The Gorillaz are 'set to star in a cartoon series for children's telly'. An 'insider' is quoted as saying "They're really excited about this project. It'll be a really funky, cool project for older kids." Gorillaz-News

Nach der merkwürdigen TV-Version mit Dirk Bach & Co kommt jetzt der Kinofilm in 3D.

John Kricfalusi (Ren & Stimpy) explains his "4-STORY STRUCTURE" and how to write a story about the modern generation and what makes a decent haircut.

Exhibition: 20 Years of Animation at the Science Museum, London (Open from 1 April to 10 June 2006)

So cute!

Makezine: HOW TO - Make LED Throwies!

Via del.icio.us

This is the best animation I have seen in a long time. I had to watch it twice right away. Take your time. It really makes me wanna play with my 3D-toys later on... Here is the big version!

Produced by 90 degrees from France.

Found at maxunderground.com

Great commercial posted by industrial-technology-and-witchcraft.de.

Soulcage Department says "Happy new Year". Take a look at their office with the Bremen-skyline in the back and watch their special short-film in 640x512 (takes a moment...) or in 360x288.

I love it!

"Harryhausen remains underwhelmed by the way special effects have colonised movies. 'Half the time I don't know what these movies are trying to tell me. They're just a series of explosions.'"

Interview in the Guardian

Bei Shesaiddestroy.org wird heute auf den prima Kurzfilm "Alive in Joburg" über Aliens in Südafrika hingewiesen. Bitte hier rechts clicken (81 MB, direct download from archive.org)Dat ist mal 'ne richtig coole Sache, die oben drauf auch noch perfekt gemacht ist! Da geht was mit der neuen Technik!

"Das neue 'profile Animation and Moving Image Festival' am Donnerstag, 08. Dezember, 18 bis 24 Uhr und später. Das neue 'profile Animation Festival' ist in diesem Jahr ein kostenloses Zusatzangebot für alle Besucher mit profile intermedia-Tickets." Info auf Deutsch

"Alan Fletcher, co-founder of Pentagram Design says:'… this is the most inspiring event that I know worldwide, equalled only by the 'ideas' conference in Melbourne…'

Three days of information, ideas and inspiration on the 09/10/11 December 2005 in Bremen Germany. plus, our new pre-conference 'profile Animation Festival' on 08 December 2005, early evening to a late-nighter.

Info in English

Everyone read this on boingboing.net today, I guess: "Machinima, in case you didn't know, is a recent trend of making films and "television" shows using video games. It's an interesting area to watch, but for the most part, machinima is a form that is filled with humor and little serious content. That, however, changes with the release of The French Democracy, a political film about France's riots created using The Movies, a game specially geared to helping you create your own machinima films."

Now the whole world keeps trying to watch this film now and the server seems to be down... This must be the most-blogged item of the year or something...

Mit dem neuen Spot aus der Kampagne eines Medienmarktes aus Ösireich zeigt sich das Bremer Animationsstudio mal wieder in Hochform.

Schön auch der "TV Commercial zum Nationalgeiztag Österreichs" (Unter Works zu finden): "Erleben sie hautnah, wie Österreichs Aussenminister Leopold Figl vor fünfzig Jahren vom Balkon des Schlosses Belvedere den Sparvertrag präsentiert und seine denkwürdigen Worte spricht. Ein ergreifender historischer Moment!"

Im Original hieß es zur "Stunde Null" natürlich "Österreich ist frei", woran man auch manch spätgeborenen Österreicher erinnern musste.

"Robot Bastard! is a short film (round 14 and a half minutes or so), starring the likes of Jeff B. Davis (Downer Channel, Whose Line is it Anyway?) and Robia Lamorte (Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

Rob Schrab's vision was to create a colorful, scratch-built world that was all his own. He wanted his debut as a director to have a signature style -- a Schrabian style to be exact. Several caffinated weekends in the making, Robot Bastard! was made for about 18,000 and shot on Super 16, color reversal featuring: squibs, explosions, stop animation, computer animation and models on green screen.

'I wanted it to have an Ultraman-Classic Trek look about it. I wanted it to be old/new looking--a low tech version of a high tech thing. Does that make any sense? Is anyone listening to me?'"

Absolutely!

FUCKING INCREDIBLE!!!! GO AND SEE IT!!!

"Gorillaz (go to their site for a "download only live version of the single 'DIRTY HARRY' recorded live and direct from the groundbreaking live show at the Manchester Opera House!) , the world's most popular virtual band, won Best Group at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Lisbon on November 3rd, 2005. Afterwards, they took the stage to play 'Feel Good Inc' live." devilducky.com has a video of these spectacular 3D puppets they had on stage.

Now, that's really something! Clips from some of Eastern Europe's greatest masters. I'll spend the rest of the night at Darkstrider.Net, I guess.

"Machinima (muh-sheen-eh-mah) is filmmaking within a real-time, 3D virtual environment, often using 3D video-game technologies.

In an expanded definition, it is the convergence of filmmaking, animation and game development. Machinima is real-world filmmaking techniques applied within an interactive virtual space where characters and events can be either controlled by humans, scripts or artificial intelligence. By combining the techniques of filmmaking, animation production and the technology of real-time 3D game engines, Machinima makes for a very cost- and time-efficient way to produce films, with a large amount of creative control."

