tween

I’ve been busy of late with Uni and the horrible things I have to do to put food on the table, but in my downtime I’ve been checking out some old haunts. There has been some interesting stuff turning up over at xplsv and mograph, but these caught my eye in particular:

Allow me to apologize in advance as I don’t have time to give you a proper rundown at the usual tween standard, I have briefs due tomorrow!

Matt Smithson – Spring 2006 Show Reel

His site seems to be a whole bunch of jpegs (we won’t hold that against him), but Matt Smithson sure does have a nice reel. Matt has a fairly unmistakable ’scrapbook’ aesthetic that spreads across a lot of what he does, but then in the next cut its super clean and corprate. I like to see individuals that aren’t limited to a style of process that has worked for them in the past.

View Spring 2006 Show Reel

Racecar – Shopaholic

Ah, Verk from Norway! Its a little slow in points, but on the whole its just a nice little piece – nice visuals, nice concept, a little comedy…

Watch it, and tell me I’m wrong.
Oh, they have more work on thier site, too.

The work of Ruff Mercy

Diligent reader Xavier Oon sent in this link. I’m not sure, but some of this work seems somewhat familiar – I thought it may have been posted before, but I can’t find any reference to it. Anyhow – I really dig Russ’ work (oh, his name is Russ Murphy), in particular the MTV pop-inc sequence & super-short Nickelodeon idents.

Visit Ruff Mercy

Karni + Saul: Beneath the Rose
Karni + Saul’s latest music video for Micah P Hinson’s "Beneath the Rose" is simply beautiful.

I’m almost certain the bugs are CG, since that’s Saul’s specialty, but I suppose it’s possible they used highly trained snails. Either way, they’re shot with that wonderful Sunday-morning light that tinges everything with a strange mix of loneliness and peace.

Now that I think of it, that’s basically what a snail represents, isn’t it—a being that is always at home and yet always on the move, looking for something and therefore a little lonely?

To see more work from Karni + Saul check out their page at Flynn Productions.

Thanks to Christopher Roeleveld

UnitedVisualArtists
Tween author and collaborator extraordinaire Babe Baker passed me a link to UnitedVisualArtists recently.

As their name suggests, they are artists. Which is to say they make art, whatever that is. Since they mainly create installation work, I’m sure their stuff is best seen in person, but the videos give a glimpse of several innovative projects that have piqued my curiosity.

I’m not crazy about their "To the Music" promo for Colder, but there is something fresh and noteworthy about it. It looks like they mapped video textures onto simple geometry, creating a weird blend of real/not-real that’s underscored by the first-person-shooter-esque camera moves.

LED Throwies
Strap a battery and a magnet to a LED, toss it onto a building and you’ve got an interesting new form of graffiti. Looks like fun.

Thanks to Tanja Zoellner

Just got word from Mr. Matt Pyke that Universal Everything is hiring:

“Universal Everything need 3D animator(s) for upcoming large format (HD and beyond) projects.
Experience in high-end / high-innovation 3D animation a must.
Location – anywhere”

Send relevant action to workwithus@universaleverything.com.

Nando Costa Joins Transistor Studios
Nando Costa has joined Transistor Studios, making their lineup of director/designers even more impressive than it already was. There’s a nice selection of his work on the Transistor site.

For those who aren’t familiar with Nando, he’s been doing this for a while. He’s one of the original inspirational forces behind my decision to get into mograph. It’s a pleasure to still see him out there shaking his moneymaker.

Prologue: Updated Reel
The legendary Kyle Cooper’s Prologue Films has recently upped a new reel.

To say there’s some good work in there would be a huge understatement. It gleams with polish and radiates a confidence that comes with being one of the giants of contemporary motion graphics.

Thanks, Matt.

Cars: New Trailer?
Check out the latest trailer for Pixar’s Cars. This might just turn out to be a solid little film. The character development looks like it’s going to be pretty strong. (I apologize if this isn’t new to the rest of you. I nearly forgot about this film for a while.)

RES Screening Series: Jonas Odell Retrospective
The RES Screen Series this coming Monday the 20th looks pretty good. They’re going to show some of Jonas Odell’s work, including his new short, which has been getting a lot of press these days.

Tickets are $10, and the event starts at 8pm at the Egyptian Theater in LA. Full details can be found here.

If I were in LA, I’d be there. Grab a drink at the after party for me.

Tween Awards 2005: Winners Announced
Congratulations to the winners of the first annual Tween Awards! All of the contestants produced truly outstanding work. We only wish we had enough money and foresight to buy the winners something really cool, like color-coded fanny packs or Tween-branded coin purses. Alas, we are but humble bloggers and can offer only our sincerest applause.

With a gold in the Reels category and a bronze in Spots, National Television did really well this year. The Reels competition was actually pretty heated, with Buck edging out Stardust by only one vote.

