Joan C Gratz's animated short "Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase" is a lovely and trippy 2D claymation of iconic artworks transforming one into another. After spending a decade on the piece, Gratz won the 1992 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Gratz called her animation technique "clay painting." From Educational Media Reviews Online:
“Clay-painting” is a unique process that blends film and painting, and an innovation that garnered Joan Gratz’s Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase a 1992 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. In this true landmark of animation, numerous famous and iconic paintings from 20th century art are “reproduced as exactly as possible but the transitions between these paintings [are] used to communicate the relationship of artistic movements” as Gratz has stated. “In the clay painting technique, which I began developing in 1966, I work by painting directly before the camera, making changes to a single painting, shooting a frame, repainting and shooting, etc. In the end there is one painting with the process recorded on film, the product is the process.”
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Kisaragi double 6 created this fantastic hand-drawn stop-motion animation of the Super Mario Bros (1985) World 1-1 level.
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Coming to Finnish and British TV this spring—and hopefully soon to the U.S. too.
MOOMINVALLEY [YouTube] is a brand new adaptation of the much-loved Moomin stories of Tove Jansson, a Finnish-Swedish writer and artist whose books have been translated into over 50 languages. Directed to a family primetime audience, the drama fantasy series is full of life and laughter for lifelong Moomin fans and complete newcomers alike.
The English-language cast is spectacular: Matt Berry, Rosamund Pike, Richard Ayoade, Will Self, Warwick Davis, Kate Winslet, Akiya Kenry, and starring Taron Egerton as Moonintroll. Read the rest
Resident Evil 2 is a just-released remake of the Capcom classic, updated with ultra-realistic performance-captured animation. DPO23 hacked the game's configuration to exaggerate characters' facial movements 500%. It's an unsettling illustration of what lies beneath cutting-edge graphics tech—and far scarier than the zombies. (See DP023's YouTube channel for more)
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(UPDATE: The embed is disabled outside of YouTube; you can watch it there.)
It's been a while, Hubert Cumberdale. The year two thousand and thirteen marked our last adventure. Before the war. (Previously)
Animator David Firth:
Salad Fingers is back for the first time in 5 years in this nightmarish new episode. Salad Fingers decides it’s time for Hubert Cumberdale to become a real boy.
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Extraweg (AKA Oliver Latta: Twitter, Youtube) is a superb and surreal animator whose computer rendered grotesques of human faces and forms writhing, merging, and doing the impossible are spellbindingly weird.
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Director Fabio Friedli animated 3,000 images to tell the story of humanity "from a seed to war, from meat to love, from indifference to apocalypse."
“It is such an excessive amount of things, shown in such a short time, you are never able to perceive everything,” Friedli told Vimeo. “I like to believe it’s one’s subconscious that chooses what you see, hear and feel, depending on what is occupying your head and heart at the moment. No one has the same first ‘In A Nutshell’ experience.”
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This 8 year old is a lot more patient and creative than most adults I know. What a cool little kid-made short film. Read the rest
A seasonal Russian animation from 1966. Directed by Vladimir Degtyarev, it's 10 minutes long and you won't need subtitles 'cause there ain't no dialogue. [via Metafilter] Read the rest
The sushi-making scene is one of many standout scenes in Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs. Read the rest
In 1992, seven years before the premier of SpongeBob SquarePants, the late Stephen Hillenburg was enrolled in CalArts' Experimental Animation Program. As a student, he created his first cartoons, including "The Green Beret" (1992) seen above, which landed him his job at Nickelodeon, working on Rocko's Modern Life and, later, developing SpongeBob SquarePants.
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The supergeniuses at The GI (go ahead and carve out about ten minutes to marvel at their homepage, I'll wait -- you'll thank me) have posted Shrek Retold, a fan remake of Shrek in which 200 different creators each recreate a scene from the movie, using live action, stop motion, and animation techniques ranging from crude paper cutouts to super-sophisticated stylized illustration and 3D rendering. Combined with the voice acting -- also a huge range! -- the result is, you know, jaw-dropping. (via Waxy)
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Netflix's latest "golden ticket" is an original animated series based on the stories of late author Roald Dahl. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG, and The Twits are just some of the popular titles that will be included. The series will begin production in 2019.
Netflix's Press Release:
Netflix intends to remain faithful to the quintessential spirit and tone of Dahl while also building out an imaginative story universe that expands far beyond the pages of the books themselves.
“Our mission, which is purposefully lofty, is for as many children as possible around the world to experience the unique magic and positive message of Roald Dahl’s stories,” said Roald Dahl’s widow, Felicity Dahl, “This partnership with Netflix marks a significant move toward making that possible and is an incredibly exciting new chapter for the Roald Dahl Story Company. Roald would, I know, be thrilled.”
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Andrew Salomone writes, "I work as a preparator for The George Eastman Museum at the Kodak founder's historic estate in Rochester, NY. It's the world's oldest photography museum and has an extensive collection of early photographic and moving image objects, like zoetropes. The house itself is a local landmark and has put on an annual gingerbread house display for decades. This year, a couple of my colleagues and I decided to make a gingerbread house zoetrope and then wrote a tutorial about it.
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Meet Bonnie's new toy "Forky" and head out on the road. Directed by Josh Cooley (“Riley’s First Date?”), Toy Story 4 comes to theaters June 21, 2019.
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Vancouver indie rock band Said The Whale spent over 80 hours putting together the music video for their song "UnAmerican." Impressively, zero digital effects were used to stop-motion animate the 2,250 different photos. The band painstakingly did that all by hand. Wow!
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This video is really gorgeous and trippy. Animator Henning M. Lederer (previously) has once again taken vintage paperbacks and put their op-art covers in motion. There are 66 animated covers in total this round.
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