tween

Take a big breath, my friends, and dive deep into this post. There’s enough here to keep you busy for a while. Here’s the haps in reverse-chronological order…

Psyop: Bubble Girl

Psyop is one of my all-time favorite studios, and it’s work like “Bubble Girl” that keeps them firmly planted on my own personal A-list. (Tween author Vectorsnob, by the way, is an even bigger fan than me.)

After shooting live footage of a woman eating chocolate, Psyop painstakingly placed, colored and animated each bubble to produce a swirling, elegant piece that perfectly captures the marketing direction of the candy bar. It also stands nicely on its own as a beautiful work of animation.

Imperial Leisure: Foot Cred

I’m always interested in narrative work, so naturally I dug Imperial Leisure’s “Foot Cred,” which they’ve entered in this year’s onedotzero festival.

I love the pacing in this piece; the narration, the music, the visuals, they all come together and push apart, expanding and contracting in a way that reminds me very much of hip-hop’s improvisational and yet strictly rhythmic structures.

And we don’t get the traditional “say cow, see cow” approach with the visuals. Rather they take the role traditionally reserved for sound design, building an environment, a context into which the narration, i.e. the story, injects itself. Very nice.

Hornet’s JJ & Maithy: Think Pink

Hornet continues to crank out animated goodness with “Think Pink,” a spot for Sweet & Low featuring the apparently timeless Pink Panther. This spot is full of wonderfully stylized visuals, clever camera moves and sassy character animation. A job very well done.

Make sure to check out all the bonus material on the site, including the “Making Of” QT. Big props to Hornet for posting this kind of material. I’d love to see more studios doing it.

Andrew Hoeveler: Ritual

Head over to Ritual for the work of Andrew Hoeveler. There’s some solid stuff in there, and his reel is full of tasty morsels.

Josh Wagner for Hire

Also make sure to check out Josh Wagner’s site. Josh is heading out to San Francisco soon, and he’s looking for some motion work. Drop him a line!

DAf

Last but not least, peep the work of Chilean studio DAf. They’ve got a ton of stuff online and a pretty wide variety of styles at their command.

Has anyone been to the “Who is Behind the Mask” thing in Barcelona? (See DAf’s Documentary section for the related work.) It looks interesting.

(Thanks for the tip, Adrian.)

Damn y’all, I’m woefully behind on my Tween posts. I’ve got emails stacked up from over a week ago. My apologies to those of you who sent news and haven’t heard back from me yet. You will.

All right, let’s get it on…

Ramiro Torres: Updates
The uber-talented Ramiro Torres has updated his site with some great new work. Beautiful stuff. “Girl Power” will haunt me tonight as I lie in bed.

(Note: The site’s a little pop-up happy, and sometimes a new movie will load into an existing window, which might be hidden behind another window. This might have only happened to me because I was doing about twenty things at once. Not sure.)

Mario Sader: Going Solo
Mario Sader, formerly of the venerable Lobo, has decided to go it alone in Paris, France. Check out both his still and motion work at his site.

Best of luck to you, Mario. With your skills, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Just watch out for those Parisian drivers.

Hornet: Good to be Square
This is fun. Join Square, a deadpan, slightly depressed square as he journeys through a land of idiotic circle people, solving their problems and inadvertently becoming their messiah (of sorts).

Visit http://www.goodtobesquare.com for the movie and some other stuff.

This piece was directed by Hornet’s Aaron Stewart, who along with the rest of the Hornet crew, has been churning out some great work lately.

That’s it for now, Tweensters. I’ve got more in store, but it’s getting late, and I’ve got to get up early tomorrow.

grocery storewars by free range.

can’t wait to see what this is all about…

Sometimes studios go the extra mile. They give a little extra love, a cherry on top of an already delicious sundae. These studios win my heart.

Freestyle Collective is just such a studio. A few days ago, I received word of a tasty :45 spot that FC cooked up for the Independent Film Channel’s “Cinema Red Mondays,” a program sponsored by Target.  The spot had to simultaneously promote IFC, Target and, of course, the independent films shown during “Cinema Red Mondays.” Not an easy task.

But FC rose to the challenge, incorporating lots of a red tones and tasteful Target symbols into a rough, collage-style environment intended to echo the hand-crafted flavor of independent films. The actual films are featured in “pods” sprinkled throughout the whole organic mess. I think it works really well, especially when you consider the constraints they had to deal with.

That’s not all, though.

The spot was originally a 13mb QT file. I had permission to host it on my server so I could share it with you guys, but I was a little concerned about bandwidth. So I emailed Tamara Walker, who helps FC out with PR, and she contacted them.

Here’s the cool part: She called my cell phone to tell me FC would re-compress the video for me.

Look, I know a lot of you probably don’t think that’s anything special. You’re probably thinking, “What’s the big deal, man? It was just a phone call.” But what you don’t understand is that I’m just a guy running a blog. I’m not a media magnate. I’m not even in “the biz,” really. I’m just a fanboy.

And here I was, getting a call that FC would custom compress their spot just for Tween. It warmed the cockles of my heart. (I’m not really sure where my cockles are located, but I did feel a distinct warmth around my aortic valve. That could have been the chili dog I had for lunch, though.)