In the Spots category, Smith & Foulkes continued their industry-wide sweep with their fantastic "Grrr" spot for Honda. "Le Building," produced by a group of incredibly talented students at Gobelins, isn’t technically a spot—it’s more of a short film—but we didn’t hear any complaints, so there they are, comfortably seated in second place.

Thanks to everyone for their participation. And a big thanks to Tween author Babe Baker (spiritform) for coming up with the Tween Awards idea in the first place. He and author Jon Gorman did an incredible job assembling the initial list of contestants as well.

Phillip Richardson: The Rock Collection
Phillip Richardson has produced an incredible body of design and animation work, much of which he has posted on his portfolio site, The Rock Collection. His reel is chock full of goodness he created with Stardust, as well as a smattering of work from elsewhere. (That Futureheads "Decent Days and Nights" promo is showing up everywhere these days.)

Keep an eye out for the small "view quicktime" links under some of the stills to see Sir Phillip’s motion work the way it was meant to be seen: moving.

Thanks, Craig.

Exopolis: Independent Spirit Awards
Exopolis has recently posted a new feature on their homepage for their work on the Independent Film Channel’s Independent Spirit Awards.

Full of scintillating textures and rich jewel-tones, the show package eschews the ray-traced, shine-powered graphics of other award shows while managing to subtly reference the glitz and glamour that accompanies such events. Nicely done.

Partizanlab/David Nicolas: Super Furry Animals "It’s Not the End of the World"
Fellow SCAD student Daniel Oeffinger sent me a link to the best quality Quicktime I’ve seen of Partizanlab/David Nicolas’ classic promo for Super Furry Animals’ "It’s Not the End of the World."

The video originally aired in late 2001, I think. I remember seeing it for the first time in 2003, and I instantly fell in love with it. I actually posted it a long time ago on the first incarnation of Tween, the wreckage of which has since disintegrated completely.

For more info on David Nicolas, check out Partizanlab’s profile page.

Joe Russ
I was lurking around xplsv the other day and happened upon the work of Joe Russ. I like it. And I think he’s an Austin boy. He sure has a lot of work that’s Austin-specific. Makes me miss home a little bit.

Best of Stash in Manhattan
Stash will be showing 35 outstanding pieces culled from its catalogue of over 350 outstanding pieces at the NYU Cantor Film Center on Thursday, March 30th at 7pm. It’s a free event, but you need to RSVP.

In addition to what I’m sure will be an inspiring lineup of films, Framestore CFC and PSYOP will also be showing some behind-the-scenes action.

See the official poster for complete details.

Man, it seems like everyone is hiring these days. That’s great news for you, gentle readers. Here’s another one from Digital Kitchen Chicago:

“Digital Kitchen Chicago is looking for Animators and Designers. Both Junior and Senior level positions are available. Junior level applicants must have a strong command of After Effects and have the ability to work in collaborative teams. Senior level applicants must have knowledge of the post production process and be able to lead design teams in executing concepts from creation to completion. Please submit reels, resumes, or questions to: jobs@d-kitchen.com”

Good luck!

So apparently St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah is a big deal. A really big deal. It’s Sunday night, and already I can’t find a parking space near my place because people from all over the country have descended upon this tiny town in anticipation of this week’s festivities. It’s insane.

Okay, on with the show…

Outsider: VW "Frog"
This has probably shown up on the regular press-release outlets, but I thought the concept and execution were so good in this VW spot from Outsider’s Henry Littlechild that I just had to post it here.

A quick visit to Outsider’s site (US) reveals that Mr. Littlechild has a penchant for the unexpectedly strange and humorous. The karaoke one had me laughing out loud.

Mainframe
There’s some really nice work in the reel of UK’s mainframe. (With Van Halen’s "Jump" as the soundtrack, can you really go wrong?)

And don’t miss their sizable collection of work (I nearly did). Scroll the contents of the right pane by dragging the plus sign of the scroller on the left. (Hey, they drive their cars on the wrong side of the street, too.)

Thanks for the tip, Mike.

Glassworks
Let’s keep things on the British tip for a bit with the amazing vfx and animation work of Glassworks. Their spots for Egg were recently featured in Stash, and they handled the CG for Chris Cunningham on his famous "All Is Full of Love" Björk promo.

Their reel gives you a pretty good feel for the caliber of their work, but I strongly suggest settling down with a cup of tea and perusing their full spots. Also check out their R&D section for a look at some of the clever systems Glassworks has created to pull off their wizardry.

Thanks, Tam.

Two Movies That I Hope Are Better Than I Currently Think They Will Be
Buzz about Richard Linklater’s upcoming roto-tastic "A Scanner Darkly" has been building for a while, probably because the damn thing has taken forever to make. Reader Seth Taylor passed me a link to a new (well, new to me) trailer that has me wondering if this movie is going to flop. I think the rotoscoping effect is most effective when used with a healthy dose of whimsy. As a tool for creating dramatic tension, I’m just not sure it works. I guess we’ll wait and see.

