This is the opening cinematic from the upcoming Wii game Epic Mickey. It is fun and has that ever-flowing look of a Disney cartoon. I have one quibble with it. You can’t always do in computer animation what you do in hand-drawn animation. In this case, I think the problem is in Mickey’s hands. They are a little off.
Category Archives: Animation
Animation: Simon’s Cat in ‘The Box’
Simon Tofield has another episode of his extremely amusing Simon’s Cat series.
Animation: Call of the Cthulhu In Under 2 Minutes
In general, I am deeply suspicious of the web trend for geeks to head toward steampunk, octopuses, and all things Cthulhu. There’s a vague and creeping racism underneath the cute old-fashioned, brass-fitted surface. I’ve also held a certain amount of contempt for H.P. Lovecraft. I think the guy was a closeted white supremacist with a knack for telling horrifying tales that are about white supremacists. I can imagine him as Sarah Palin’s favorite author… if she reads. The Cthulhu stories are genuinely frightening and his writing does contain a high creep quotient. But I’m just about ready to launch DOS attacks on sites that dig every alien octopus that shows its tentacles.
This, of course, is Lovecraft’s Call of the Cthulhu in under 2 minutes. It’s very well done and I like the use of the newspapers to move the story. Declan Moran made it. He also made Dante’s Inferno in Under 2 Minutes.
Animation: Zoudov
A film about an attractive spy during a rocket launch. By Clement Bolla, Aurelia Vernhes, and Laurent Gillot.
Film: Sweetheart
Here’s a music video made entirely out of illustrations, photos, and text from second-hand books! I never watch music videos all the way through. But I watched this one and admired its clever associations of images to lyrics. It’s all spelled out for you in the most charming and humorous way. Good song too! Ben Reed made this for a band called The Wave Pictures.
1000 Years of Polish History Turned Into 8 Minutes of Xbox Hell
Here’s how you obfuscate 1000 years of history. You animate it into an unintelligible eight minutes for an expo in Shanghai because certainly those Chinese are interested in how the Poles won their freedom. But the real problem with this animation that seems to place Poland’s entire history squarely into an Xbox game is the ending. All that history brings us up to the overbearing and rather creepy final images of the great corporate towers ascending into the heavens, completely taking over and creating the corporate citadel of wonder that houses only cubicle workers and offers relaxing courtyards where business people can take a mandatory lunch. It’s as if the only thing the western world can figure out to do with cities anymore is to turn them into gargantuan corporate business parks unfit for any human habitation.
Animation: Educated Fish
Here’s a 1936 cartoon from the Max Fleischer studio. Little fish need to go to school under the ocean. But one little fish doesn’t behave so well and gets hooked by some dangerous trouble.
Animation: Sensology
Animator, Michel Gagné, has just premiered his latest film. Sensology is a visualization of music played by Paul Plimley (piano) and Barry Guy (bass). The images actually look like the sounds they accompany. I couldn’t help thinking all the way through the film that the pictures were exactly how the notes sounded. I’m normally very hard to amuse with shapes that illustrate music, but this piece is short and good. My favorite part is the machine-like animation near the end.
Via Cartoon Brew
Animation: Dante’s Inferno In Under 2 Minutes
Filmmaker Declan Moran made this under 2-minute version of Dante’s Inferno which is based on a book called Dante’s Inferno: A Comedy’ by the Brothers Grim & Grimy (undead). I like it. Dante’s actual book is so full of colorful Italian whining that I find it almost unreadable. I mean really, the nasty old fellow used his trip through the underworld to take out his revenge for every little insult he ever suffered at the hands of almost anyone he ever met. Insufferable. Well, suffer no more, the Inferno is here in short form!
Animation: Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty
In this Oscar-Nominated short, Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty, directed by Nicky Phelan and produced by Darragh O’Connell, old Granny tells a tale that goes a bit off the rails as all good stories should do. It’s hilarious. It’s got a maniacally angry ‘elderly fairy’ who crashes the fairy tale party and spreads her bile around the joint in a most amusing tirade.
Animation: Hanabeam
Look at this astonishing music video from a Japanese breakbeat duo called Hifana. It explodes.
Animation: How To Feed The World
The real problem with feeding the world properly is the production of meat. Meat is a very destructive product because it is a huge polluter and uses land inefficiently. Denis van Waerebeke made this instructive short film about world hunger.
Animation: Table For 2
A nice little love couple enjoying a simple meal together with plenty of food and knives and forks to throw. A messy relationship. Strong table required. Israeli filmmaker Dafna Axel made this as her graduation project film.
Animation: The Family That Dwelt Apart
The National Film Board of Canada produced this cartoon adaptation of a story by E.B. White. He did the narration too! It’s a far-fetched tale of logical and methodical silliness that ends in an eruption of accidental death and mayhem. Simply marvelous.
I found this at Your Daily Cartoon
Animation: The Hole
In 1962 John and Faith Hubley won an Oscar for this short that features a conversation between jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie and George Matthews. It’s about two construction workers down in a hole having an intense discussion about accidents that goes totally nuclear. Fascinating Cold War film that is still just as relevant today.
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