So special thanks to Freestyle Collective and Tamara. Drinks all around!

totally diggin the stuff from this kat…
+ www.davidnavas.com

check out this new adidas spot by digital domain… a pretty amazing feature in the new issue of one of my all time favorites, www.ventilate.ca.

the munkmotion reel by morten rowley is pretty hot too. be sure to check out his website as well.

Renascent: "Offf: Things That Never Existed" and "Eroski"
Let’s start things off right with two new, kick ass pieces from Renascent, "Offf: Things That Never Existed" and "Eroski," both of which can be seen in the Motion Graphics section of http://www.renascent.nl, a site worth browsing again and again.

Joost Korngold (a.k.a "Renascent") has been at this game a long time, and with his new works, I feel like he’s entering a new level. He’s one of those guys that practically invented a style that’s been imitated by others countless times, and now he seems to be refining that style with a new vision, a renewed passion.

On a totally unrelated note: I wonder how long it takes for him to render something like the Offf sequence? Does he farm that out? I guess I could ask him…

Framestore NY: GMC and Ford Prefect Mos Def Pair Up
I can’t help it: whenever I see Mos Def, I think Ford Prefect, the character he played in the recently released Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie. Before the movie, I honestly didn’t know who the hell he was. I mean, I knew he was a hip-hop artist of some sort, but I couldn’t have picked him out of a crowd.

Well apparently I’m not the only one recognizing Mr. Def these days. Check out this spot created by Framestore NY for GMC. I can’t say much for the music or the car, but the whole thing has a slick, 20-inch-blades, million-dollar-music-video quality that I can dig. Someone pass me a Hennessy.

Stiletto NYC
An astute reader recently sent me a link to Stiletto NYC, causing me to experience much joy and a little embarrassment. I’ve been a fan of Stiletto’s for a while, but for some reason, they’re haven’t been in the Cream O’ the Crop (until now). Spiritform made a quick post about them on April 25th, but I figured they deserve another round of eyeballs.

A lot of their work has a nice, hand-made touch to it. Unpretentious and a little raw but always sensitive. And if anyone can make the Westminster Dog Show cool, it’s these guys girls.

Two More Quickies
I’m checking out Aurora Motion Graphics, but I thought I’d share them with you now. They’ve got a nice client list. I’m definitely feeling some MK12 love on some of their pieces. Good stuff.

And my buddy Chris Palazzo sent a stylish little site my way, Version2. Check out "V2Space" for a lovingly crafted look at their offices. Swanky, no?

more motion / animation related goodies i’ve come across over the past couple weeks… enjoy!

+ www.cuartopiso.com
+ www.4stroke.tv
+ www.brainold.com
+ www.derrickborte.com
+ www.claytonjunior.com.br
+ www.woodpeckerfilm.fi
+ www.defasten.com
+ www.damnengine.net
+ www.nthdegree.tv
+ www.believemedia.com
+ www.nwe.com
+ www.c-k.com

Now that I’m working mainly from a laptop, I see very clearly what some of you have pointed out to me before: Tween’s blue links are too low-contrast. So what did I do? I made them bright friggin’ red. Ugly? Yeah, maybe. But this site is all about linkage and now there will be no confusion whatsoever discerning what is a link and what is my long-winded, bombastic banter.

Universal Everything: New Work
Universal Everything is sporting some new work in various media. I dig the "Love Bytes" piece. It’s a sparsely populated but well-composed parallax collage that I think would hold up to repeat viewing. (It was designed as a projection loop for the Digital Arts Festival, so I’m assuming it was shown before each feature).

Transistor Studios: Linkfest
I recently received a very informative e-mail from Transistors Studios that was chock full of linkage to new work. And now, because I’m such a great guy, I’m going to list all of them here for you.

I know some of you will object, but I like the Cingular spots, mainly because they took a concept that’s been done to death (i.e. retro video game as advertising) and breathed a little life into it using the magic of 3D. Mr. Harder’s been busy with some varied work, including a nice Terry Gilliam-esque spot for "Kept.” And the low-fi Paygoist series from Aaron Baumle is pretty damn funny. My favorite is "Biker Girl." Love the crotch shot combined with the voiceover. Classic.

Cingular/MTV 1 (Director: James Price)
Cingular/MTV 2 (Director: James Price)
"Trippin’" (Director: James Price)
"Kept" (Director: Justin Harder)
J-Lo / MTV (Director: James Price)
50-Cent / MTV (Director: Justin Harder)
"Flame Dancer" (Director: Aaron Baumle)
"Shadow Babies" (Director: Aaron Baumle)
"Biker Girl" (Director: Aaron Baumle)

In case you’re not familiar with Transistor Studios, they’re a bi-coastal collective of bad-asses (including Matt Pyke of Universal Everything, mentioned prominently above). They’ve been at it since 2002, when they hit the ground running. They’ve grown over the last few years to harness huge clients that most studios drool over: MTV, VH1, Showtime, Virgin Mobile, etc.

Hmm… I’d like to see what Transistor and Diesel could dream up together. In my mind, there are three giant patrons of mograph: Nike, MTV and Diesel. While Nike has commissioned some pretty open-ended projects (like the Art of Speed series), they’ve got nothing on the wild, tripped-out perspective of Diesel. Mix a little of that with a handful of TS’s directors and I wonder what you’d get…