animation

The Rhyme of the Ancient Merino

Posted by hil

It’s great to see the complete realisation of Dave Jones’s The Rhyme of the Ancient Merino.

At sail on a sea of wheat, the Ancient Merino and his aging theatre troupe struggle to eke out an existence in a hostile environment. When a the threat of modern technology looms they must adapt or fade into obscurity.

The animation is an allegory for the story of ‘the 50 year history of the Arapiles Community Theatre, and the recent influx of new arrivals and the changes that has brought about’ in the small regional town of Natimuk, Victoria. Traditionally a service hub for the surrounding farming country, Natimuk is also the closest town to Mount Arapiles, a mecca for rock climbers, so it is an interesting mix of farming people, climbers and an arts community. In October it will again be the centre for the Nati Frinj.

I love the puppets in this; they’re life size and  made from bits of old farm machinery. And I like the little details like the snails.

Perpetual Ocean

Posted by hil

 

Here’s a lovely NASA visualization showing ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through Decmeber 2007. You can read details of how it was done and download higher resolution versions at this NASA page.

(via @davpope, Canberra’s great cartoonist, who by the way, every now and then slips puppets into his cartoons. Today’s is a good example)

Update:  This wind map of the US with close to real-time data is also really cool!

Cool animation: Of Monsters and Men’s Little Talks

Posted by hil

A lovely music video animation for the song Little Talks by the Icelandic band Of Monsters and Men.

Five sky-sailors discover a crystal meteor containing a lost mythical female creature. An epic journey through fantastical worlds ensues as the sailors struggle to return her to her people.

The animation was directed by WeWereMonkeys, who have an interesting article and photos of  how it was made.

The puppets in Aardman’s new Pirates Movie

Posted by hil

 

Aardman’s latest movie The Pirates! – In An Adventure With Scientists is released on 28 March, and looks like it will be lots of fun. Here are three videos that give a look at the stop motion puppets and the making process.

David Sztypuljak’s  video has some great footage of the sets, workshops and puppets. He also has an accompanying arcticle:

 

 

Andrew Bloxham talks about the complex process of creating the Pirate Captain’s luxurious beard:

 

 

And Caroline Hague, puppet and maintenance coordinator, talks about looking after the puppets.

 

Wenlock & Mandeville, the London Olympic mascots

Posted by hil

 

This animation introduces the two mascots for the London Olympics, Wenlock and Mandeville, and the story of how they originated from the Bolton steelworks where the girders for the Olympic stadium were made. It was written by Michael Morpurgo, the author of War Horse and many other children’s books. There are follow up adventures which also serve to meet the desire expressed by children that they have stories associated with them.

The mascot design and maybe in particular the bodysuit puppet versions have been mercilessly derided for obvious reasons. I’m not very fond of mascots generally; with these I’m disconcerted by their saggy bottom halves, but quite like their faces.

 

London Olympic mascots 2012

The Quay Brothers: OverWorlds & UnderWorlds

Posted by hil

 

OverWorlds & UnderWorlds is Yorkshire’s flagship arts project for the London Cultural 2012 Olympiad. Leeds Canvas, the first collaboration between eight of the city’s key arts organisations  offered their city of Leeds – its people, landscape, buildings, artists, and cultural institutions – as a canvas to The Brothers Quay, and asked them to respond in memorable and surprising ways.

They have proposed a large scale work, taking place this May, which will explore the  flow of people and water through the city.  They are interested in how, from out of the anonymous and everyday, myth suddenly erupts and transforms space into another dimension and then subsides, leaving the everyday altered and somehow different.

The Brothers Quay are renowned for stop motion animations which often involve surreal puppetry, (the video above is an excerpt from Street of Crocodiles) and although we don’t know yet what will unfold, this sounds exciting to me.  As a lead up, the brothers’ exhibition Dormitorium, miniature scenes and decor from their animations, was shown in Leeds last October.

An interactive animation of Starry Night

Posted by hil

I love this interactive animation of Van Gogh’s Starry Night! Made by Petros Vrellis with openFrameworks it imagines the energy flows in the painting and offers the ability to change them with touch-sensitive gestures. These also change the ambient background music.

(via Colossal)

The Borrowers adaptations

Posted by hil

When I saw that Mary Norton’s The Borrowers had been turned into an animation, The Secret World of Arietty, my knee-jerk reaction was a blurted out tweet (a twurt?):

Oh crap, The Borrowers have been Disney-d. Why can’t they make up their own damn stories?

Or is it anime-d? Probably both.

Then I promptly reread the first four books in the series straight through (for the first time in many years),  finishing last night with a satisfied sigh.

But I’ve had to give myself a talking-to about the adaptation. It turns out that there are numerous previous film adaptations, and a new BBC one coming out this Christmas. If I take a step back from the strong imprint the book made on me as a child, I can see that the things that made me love it also make it an irresistibly rich story for others to reinterpret. And while for me the drawings by Diana Stanley

are inextricably part of how I imagine and experience the story of Pod, Homily and Arietty, it seems Americans have an equally strong association and love of the illustrations done by Beth and Joe Krush.

So instead I’m going to welcome the new adaptations, and enjoy some new ways of seeing The Borrowers, and the new stories created from them.  I probably won’t like some of the sentimentality, or the idea of Mild-Eye being redrawn as an evil professor instead of gypsy, but that’s okay, I don’t have to. And maybe those aspects will speak to some who would otherwise never have the pleasure of knowing The Borrowers.