Year of the Rabbit from Frater on Vimeo.

Saw this nice little animation today in aid of the celebrations for the new Chinese year and it being Year of the Rabbit. Benji Davies & Jim Field from Frater Films designed and directed the short animation. Love the contrasting black and whites, which really helps the illustrative linear style.

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Is it my obsession with anything Zombie related, or is the whole genre really taking off as of late?

Eric Powell’s The Goon, is being developed as an animated feature film to be produced by ground-breaking filmmaker David Fincher, Blur Studio, and Mike Richardson at Dark Horse Entertainment.

The Goon movie has not been funded yet (fingers crossed it will be soon) as the team is currently looking for a studio to snatch up the project and finance production. If it’s anything to go by from the above proof of concept footage, it looks set to being absolutely amazing.

Just been scoping this years awesome lineup for the 2010 Offset event in Dublin this October. One of the speakers is David O’Reilly who just blew me away with this beautiful piece of work -

A 10 minute about a troubled relationship between a Cat and Mouse set in a wonderfully abstract and surreal future.
The film won the Golden Bear for best short at the 2009 Berlinale, the Cartoon D’or and several other awards. In 2010 it was given a distinction of cultural significance by the German ratings agency FBW.

There’s an interesting mix for this years short film (animated) Oscar nominations. Whilst not actually being that varied in styles (there are four CG animations and pretty much all comedies), they are all created outside the USA. The only clip unavailable to get hold of on here is Nick Park’s Wallace & Gromit in ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death‘, it’s also the only one which isn’t a CG animation and will more than likely get nod for the Oscar win. I would like to think Logorama has a good shot at it, but I’ll just will let you can delve straight into watching the clips below and judge which you think should win.

“The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)” by Javier Recio Gracia

“Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty” by Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell

“French Roast” by Fabrice O. Joubert

“Logorama” part 1 by Nicolas Schmerkin

and Logorama part 2

Brilliant video from Coy! for the Circle Creative awards.

Beginning with the 1973 Hovis classic, this charming animation short takes us through the ages of advertising with references ranging from the classics to the more annoying tv spots (personally love the Surfer ad for Guiness reference near the end).

How many adverts can you spot?

Need some handy little tips on ideas generating? Check out this rather superb little animated video for the 2010 Rethink Scholarship competition.

In which you’re asked to create a sketchbook, pile it full of ideas, and in return those judged best will be given a scholarship to Langara’s Communication and Ideation Design program as well as an internship with Rethink.

Self taught Art Director Christian Borstlap has created some wonderful illustrations for Dutch children’s charity, Kinderpostzegels.

Paul Postma did the animation to Christian’s colourful work, bringing it to life with a playful animation style really letting their personalities shine, as seen below.

Great little video from Greenpeace with some really amazing illustration and animation production by Ogilvy & Mather. Short, simple and to the point.

Really nice collaborative animation. Blu has done it again, last time over 5 million people saw his Muto animation on Youtube. Now he and David Ellis have got together to create another wonderful animation. Love how each artists’ work emerges from one another, almost like a big graffiti game of chess, all in raw stop-motion.

Thanks over to the sweatyyetti for linking me up. Love the simple, laid back animation style from Lev Yilmaz. Also great voice over, reminds me the DJ from the ‘super sounds of the seventies’ off Reservoir Dogs. Very interesting…