Freedom from boring work.

Some day I will only ever have Amnesty International or the Ad Council as clients. Then I would spend copius amounts of kaish producing whatever I wanted. Some of it might even be cool (I’d hope).

MTLB SC NYC OK.

Yes, I’ve been neglecting my audience. MY BAD. Ennyway, after a recent spate of new biz pitches, here’s a different take on NYC THAT I WAS JUST IN LAST NIGHT. (Define irony: Move from CT to SC then revisit NYC.) So Plan of the City is a very cool animated piece about New Yawkers up and moving their ass and buildings to Mars.

Deficits 101.

My breakdown would be shorter: Don’t spend more than you take in. There’s always the Plate of Food theory, too.

To the cow cloud.

I’m in a cow/zebra/cloud eye candy mood. “Zow” by Taras Hrabowsky is a segment from a larger Adult Swim piece.

(Via.)

To DVD, and beyond.

Sorry about the really poor Buzz Lightyear wordplay. Suck it. After seeing a rerun of The Pixar Story last night, it’s easy to forget how far animation has come since the mid-90s. By comparison, the level of what’s out now either in video games or features is almost taken for granted. The clip above is from the Making of Toy Story specifically, but has a lot of the same players as the longer doc. (Check Pixar Story out on Netflix.) Thing that gets me after watching it is how a hugely successful company got started by people who didn’t know anything about computers (like director John Lasseter). Or how they had one computer to create new animations that hadn’t been done before, but still had to wait like everyone else for things to render. And it wasn’t just the vision of Steve Jobs that got them going, but his $10 million investment at the start. No bucks, no Buck Rogers. (Part 2 and Pixar trailer after the jump.)

Here’s more Train!

Heh. JOKE. Enjoy the animation work in this student short Train of Thought before some agency gets its hands on it for a floor wax. (Okay, it’s *sorta* like this.)

450 pages of pure Google Docs pleasure.

Or, maybe you prefer 1:30 seconds of pure Maria Sharapova pleasure? While I admire the effort put in, a guy should never say “Let’s rock the Google docs!” Choose your favorite at Google Demo Slam.

(Via.)

It IS loud with a Shop-Vac on.

Welcome to suburban angst, where Shop-Vacs rule. Animating the Jonathan Coulton’s Shop-Vac song, Jarrett Heather spent upwards of 1,000 hours trying to visualize everything special about the ‘burbs. I hope that boy got PAID. (He didn’t – labor of love.) Regardless, it’s super tight work. Hopefully Shop-Vac hits him up considering how much YouTube love he’s given them in less than two weeks.

(Via.)

200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes.

Check out this compelling BBC visualization with Hans Rosling of how far most of the countries in the world have come – or not come in 200 years, both in terms of wealth and population.

(Via.)

Is it the most realistic cgi ever?

They say it is, whoever they are. This Silestone kitchen worktops commercial from Alex Roman and The Mushroom Company is about as tight as you’ll see. NO REAL LEMONS. AT ALL.

(Via.)

Pretty windmills WILL save villages.

It takes a village to raise an issue. Do animations make you feel all warm and fuzzy about the world’s problems? Or can you get past that if the story is compelling enough? Do the people most impacted by it think about it in those terms, or do they just want clean water and other basic necessities essential to life? Oxfam’s climate change initiative thinks so.

(Agency: th1ng.)

Where old vinyl goes to die...

Into the souls of DJ shamans standing amidst circular rituals of spinning aural delight? Perhaps. Directed by a one Mr. Chopsy, this journey of vinyl’s last days has nice little bits o’ animational fun soon to be lifted appearing in a banking commercial no doubt. The fun where coins are shown being sucked out of your bank account “by those other guys with high fees.” (Shhh. It’s true. I know how you freaks work.) Just dig this now before it comes to that.

(Via.)

Ken Burns meets After Effects.

Four score and seven animators ago...

Look, I just like this piece on the Gettysburg Address compared to the usual animated type porn now in vogue, okay?

(Via.)

Ask your creative director if PSD is right for you.

More from the “If Photoshop was real” department. This time, a disease afflicting millions: Photoshop dexterity (PSD). Way too peppy a soundtrack for a hangover though.

Here’s a thought... bubble.

This *Thought Bubble* from Trouble and Maker was done for Greenpeace’s Go Beyond Oil campaign. Taking a left as only I do, that’s not what I thought of when I saw it however. I was thinking that with all the talk of which agency does what when it comes to handling a brand’s work, the one group that seems to be discussion-proof here are production and effects houses. As long as they do tight work like this, they’re always going to be in demand no matter who comes up with the tagline, the strategy , or the social campaign. That is all.

“A long time ago in a camera far, far away....”

Forgive my abstractness here, but the coolest part of anything? Is seeing it in a new light. Duh. Like the series of behind the scenes shots out for Star Wars freaks to drool over. For the few who don’t have the classic opening sequence etched into their brains like a bad Caruso throws shades on CSI intro, seeing how they filmed it in the most basic way enhances the memories for those who do. Cool stuff, as they say. Or mindnumbingly simple in an After Effects world.

(Via.)

Opulent forest starburst love – I HAS IT!

With Mel Gibson and Oksana showing the ways in which true love can come to a grinding, festering, and very public halt, it’s easy to forget how it all starts for people in love. It’s in this spirit that I think you deserve a little wedding video awesomeness in your life. Something to make you feel better about your special day, whenever that was – or may be. How do you even bring up this theme with the happy couple ahead of time?

(Via.)

Tumblingerstraße.

Turning tilt-shift stop motion on its head and combining it with the tagging arts, how do you not dig this?

Google ads now 2-0.

If I was to count this and the previous one with the Paris story, I’d say they’ve done okay so far. Click the X, I dare you. Half-old school animation, half-Google ad. What else is there to say except clever stuff by Super Force Armada, Germany.

(Via.)

The year of stop-motion.

Maybe not, but simple is betta... IT JUST IS. I can see a backlash against consumer-generated bullshit resulting in more professionally done work that *appears* to be the work of consumers. Whether a brand has a *story* to tell or not is moot. All brands want to be associated with buzz of any sort, no matter who creates it. This 7-minute long short speaks to surf culture, but it could be for any brand. Slap an OP, Vans, or whatever logo on it somewhere. All that people care is that it’s cool. Animation love here goes out to creator Karim Rejeb. Next time you see this though, I suppose it will probably end up used for a :30 promoting Taco Bell’s New Baja Surf Burrito Combo!*

*They don’t really have this. The fast casual industry playbook for food innovation dictates that you don’t really create new ingredients instead, you just recycle existing ones in different combinations. So Taco Bell will just take lettuce, tomato and cheese, sprinkle some Mt. Dew Baja blast over it and wrap it in a tortilla wrap. Combo Nation™ now has a new product. Done!

(Via Vans.)