Henry Phish

Okay, I’ve been threatening to add this to the blog for months, so here it is.

I found this film, Revenge of the Red Balloon, online about five years ago. I had heard of The Red Balloon, a French film by all accounts, in a class. Being a student of filmaking and film in general, I was totally enthralled by the idea of the Red Balloon getting it’s revenge on the boys who had so violently murdered it in the first film…keep in mind that I still haven’t seen the first film; I just love irony.

The short film is great, and the story behind the making of the film is almost as cool as the film itself. Apparently the director actually went to France to film the short. Anyone who’s committed enough to buy a ticket to a foreign country just to make a film is either completely nuts, or someone I’d like to meet…maybe both.

Anyway, check it out.

Matt’s earlier post “Mad World” reminded me of two other videos I came across on YouTube. It’s amazing what a little time and some dedication can accomplish. Commercials do not all need to be computer generated to be animated.

TalkTalk reklamı (bigumigu.com)

Akbank - Yenilikçi Güç (bigumigu.com)

I personally like the Akbank one more.

Can anyone find a recent and good claymation commercial?

For those of you who are fans of Mike Mignola and the Hellboy series…or if you just want to have Paul Giamatti’s love child…check out the Amazing Screwtop Head pilot over at the Sci fi Channels official site.  The Amazing Screwtop Head was a limited run series about a civil war era spy who could swap his head into any number of fantasic bodies. Together with his robot butler and his patron, Abe Lincoln, he often found himself in fantasic situations in his quest to defeat the evil Emperor Zombie and his lackies.  Like Hellboy, the art work for the series is very much in Mike Mignolas patented style, heavy ink lines and sharp angles.  Also, like Hellboy, the plot is a lot of fun; very much the serial adventure stories that nobody does anymore…at least not well.  It’s fun to see when good art like this succeeds.  I can’t say I’ve read many of the comic books, but I always found the concept facinating and I’d love to see a few more episodes of the show.  Anyway, if you like the pilot, then take the survey and let them know…these kind of shows don’t last long without fan support.

More Info About the Amazing Screw on Head

This thing is pretty amazing.  It’s a demo reel for a 3D artist…though I’m not exactly sure who.  Still, it’s worth taking a look.  You’ll be amazed.

Plant Reel 

…an idiots guide to art.  Actually it’s an article about a certain exhibit in London that has become the focal point of a discussion on the state of modern art.  In all honestly, the discussion is nothing new, but it’s always fun to point and laugh.

Thought to have Merit 

A pretty interesting flash animation. It’s not all that easy to describe, so just watch it.

A friend of mine sent this link to me and it’s insanely good. Even better is the fact that it was created using open source graphics software such as Blender. Being a big fan of animation and working on my own little opus as we speak, making this stuff is incredibly hard, and these guys did a great job.

Check out Elephants Dream at Milk and Cookies.

Also, the comments are pretty interesting themselves.

Remember that ad campaign from a few years ago…the one with that thing and that crazy logo…yeah, that’s the one.  Well now you can relive the good old days at Adflip.com.  Adflip has print ads from just about every era you could imagine, and it grows daily.

Unfortunatly, to search their database, you need to become a paid subscriber, but you can look through daily ads without paying a cent, or check peruse the categories on the right hand side.

 Some of my favorites are:

The Road Warrior

Airplane

Tandy 2000 (And yes, that is Bill Gates)

Seems like a long time since my colleage days.  It’s been about five years now…not quite…but we’re getting close.  I’ve been looking back at some of my old multimedia work and I decided to put some of it up on www.youtube.com just for kicks.

The first one I posted was called Still Life.  It was my senior thesis project back in the day.  It was an interesting idea, but very art school.

 Anyway, check it out at the link above, or read more about it at my official site.

Most of you have probably never heard of Shane Acker; he’s an artist/animator who’s just started making the rounds. He’s done some work for Weta on Lord of the Rings: Return of the King…and he’s done a short film, called 9 that’s made the festival circuit and has just been picked up by Tim Burton to be made into a feature film. While I haven’t seen the short film in it’s entirity, I have to say that the trailor kicks ass. The CG is georgous, and the film has a lot more character than most commercial cg films these days…if Disney hadn’t just bought Pixar, I’d be telling them to watch out for this guy… Anyway, check out the trailor, and go see the movie…it’s always fun to see indy filmakers succeed…

By the way, it’s a good buy on HSX as well. It’s listed as NINE. Check it out.

9 - Trailor