Takorantis is the site of the Japanese studio Takorasu, "Las octopus" according to a weird on-line translation. On the Takorasu portfolio you will find their work of wonderful illustrations and animations with robot-like giant animals, which transport tiny whimsical steam worlds; midis from their animations, images of character design, and images (reload the page) of a web comic (now closed). Those steam worlds are inspired on the 19th century machinery and the middle ages European cities. For more information about it, watch the short video bellow by Diginfonew. (via armchair aquarium)

Continue reading "Takorasu" »

Posted by Bibi on January 25, 2008 02:52 PM in Animation, Illustration ||

GAME OVER is a brilliant video performance project created by the Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond, using stop-motion (pixelation) technique to visually reproduce classic arcade games, pixel by pixel.

It consists of a series of collaborative animation movies which revive some of the very first video games. The pixels are replaced by a group of real human-beings that are moving from seat to seat in a theatre during about 4 to 6 hours. Each "pixel" has its own rules and decides what s/he wants to do for each picture. Once all these pictures are turned into a short animation movie, a giant human-scale video game unfolds "live".

The project started with video performance of Pong. The second video was Space Invaders on June 24th 2006, followed by Pole Position on February 11th 2007, and Tetris on November 24th 2007. The videos demanded a lot of time to be shoted, planned, and the result is great. However, two more reasons to watch them: the special effects and the soundtrack all made with voices only. Watch Tetris bellow.

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Posted by Bibi on January 23, 2008 09:15 PM in Animation, Fun, Fun, Games, Video ||

The London based animation director and illustrator Steve Scott has a marvellous work. He started directing animated promos in the late 90s, creating clips for many bands, including Silverchair, New Zealand's Salmonella Dub and his own band, Telemetry Orchestra. His cheerful and colourful portfolio of illustrations, some with a retro style, includes magazine covers, ads, CDs illustration, character design and pin-ups.

His animation portfolio is also great, with commercials and music videos. Don't miss Telemetry Orchestra's Suburban Harmony, with a style very similar to The Beatle's "Yellow Submarine".

Posted by Bibi on January 21, 2008 10:50 PM in Animation, Illustration, Pin-ups ||

The Russian LiveJournal community Kidpix published some illustrations with part of the text (in Russian) from the book "Ёжик в тумане", known as "Hedgehog in the Fog". "Hedgehog in the Fog" was at first a Soviet animated film directed by Yuriy Norshteyn, produced by the Soyuzmultfilm studio in Moscow. This classic animation was released in 1975, based on Sergei Grigoryevich Kozlov's script. However, in 2006 Norshteyn published the book under the same name, listing himself as an author along with Kozlov.

The film won the Teheran's Children's and Youth Film Festival of 1976 as "best animated film", and Frunze's All-Union Film Festival in the category "best animated film" in the same year. In 2003 the film was voted as "№1 Animated film of all the time" at "All time animation best 150 in Japan and Worldwide" contest in Tokyo. If you don't know this wonderful animation, watch it on YouTube or bellow (10min) with English subtitles:

Continue reading "Illustrations from Hedgehog in the Fog" »

Posted by Bibi on January 20, 2008 03:29 PM in Animals, Animation, Illustration ||

The animated short film No Quarter it's a light-hearted comedic view on the devastating consequences of overwhelming greed. The animation, by Mike Trent, was created as his conclusion project for 3D Animation program at Vancouver Film School. I enjoyed very much the aesthetic, including the colours, the characters and the humour presented on it; all those elements help to create an old-time atmosphere. (via CGTalk)

Posted by Bibi on January 16, 2008 10:57 PM in Animation, Fun, Fun ||

Every new year people do their predictions: doing more exercises, eating more healthy food, visiting new places, being more kind with other people, and many other things like that. In my personal, and mental, predictions list I also listed things to do to save the world: recycling, use less energy, taking shorter showers, use less paper and re-use it, taking my saddlebags to the supermarket and greengrocer, avoiding the use of more plastic bags, and eat less meat.

The international organization WWF has a new video campaign for climate change in UK, to those that don't want to listen, called How to save the world. The animated video lists small actions good that we can do to make a big difference and helping to stop the climate change. The animation was designed and animated by Jon Yeo and Maria Sandström, and written by Rafaela Perera and Ravi Karawdra. (via No fat clips)

PS.: this post is dedicated to the great guy behind Martin Klasch, who was worried about my blogging absence.

