What a glorious piece of work this video is. It follows the journey of a solitary creature as he deals with loneliness and inner turmoil. This independently produced animation is done entirely in Flash CS3 by animation artist, Adam Philips. Digging up info on him I came to discover he left Disney in 2004 to create his own ideas with this Brackenwood series and has become one of the highest ranked artists on Newgrounds. That alone becomes a great inspiration to me.

I particularly enjoyed reading his thoughts on the direction for Bitey and his opinions on “controversial” uses of narration (which I find quite enjoyable):

Sure he’s a spiteful little turd, but he’s not evil to the core. I now want the world to know who he really is and why.. to prove that there’s more to the character and his world than anyone imagined. For that purpose, I believed narration to be a suitable expository technique, despite how unfashionable it may be in the eyes of today’s screenwriters and snobbish film students. I know (just as some others wish) I could have made this movie entirely without narration, but I’ve said a number of times since LotD’s release that I have a soft spot for the spoken storytelling tradition which is something that I grew up with.

This totally needs to be made into a feature film. I love hearing stories like these and am always in support of ideas that go against traditional (and tiresome) commercial executions and delivery of entertainment. Kudos to Philips and much luck!

Holy crap, this is a work of madness… and by “madness”, I mean PURE genius–LOGORAMA is a 2010 Oscar-nominated, 16-minute anumation where French directors François Alaux, Ludovic Houplain and Herve de Crecy created this world of over 2,500 brand logos in the course of six years.

Summary from News in Film website:

Ronald McDonald is a machine gun-toting fugitive running from the police played by foul-mouthed Michelin men. The E! logo topples amongst the other brand skyscrapers. Big Boy gets into mischief. The Jolly Green Giant tries to hold back a stampede of animal logos.

BAAAHAHAHHAAAAaaaa… haa.. oh… haha. I love dinosaurs. This made me laugh by myself. And that’s fun. Ya.

From YouTube:

Completed in January 2010, The Moon Bird is a dark fairytale about an orphan girl who must outwit a terrible sorceress with the help of a magical lunar bird. The film is a short animation fifteen minutes long funded through the UK Film Council, Screen WM and CHANNEL 4.

From the Brother’s McLeod Site:

We’ve never done this before but we thought we’d take you through the process, the ups and downs, the long nights and early mornings. We’ve got to deliver the film by August so it’s going to be a busy few months.

The film is titled ‘The Moon Bird’. The story came about after Greg challenged Myles to write a Brothers Grimm tale. We’re going through script tweaks at the moment and Greg is working on style sheets, character and layout design.

Here’s an animation by Andy Hueng done in 2005. This is interesting, creepy and thought provoking. Here’s the short blurb from YouTube:

A machine with a doll face mimics images on television screen in search of a satisfactory visage. Doll Face presents a visual account of desires misplaced and identities fractured by our technological extension into the future.

I found this some time around Halloween–not sure exactly why I never posted this already. Just came back up while checking starred items in Google Reader. I had to share it. I know I will never look at bubble-wrap the same way again. Now I can’t help making that horrible horrible whining pitiful weeping when all things in my life at the moment seem defeated. This video is done by Arthur Metcalf and has hit up some festivals: It depicts that last moments of horror for a society of sentient bubble-wrap bubbles. Creepy.

Oh my holy what the crap! For those afraid of clowns… I hope this doesn’t make you afraid of pencils.

Director: Christian Simmons
Official Selection of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival
Produced by Dandy Dwarves production company

Germans in the Woods from Rauch Brothers on Vimeo.

I love these types of animations that grab the audio from some interview done ad-lib to then be given this treatment. “Germans in the Woods” is a short animation by Rauch Brothers Animation that tells the story of veteran Joseph Robertson’s haunting memory during the Battle of the Buldge in WWII.

The first time I saw this type of production–animation over ad-lib audio–was with Doogtoons, and most recently it was to a Kevin Smith SModcast episode featuring Aquaman–but it’s neat to see this treatment given a serious treatment instead of the typical comedic one.

Gravel

Warren Ellis’ Gravel comic series may hit the big screen. The film rights have been picked up by Legendary Pictures. Where it goes from there is anyone’s guess.

Spider-Man 4

Sam Raimi has confirmed that the next Spider-Man movie will start filming in March 2010. The script is currently going through a re-write, and additional casting hasn’t been done yet, but preparations with the sets and visual-effects. Rami’s thoughts on the direction required with the new villain:

What we’re trying to do right now is really understand the journey Peter is going to go on this time and have the villain maybe be a counter to that growth, something that he has to overcome. Or maybe he has to grow in a way to overcome the villain, because there always seem to be stories of coming of age, of a young man growing up and learning things about life, so once we are identifying the exact movement that Peter has to grow to, I think the villain—and we’re trying this right now; we’re trying to choose a villain based on who would be the proper counter to that growth, so we really have dramatic conflict.

Transformers 3

Looks like Michael Bay is tired of dealing with Megan Fox and her free-flowing mouth. Bay discovered Fox, who has been the lead female role in the Transformers franchise–now it’s time for a possible deal scene in the first few minutes of the next Transformers movie, and time to move on to the next in line.

X-Men Franchise

It seems Bryan Singer is interested, and in discussions with Fox, about possibly returning to the X-Men franchise. Singer’s comments about science fiction and fantasy films is that he likes to “trick audiences into thinking they’re seeing fireworks, but they’re learning about themselves and listening to what I have to say,” and that “The excitement about working in science fiction and fantasy is – the stories, if they are good, are about the human condition.”

Preacher

Garth Ennis’s Preacher series may be coming to television. Rose McGowan is claimed to be producing the mini-series for HBO.

Here’s a music video by Giles Timms, a freelance motion graphics artist. Giles is pursuing an MFA at UCLA’s Department of Theater, Film and Television. This animation is done in a cutout style with illustrations mimicking woodcut art of the days of old. This video takes you on a journey of a young boy wrapped up in a world of gothic horrory goodness. From Gile’s YouTube site: “Enchanted by a pixie, a child called Yorick enters a magical kingdom, but when Yorick returns he finds his world ravaged by time.” The music is performed by Ceri Frost.