Another film that has me wondering is Sophia Coppola’s "Marie Antoinette," to be released this Fall. I remember feeling the same mixture of curiosity and confusion when I saw the trailer for Lost in Translation, a movie that ended up being one of my favorite films of the last couple years. So with that in mind, my hopes are cautiously high.

Thanks for the link, Greg.

Most of my undergraduate education as an English major was a useless, forgettable blur. But there’s one concept that stuck with me, something I learned from Dr. Bernard in my Renaissance Literature class.

Around 1528, an Italian guy named Baldassare Castiglione wrote The Book of the Courtier, which was basically an instruction manual for courtiers, people who’s sole job it was to hang out in royal court and be cool all day long (and sometimes all night). One of the central characteristics of a successful courtier, Castiglione said, was something he called sprezzatura.

Sprezzatura is hard to define. It can be poorly translated to mean "doing incredbly difficult and cool shit without much visible effort." As one of the characters in The Book describes it:

"It is an art which does not seem to be an art. One must avoid affectation and practice in all things a certain sprezzatura, disdain or carelessness, so as to conceal art, and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it….obvious effort is the antithesis of grace."

All of this is a roundabout way of setting up the work of Lifelong Friendship Society, which has recently been unveiled to the world via their newly relaunched web presence. This stuff has shown up in various places before, but finally it’s all here in one convenient location.

LFS’s work reeks of sprezzatura. It has a carelessness, an effortlessness to it that only amplifies its quality and ingenuity. And I’m not just talking about their low-fi aesthetic, although that’s certainly part of it. The childlike cleverness of the VW Passat spots and the beautifully ornate structures in the MTV Hits packaging almost look as if they were completed with a simple flick of the wrist.

Or maybe they’re better described as artful sneezes, seemingly accidental but controlled to produce a perfectly imperfect composition. The Futureheads promo is an excellent example of this sneezing process. It’s so loose and raw, but if you think about all the finicky little details and flourishes in it, you realize just how premeditated and labor-intensive it must have been to create.

I don’t know. Like sprezzatura itself, it’s hard to pin down exactly what LFS does, but it’s clear they do it very well. A full tour of their work shows they have surprising range, too. Compare "Brian Wilson Smile" and "St. Joes" to "Love Is" or the "Dots" series. Granted, they’re all tinged with irony and a kind of inside humor, but when LFS needs to, they can clean themselves up quite nicely.

You know, maybe I’m wrong about the whole sprezzatura angle. Maybe LFS just has a wide-eyed, fresh way of looking at the world, and their work is simply a reflection of this perspective. But that would suggest that they aren’t aware of their own cleverness, and I’m pretty sure they are. The fact that their URL contains the word "rebrand" shows that LFS is more savvy than they let on, that they’re simply playing a game without looking like they’re playing a game.

Castiglione would be proud.

Big thanks to Bran for being the first to let me know about the LFS update.

Another job post – only freelance in Sydney Australia this time though boys & girls:

Ash of Umeric says: “We are currently looking for a talented C4D Artist to help on an fun / exciting project that would run for approx 3 weeks. Experience in 3D Modelling / Texturing / Lighting a must. We are looking for someone who can start ASAP.

Please contact us via inquire[at]umeric.com “

Good luck!

Two words: Comcast blows. I still don’t have a real internet connection, thanks to the do-it-yourself customer service tactics of Comcast. My newly scheduled installation appointment is for this Saturday, but I’m not holding my breath. Until then, I extend my thanks to 115 W. Perry Ln., from whom I am leeching my internet access (unbeknownst to them).

Loyalkaspar: Lime and Showtime
Man, I’m really liking Loyalkaspar’s branding campaign for LIME, a new "lifestyle network." It’s classic LK stuff: lush, evolving landscapes of intricate, organic details beautifully integrated with well-shot footage. The logo resolves are really nice, too. Notice the clever little twist of the tag line?

Check them out at LK’s site under work > recent work.

Also don’t miss the new stuff LK has posted for Showtime’s "Next" and "Beyond." I’m particularly fond of the type handling in "Next." Massive props all around to LK.

David Pocull
My favorite moments in Barcelona-based David Pocull’s reel are those featuring his whimsical character animation skills. With muted palettes and simple lines, his character work is clean, fun and contemporary, even when its harkening back to a retro aesthetic.

(You may need to be a little patient with the download. It can take a few minutes.)

Blue Vertigo: Argentina Showcase
This is interesting. Design resource site Blue Vertigo has posted a "special edition" series of links to motion graphics studios located in Argentina. I haven’t had time to really dig into them yet, but I’m glad to see Blue Vertigo is branching out beyond its normal scope.

Thanks for the tip, Yotam.