Related posts:
Humans!
Global Warming

Posted by Bibi on January 16, 2008 12:59 PM in Animation, Nature ||

L'âme Seule (The lonely soul) is a touching animation created by three talented students from EESA (Ecole Européenne Supérieure d'Animation): Cédric Berthier, Jean-Sébastien Leroux et Maximilien Royo. The short-film (4min) tells the story of a lonely character and the discover of what is missing in its life. The making-of shows part of the process of this a stop-motion animation and the creation of the characters with plasticine. The music was composed by SoH-So, who also made the site.

Continue reading "L'âme Seule" »

Posted by Bibi on October 1, 2007 06:27 PM in Animation, Video ||

Doug Savage is known for his humorous cartoons Savage Chickens drawn on post-its. The Savage Chickens is daily cartoon with an acid humour, and for your enjoyment has a feed available. And I must say that just now I've got a decent attitude to subscribe to it (yes, I know, I should do it before).

The sometimes-slow-creature-here noticed this neat cartoon due to Doug Savage had won the Laura Veirs and Saltbreakers music video contest. The stop-motion video was made to the song "Phantom Mountain". The contest rules were simple: made a videoclip for any of their songs and send it until August 31th. He tells about his video experience on the page Behind the Scenes. Some of the Phantom Mountain Fun Facts:

There are about 500 sticky notes in the video, including a butterfly and 4 or 5 stunt butterflies.
There are over 1500 photos in the video. I used a digital camera on a tripod, which I had to sort of crouch over. My back was killing me!
I drew so many cartoons that I actually developed a callus on the inside of my left thumb from drawing too much. Towards the end, I had to get up and shake out my arm every few minutes.
The old clock radio on the table used to belong to my great-grandmother.

And finally, the winner music video bellow (3 min). Great work.(via Koreus)

Posted by Bibi on September 28, 2007 01:10 PM in Animation, Comics, Fun, Fun, Music ||

There’s Something In The Water is a blog, and part of a clever campaign to promote V Water, an English flavoured water with vitamins. The themes keep calm and don't stress are emphasize in the cheerful animated film created for it. The video reminds the Max Fleischer's animation News Sketches, made in the 1940's. (via Blogeek, merci Bertrand!)

Posted by Bibi on September 24, 2007 12:14 PM in Animation, Food, Food, Video ||

The Internet Archive's blog made a special post to celebrate the International Talk Like a Pirate Day: Pirates!. The post points to films, animations, audio archives and books with pirates on Archive's collection. Nice suggestions, specially the animations: Felix the Cat: The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg and Peg-Leg Pedro.

On the Felix the cat cartoon The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, from 1936, Felix's goose, who lays golden eggs, is goose-napped by none other than Captain Kidd. The seven-minutes video is one of the finest Felix available on Archive. You can watch below, on the Internet Archive page, Google Video or at Videos with Bibi, with other Felix cartoons.

The cartoon Peg Leg Pedro from 1938, isn't really a cartoon, it's an advertisement for Chevrolet commercial, where A boy and girl on a trip are attacked by pirates while looking for treasure. It isn't so good as Felix cartoon, but it still amusing. You can watch it at the same places: Internet Archive, Google Video, or Videos with Bibi, and enjoy to watch more Chevrolet cartoons.

Related posts:
Felix The Cat
Vintage Chevrolet Cartoons
Talk Like a Pirate Day 2007

Posted by Bibi on September 20, 2007 04:05 AM in Animation, Audio, Books ||

Once more it's time to celebrate the International Talk Like a Pirate Day. And I will do it on my way, sharing links, since I don't have any pirate costume.

Catster and Dogster users are also participating of this special day, submitting the pictures of their furry fellows dressed as pirates, with the tag "pirate", on Dogster and Catster.

Getting to Know ... International Talk Like A Pirate Day: an interview with Mark "Cap'n Slappy" Summer and John "Ol' Chumbucket" Baur, the founders of Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Many Books has a nice collection of Pirate Stories of digitalized books in the public domain to read on-line or download, available in many formats.

Photos from International Talk Like A Pirate Day on Flickr. Explore all the previous images or go directly to the 2007 photoset.

Pinup Pirate illustration created by the deviantART artist agrivaine (ChrissieA).

Pirate Pinup: the picture above is a self portrait by the Flickr user Danielle.