About that thing with Disney... Have a look at the gates of Pixar!

"Church of Fools is the UK's first web-based 3D church which opened as a three-month experiment on May 11th. Church of Fools is an attempt to create holy ground on the net, where people can worship, pray and talk about faith.

We launched Church of Fools because we want to find out if it is possible to go one step further in the online community and "do church" on the net. The digital media agency Specialmoves has worked with us to create a 3D church with a crypt downstairs, where you can log in as a cartoon character, sit in a pew, talk to other people from around the world, kneel, cross yourself and take part in regular, short services. We're running it as a three-month experiment, and already the chemistry is looking ... well... interesting."

->Go to church right here...

The site was built by special moves who also did a wonderful little microsite for the The Osbournes

If you look at genre-charakters, superheroes are the most childish of them all! Would you go and fight crime after having fallen into some atomic soup? I certainly wouldn't. I'd try to get on TV and make lots of money of course. And I wouldn't wear a cape for sure. Since superheroes are such a ridiculous bunch, they're perfect for animation which is considered an art-form for children anyway. Animation for adults never really worked besides a handful of obvious exceptions, but why would you wanna watch "anime porn" if you can watch the real thing instead. Must have something to do with being able to show stuff you can't do in a "real film". That's why animated adult entertainment is mostly based on giving the perverts what they want and animation works best if it relies on a solid fantasy-story because there is no reason to animate talking heads with lots of dialogue.

Animation is about physical humour and heavily relies on slapstick-routines with a punchline. Well written superheroes are all about that. But superheroes only worked within their original medium: comic-books. The underwear and the capes look stupid in the real world.
"Superman" was an all-right movie because it wasn't taking itself so seriously. Especially Part III starring Richard Pryor has some groove. And the sixties-camp-version of "Batman" was great of course, but it wasn't what the comics were about.
With the methods of CGI, which are more than a giant step for special-effects, everything is possible and directors have more time to concentrate on stories and characters instead of controlling a giant crane which is supposed to make an actor look like he is flying for real.
With "Blade", "Spider-Man", "X-Men", "Hulk" and "Daredevil", superheroes became the dominating genre for blockbuster-merchandising-vehicles in the last few years. There are more movies lined up. Another "Superman" is in the making, "Batman begins" has started shooting, "The Punisher" is on his way, the promotion for "Spider-Man 2" is heating up and Doc Ock sure look great in the trailer., but I'm afraid that Hollywood is trying to get lots of long-running properties with lots of sequels instead of just following a trend here. Superheroes dominate 90% of the american comic-market. It would be too bad if 90% of all movie-budgets would be wasted on making the "Hulk" look "more realistic". You can get ten movies for whatever "Ghost Rider" or "Hellboy 2" will cost and even make more money.

So, it's a good time for "The Incredibles" to break new grounds and make superheroes look ridiculous again. Check out the trailer. This looks like the best movie Pixar has done so far and even if you don't like their "hey, we're the new Disney"-approach, it's about time to make fun of crime-fighters and good-doers running around in capes. Come on, a fat old superman, that's funny!

Another fine shortie from these guys in Bremen winning awards like crazy. The latest one won the "good film food 2003"-award which was a competition about "ecological cultivation and it's products."

Check the film-section of the portfolio to see it!

"Suppose you could take a camera - lens, film, and all - and stretch it like a blob of Silly Putty. You could wrap it around people, simultaneously capturing them from all directions. You could put one end of the blob on the ground floor of a building and stretch it up the stairs to the roof, getting one exposure of all the foot traffic in the whole building at once. You could change the shape of the camera for every image in a movie, capturing the point of view of multiple characters at once as they move around."

Andrew Glassner figured it all out.

After "The Treasure Planet" became a financial disaster, Disney thinks of giving up 2D. "Eisner has expressed interest in reanimating Disney's classic 2-D features in 3-D. A computerized Pinocchio, anyone? (In fact, much of the 3-D character animation for Walt Disney World's upcoming Mickey's PhilharMagic was so bad—in particular Ariel from The Little Mermaid—it had to be reanimated by 2-D animators, then transferred into the computer.)" taken from an interesting story at mouseplanet.com. Found at boingboing.net

Come on, if you came here, you want to see this flash-toy and play around with it forever because it's so much fun

Rustboy is a private 3D-project carried out with Infini-3D on a Mac. Pretty impressive work for a no-budget-production. Interesting way of documenting every step of the production in an online-diary. You can watch a showreel right here!

The Breed has some wicked stuff up there.

Rustgirl.com is a great little website promoting pictures of dark and rotten machines, abandoned places and industrial art that looks a lot like it was inspired by Dave McKean Rustgirl also designed the site for Kenji Siratori's Blood Electric - Fiction for the 21st Century

<A target=_blank HREF="www.metafilter.comMetafilter has posted this great link with images of old travelbrochuregraphics. Phantastic 20s and 30s stuff from all over the world

Cute little divx-shorties in a nice cartoonish 3D-style from Italy's Gianpaolo Fragale.
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