years going back to the Apollo missions. Now, Snoopy is headed to the International Space Station for a new cartoon series, Snoopy In Space, launching November 1 on Apple TV+.

NASA image below: "Headed for the launch pad, Apollo 10 Commander Tom Stafford pats the nose of a stuffed Snoopy held by Jamye Flowers (Coplin), astronaut Gordon Cooper’s secretary."

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This video is a protip for animators, a comedy reel and a horror short. You learn how to make a walking 3D character the easy way, then generate a startlingly realistic crowd scene with a few clicks and assets. Blink twice and the uncanniness, the repetitions and simplicities, become clear. But for just a moment, that's an inauguration crowd. Consider the idea of shallow fakes: things that only need to fool you for a moment.

(All hail the new trend of short, no-nonsense instructional videos.) Read the rest

J. Michael Mendel, beloved producer of "Rick and Morty" and "The Simpsons," has died just two days before turning 55 years old. The cause of his death has not been made public. He is survived by his wife, casting director Juel Bestrop, and two children. From CNN:

Mendel worked on Fox's The Tracey Ullman Show, on which "The Simpsons" began its life as a recurring segment, before moving to the independent series.

He helped to create 207 episodes of "The Simpsons" over his time on the show, winning Emmys in 1995, 1997 and 1997. Mendel then produced 22 episodes of "Rick and Morty," winning a fourth Emmy for his work last year.

My friend, partner, and line producer Mike Mendel passed away. I am devastated. My heart breaks for his family. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you by my side Mike. I’m destroyed.

— Justin Roiland (@JustinRoiland) September 23, 2019

pic.twitter.com/htPBbqp4aT

— [adult swim] (@adultswim) September 24, 2019

Artist and animator Stephen Cunnane directed these wonderful videos to help artists animate bugs, birds, and other animals.

.embed-vimeo {text-align: center; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%;} .embed-vimeo iframe {position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;} Read the rest

The WarnerMedia streaming platform HBO Max has ordered two "reimagined" seasons of the cult favorite 'The Boondocks,' so we're getting 24 episodes of a new Boondocks show.

This is real. Read the rest

Get down to the quark level in this amazing CGI animation by Pedro Machado. Read the rest

Writer Andy Weir's popular short story from 2009 (it's been translated to 30 different languages) about reincarnation, The Egg, has been beautifully animated by German studio Kurzgesagt. It was more than two years in the making.

The story begins:

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

Posters are available. Read the rest

At yesterday's D23 Expo, The Simpsons creator Matt Groening put an end to speculation that the character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon is going to disappear. Apu's future has been publicly questioned since comedian Hari Kodabolu's 2017 documentary "The Problem with Apu" argued that the character is a racist caricature. From Variety:

When asked by a young fan whether Apu would remain on the show — following reports that the character had been written out of the show — Groening said, “Yes. We love Apu. We’re proud of Apu.”

From Etudes.ru (Google translation):

More than 40 years ago in 1968 ... A team led by Nikolai Nikolaevich Konstantinov creates a mathematical model of the motion of the animal (cat). The BESM-4 machine, executing a written program for solving ordinary (in the mathematical sense of the word) differential equations, draws a cartoon "Kitty" containing even by modern standards an amazing animation of cat movements created by a computer.

(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Ishu Patel's 1977 animated film, "The Bead Game," uses thousands of colored beads as pixels to show animals eating each other, giving birth, fighting, and evolving.

From The National Film Board of Canada:

In this fascinating, innovative exercise in animation, thousands of beads are arranged and manipulated, assuming shapes of creatures both mythical and real. They continually devour, merge, and absorb one another in explosions of color. The theme is one of aggression and inevitability, but any conclusion is left to the viewer.

See also: Using colored beads to remind yourself that you will die soon

[via Aeon] Read the rest

Under Covers is a delightful NSFW animation by Mighty Oak.

On the night of a lunar eclipse, we uncover the sweet, salacious, and spooky secrets of a small town. From a pigtailed psychopath to naughty nuns and everything in between, this stop motion animated film conjures a comforting thought: that weird is relative.

From the Vimeo blog:

The film, which originally debuted as part of Sundance Film Festival’s 2018 Midnight Shorts Program, provides a God’s-eye-view into the bedrooms of seemingly sweet characters hiding a secret or two under their blankets. What may seem innocuous is not always as innocent as it appears, and Olsen shows us that through a powerful combination of stop-motion animation, detailed character design, and a sick sense of humor.