Pirates Of The Caribbean 1 and 2 in 30 seconds and re-enacted by bunnies, presented by Starz Bunny Club Exclusive, created by Angry Alien Productions.

Polite Dissent made a great list of comic-book pirates (and pirate comic books) to celebrate the day. (via Pen-Elayne on the Web)

Post Like a Pirate is a pirate translator which also posts directly on Twitter, Myspace or send by email the translated text.

Réunion de piratesses: a collection of illustrations created by several artists to a contest created by the French illustrator Delfine, on her blog, which theme was "fille de pirate" (daughter of pirate). Take a look at the illustrations and on the Hors concours illustration of the contest if you speak French.

The Pirate Pin Up Arrr Mates, the Sexiest Pirate Pinups 'n the Seven Seas. Sexy picturs of pin-up dressed as pirates, or something like that. The picture on the top is from one of those girls, Molly Roger.

Watch the classic silent film The Black Pirate with Douglas Fairbanks at Videos with Bibi, and the special "Talk like a Pirate Day" films Dancing Pirate and Captain Kidd.

WordPress users can Piratify Your Blogs using the Text Filter Suite Plugin. It turns yer blog into pirate-speak on Talk Like a Pirate Day! (via The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire)

The YouTube profile Offcial Wench hosts 23 videos of Cap'n Slappy and Ol' Chumbucket. The last video added, Pirates of the Burning Sea, introduces the video game, "Pirates of the Burning Sea" for the release party in Seattle, Washington on September 19th. You can watch their video Pirates And Ninjas bellow.

Pictures of The Pirate zombie pin-up model. As a good pirate she has a parrot.

And the original Talk Like A Pirate Day site. It has some cool stuff, games and many other links.

Previous posts with pirates:
Devout Dolls
Talk Like A Pirate Day
Courts métrages Annecy
Piratical and Privateering Books in English

Posted by Bibi on September 19, 2007 08:55 PM in Animation, Books, Cinema, Culture, Events, Fun, Fun, Photography, Photography, Pin-ups, Video ||

Musicotherapie is a funny schizophrenic French animation presenting the director of a mental institute neurotic with all kind of noises. To make it worse, the insane patients start to compose a music with noises and fuss in the kitchen. This very well done short-film was realised by Amaël Isnard, Manuel Javelle and Clément Picon, students of SupInfoCom Arles. The film music (and noises) was composed by Nicolas Baloche and Benjamin Fournier, FX Musik - Tambour Battant. (via NicoSite)

Posted by Bibi on September 15, 2007 06:33 PM in Animation, Fun, Fun, Video ||

If you love animations, you should be a reader of Videos with Bibi. I have been posting there since February and the video blog (vlog) contains, until now, hundreds of videos. There is a bit of everything: documentaries, silent melodramas, horror films, musicals, avant garde films, action, film-noir, ephemeral videos and much more. But I'm here to sell my fish to those who want to watch cartoons and animations. And I think the best way to convince you is showing a list of good reasons. Here it is my list:

- Alexandre Alexeieff pinscreen animations and Animated Commercials. The commercials aren't so wonderful as his pinscreen animations, but still being too beautiful to be just commercials.

- Betty Boop Cartoons: 1932, 1933, 1934 - 1935, 1936 - 1937 and 1938 - 1939.

- Cheburashka and Krokodil Gena: a classic! Cheburashka is probably the most adorable Russian character of all time. It's impossible not look at him and think "aww so cute".

- Dave and Max Fleischer animations: short animations I, short animations II, short animations III, short animations IV, The Cobweb Hotel and Gulliver's Travels.

- Felix The Cat Cartoons: Felix The Cat Cartoons I, II, III and IV.

- Ivo Caprino Short Stop Motion Animations I and II. The great Norwegian puppet animatior is most know for his adaptations of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's tales.

- Jan Svankmajer Short Films I, II, III, IV and V. Watch them fast, before all them disappear.

- Jirí Barta Animations: the Czech animator plays with stop-motion, classic animation and experimental animation. Bellow, one of his animations, Riddles for a Candy (8min).

- Jiří Trnka short stop-motion films - I, short stop-motion films - II and The Emperor's Nightingale. The Czech Trnka was a master of stop-motion animation. Must-see.

- Leonid Nosyrev Short Animations and the film Laughter and Grief by the White Sea, also by Leonid. The cartoons are all in Russian, but the dialogues aren't so necessary. The last cartoon, a tale about a tiger and a sunflower, is superb.

- L'Idée: directed by Berthold Bartosch, it's an adaptation for Frans Masereel's Die Idee. Very poetic.

- Norman McLaren short animations I, II, III. McLaren dismiss any presentations, right?

- Superman cartoons: all the superman cartoons already blogged here can be watched directly on four posts.

- The Cat Who Walked by Herself: beautiful Russian film based on Rudyard Kipling's short story "The Cat that Walked by Himself".

- The Tell-Tale Heart: a marvellous Edgar Allan Poe's based cartoon from 1953.

- Warner's Private Snafu Cartoons I and Private Snafu Cartoons II were created as educational films for the soldiers during the WWII.

- Winsor McCay animations: Animations I, Animations II and Dream of a Rarebit Fiend.

- Wladyslaw Starewicz: : short stop-motion films. Those animations are from the first two decades of the 20th century.

- Yuri Norstein's animations: a master of Russian animation. His wonderful animations are like poetry.

Posted by Bibi on September 12, 2007 07:00 AM in Animation, Blogging, Blogs, Video ||

The animator Antoine Antin studied in the renamed French Gobelins school of image and have been working with animation since 2002. His portfolio includes many drawings, some videos and films. In the last years he has been working at BiboFilms, creating short animations, feature films, commercials and series. The site contains tons of videos to watch (in Quick Time).

Antin's short animations are wonderful. Monsieur Carré is almost a fable, telling the story of a sad lonely square in the middle of a round group. It's adorable and full of sensibility, but you need of some French to understand it. Le Papillon (Butterfly), directed by Antin and Jenny Rakotomamonjy, shows the story of a samurai. The marvellous animation won many prizes in festivals.

Posted by Bibi on September 12, 2007 03:07 AM in Animation, Video ||

The 2007 Fantasy Filmfest, a German festival of science fiction, horror and thriller films, has a delightful trailer: Monster Party. I'm a huge fan of the monsters of horror films, even the bad films, and this excellent stop-motion animation has (almost) all the classic characters. I chose the shoot of my favourite, Murnau's Nosferatu.

The trailer was directed and edited by Frank Vogt, from MagnaMana. The animation was "realized by Juergen Kling, from Weirdoughmation, and by Susanna Jerger, helped by Christiane Rvmer and Daniela Smets." Watch the video at Weirdoughmation, with Flash at Videocommunity or bellow. No fat clips has four options to download the video and some interesting bonus, specially for animatiors.

Posted by Bibi on July 25, 2007 02:59 AM in Animation, Video ||

While most of directors who stayed in Germany in the 1930's and 1940's were working with the Nazi State and doing propaganda films, like Triumph of the Will, there are also few examples of those that were subverting those rules with intelligence. That is the case of Hans Fischerkoesen, also known as Hans Fischerkösen.

Fischerkoesen started working with advertising films, something he seemed perfectly suited to. After all he had an irrepressible sense of humor, a good sense of rhythm, and a charming, flexible cartoon style. During the war years he realised three amazing animations: Verwitterte Melodie (Weather-beaten Melody) in 1942, Der Schneemann (The Snowman) in 1943 and Das Dumme Gänslein (The Silly Goose) in 1944.

My first contact with his wonderful animations was through Weather-beaten Melody: it was love at first sight. It's a cheerful animation with amazing graphics in a time when there were no computers to render them. It's almost a fable who tell us to enjoy the life. William Moritz wrote a brilliant essay about Fischerkoesen: Resistance And Subversion in Animated Films of The Nazi Era: The Case of Hans Fischerkoesen. Part of it it's available at Animation World Network. An example of why I'm suggesting this reading for any one interest in animation and film history:

The opening sequence of Weather-beaten Melody (1942), his first film made under the government edict, demonstrates a bravura mastery of both the multiplane and stereo-optical processes--and a meaningful use of depth, following the flight of a bee down from the sky, through 12 layers of grass and flowers in a meadow, and circling around an abandoned phonograph which lies, puzzlingly for the bee, in the middle of the meadow. Behind this long point of view sequence is the assumption that the bee is a personage worthy of following, and in fact she turns out to be adventurous, resourceful, perceptive, talented, witty, and friendly, among other admirable, even noble "human" characteristics.

That is just a small part of a deep analysis of the three animations cited above. For better enjoying the essay, first, watch the animations on-line. They and some of Fischerkoesen's commercials are available on my video blog Videos with Bibi on the following posts: Hans Fischerkoesen's animations and Hans Fischerkoesen Vintage Ads. If you prefer, watch one by one with this list:

- Schall und Rauch (1933): watch it here. (2 min)

- Das Blaue Wunder (1935): watch it here. (3 min)

- Waardige vertegenwoordiging, also known as How the Light Came Anyway When the Sun Overslept, Vaerdig Repräsentation or Hvordan det likevel ble lyst da solen forsov seg, (1937): watch it here. (5 min)

- Scherzo - Verwitterte Melodie, also knwon as Weatherbeaten Melody (1943): watch it here. (10 min)

- Der Schneemann, also knwon as Snowman in July, The Magic Snowman or The Snowman (1943): watch it bellow or here. (13 min)

- Das Dumme Gänslein, also known as The Silly Goose (1944): watch it here. (13 min)

- Fischerkoesen Adverts - a collection of vintage German advertising films: watch it here. (69 min)

PS.: The last video with the advertising films has a strange problem with the audio, so, try it without the audio or watch just a selection of them saved in this playlist.

Posted by Bibi on July 18, 2007 07:15 PM in Animation, Video ||

The winners of AniBOOM Awards 2006 were announced weeks ago. Among the 1,700 entries from 70 countries submitted to the contest there are many so-so works and there are also some little pearls that worth the visit. A good way to start exploring the site is checking the winners:

- Beton by Ariel Belinco and Michael Faust won the prize for best drama. The day to day life of a military world is disturbed by the appearance of a black kite behind its high walls. The army annoyed by the existence of this kite in its clear blue sky, decides to solve the problem. It's brilliant.

- Chaos Theory by Conspiracy was the winner in the experimental category. "One Constant Remains." An up-tempo, high-energy journey through various representations of entropy - all compressed into a 64 kilobyte executable.

- Mr. Fortune by Eric Lerner won in the category Music Videos. It's another beautiful day in the life of Mr. Fortune, an example to us all of how to live a zen existence. With music by Ariel Einfeld, Eric Lerner used the 3D animating program Maya together with Digital Video.

- The Grand Prize went to the excellent silhouette style animation Bendito Machine by Jossie Malis. It's a modern tale about power, religion, sex and money.

- The winner for the category funny was Humans! by Three Legged Legs. I talked about it before, but it's never enough say that it's a wonderful animation.It's a 60 second global awareness PSA sensationalizing the excessive, all-consuming nature of the human being. This cute and naïve Earth stands no chance against such an insatiable parasite. Witness its utter demise in a fun and sickening kind of way.

- They had also curious category named crapy, which winner was Back In Bush!, a parody of AC/DC's "Back in Black" by Anita Drieseberg. Rock on with George Bush and lead guitarist Dickie C as they try for a record THIRD term in office! Don't underestimate it, it's really nice if you don't agree with Bush's politics.

Posted by Bibi on March 30, 2007 08:40 PM in Animation, Fun, Fun, Video ||

The Angry Alien bunnies attacked again. This time the "victim" was the last two Spider-Man films with Tobey Maguire as the main character. Maguire is good, but not so good as the bunnies that had only 30 seconds to re-enact Spiderman. As usual, it's hilarious and very well done. That's a good motivation to watch the films again and the trailer of Spider-Man 3, while you wait for it.

Posted by Bibi on March 30, 2007 01:27 PM in Animation, Cinema, Fun, Fun ||

The Austrian-American animator Max Fleischer and his brother Dave Fleischer made an amazing contribution to the history of animation. Max created the Rotoscoping process of animation, founded the Fleischer Studios with his brother and left us a wonderful group of unforgivable characters: Betty Boop, Koko the Clown, Popeye and his 1940's Superman to cartoons.

For our happiness - mine at least, almost all of his works are in the public domain and I have been posting about them since I discovered that, last year. If you missed any them, take a look at Superman Cartoons, Finding His Voice, In My Merry Oldsmobile, Now You're Talking and Betty Boop Cartoons, that was updated a week ago. I added two new cartoons to it Betty in Blunderland, the adventures of Betty Boop in Wonderland, and the unique Betty Boop's cartoon animated by Fleischer in colours,