Adidas - Unite All Originals

Adidas' new advert was created by SoMe, an artist I've been a huge fan of for years. His effortless animation style really struck my imagination before I knew what it really was. I remember coming home from school and seeing Kanye West's Good Life video on the music channels and just being inspired. I was mad into digital art at that age. Looking back on here I've realised I've previously wrote about SoMe, nice to know I'm consistent over the years, eh!? And also that I did teach myself to rotoscope after mentioning here that I wanted to learn, can I get a woohoo for self improvement?!
After researching the advert I discovered via digitalartsonline that there's an interactive element which can be found on Adidas' website here. The video can be controlled by human interaction, following a tutorial, you're invited to either say or type what you see, making the video react to your input. A brilliant idea from Adidas, the novelty value alone is a winner, but teamed with Run DMC, SoMe and A-Trak, anyone with an interest in sports or urban culture is going to be sucked in like fat kid in a water slide. Absolutely raging I don't have my Stan Smiths anymore - as in, I have no recollection of throwing them away, so they must be somewhere... but where!?
I'm a lover and a hater of how fashion recycles - it's always when I give up hope and get rid, that bygone era makes a come back. If Bench ever becomes fashionable again it will be a day of silence in my house. I had enough of the stuff to dress a small army and got rid of it in a de-chav wardrobe revamp a few years ago, so naturally it's bound to be the new 'it' streetwear brand any day now...

PROTEIGON

PROTEIGON from BURAYAN on Vimeo.


A stop motion, directed by Steve Braind for Parizan.
via

GIF Player

An animated gif is a digital file format where multiple images are being looped after each other, creating a short and small sized movie clip. The file type was first introduced in 1987 as a first online movie, but soon lost its function with the increasing speed of internet and the possibility to upload longer and bigger movies. The document type however has gained back some of its popularity and is even entering the field of Art today. In 1832, Jozeph Plateau, a Belgian physicist invented the phenakistiscope. The first device which was able to show a moving image and which is considered to be the pre-runner of modern cinema. The only down part however was the fact that it could only show short movie clips in a loop. An animated gif is exactly that, and after some research on Plateau’s original design, Pieterjan Grandry succeeded to build a device capable of playing animated gifs, incorporating led lights, microchips and magnetic sensors. The Gif player is a wooden box, much like a turntable, with a dimmer to adjust the speed of the animation and a small looking hole in the front.

text via.

I found this really interesting that people were still revisiting the now more or less defunct GIF, which seems to only have a life span on blogging sites such as tumblr. It's inspirational to see such simple things being given a new creative twist. I could imagine this kind of technique used on a much larger scale for cheap and effective advertising, for example on billboards, parts of the image could move, or even the moving photographs which became popular on the internet in which really slight things move, like a skirt blowing in the wind. I could see myself looking twice if I thought I saw a static billboard move out of the corner of my eye.

Jonas & Francois

This video was created by Jonas & François, who also directed the music video's for Justices - D.A.N.C.E. and Kanye West - The Good Life. Every video clip they made feature original creative ideas and incorporate a fluid, natural element which makes them seem like they've just leaped straight from their minds and come to life. I admire this a lot. The graffiti inspired fonts and style of the video's always works so well, each song is obviously thought about, the style never feels forced.

WHP Idents

WHP 10 ROOFTOP from Chris Cairns on Vimeo.
One of a series of animations for www.thewarehouseproject.com 2010 in Manchester

Produced by the irrepressible Bonnie Anthony

Post by www.rossmcdowell.co.uk

Many thanks to Sam and Sacha, Paul, Cadi and Andy, Tim, JC, Nick and the gang

Music: Beauty by Silkie

WHP 10 STEPS from Chris Cairns on Vimeo.
One of a series of animations for www.thewarehouseproject.com 2010 in Manchester

Produced by the irrepressible Bonnie Anthony

Post by www.rossmcdowell.co.uk

Many thanks to Sam and Sacha, Paul, Cadi and Andy, Tim, JC, Nick and the gang

Music: 16bit

WHP 10 CASTLEFIELD from Chris Cairns on Vimeo.
One of a series of animations for www.thewarehouseproject.com 2010 in Manchester

Produced by the irrepressible Bonnie Anthony

Post by www.rossmcdowell.co.uk

Many thanks to Sam and Sacha, Paul, Cadi and Andy, Tim, JC, Nick and the gang

Music: Uranium by Radioactive Man

Andy Martin

Dry Fish from Andy Martin on Vimeo.

This clip is alot more than it seems when you first watch it. I came across the blog of Andy Martin, the creator of the piece. On it he's wrote about the whole creative process which went into it. He began by sketching out different characters and expressions as an experiment but then began developing it more. You can see some of the sketches below.

In the blog he also talks about his process, which consists of using photoshop to edit the sketches and then using after effects to sequence them. I find it really interesting to find out how people work, sometimes its more helpful than reading a step by step tutorial, it gives you the insight you need without telling you what to create. You can read the full write up here.

Bruno Dicolla - Return as an Animal

Return as an Animal from Bruno Dicolla on Vimeo.

Shortmovie about the myth of the eternal return of life after death.

Animation

Wellllllllll, I bought some materials for my animation yesterday, different coloured A3 paper, in blue, pink, green, yellow and orange. Hopefully today one of my flatmates will stick around for the full day so I can build my contraption around them, I had more ideas of someone on the phone and the conversation floating out in speech bubbles, or at least one saying "blah blah blah" so as the paper is worming around them they're "wrapped up in coversation" I'm unsure of which way I'm gonna go with this, hopefully i'll have enough paper left to create a paper mural on the wall too cause I really like that idea. I created a white board animation the other day too, which I'll try to upload but I need to edit it in premiere first before I can.

Animation, initial ideas

Well I've been really looking forward to my animation project, and I've had a few different ideas about what I want to do for it. Mainly I want to do something relating to music, wether it be a music video or just moving in time to the beat of a song. As far as what I want to do within the video I want to do something quite elaborate, at the moment I've mostly been focusing on ideas and in the next two weeks I'd like to start making mini animations. I found this music video for Simian Mobile Disco - 10000 Horses can't be wrong



which although I don't really like the song, I think that the way the lights used move with the music. So with that as kind of a starting point it gave me a few ideas to use whiteboards and have something morph with the music like this video...



but again I would like to use photography in my work too to include the interaction with people, so I'm thinking that I might do some animations on both whiteboard and using photo's then morph them together using photoshop to get some interesting effects, cause like the Nabil Elderkin video I've included before in which the pictures mash together I think that this could be easy and interesting to use in my stop motion cause I could have two narratives going on at the same time and working together.

I've had tooooooo many ideas really and I can't jot them fast enough haha..

Was also thinking of using cardboard and telling a story using illustration on cardboard then crushing the card and taking photos as I do that, then running it backwards and have it rebuild into something else.

Another thing I would like to experiment with in this project is viewpoints, there are so many interesting things you can do with having a strange angle, or moving around as the subject you're photographing is moving.

Also colour, I want to include lots of colour in my work, and possibly editing over images in photoshop by drawing on them.

Lots of ideas, hopefully I'll get an end result that I'm happy with. I need to start thinking about what I want to photograph, the stop motion we did in the first week was good cause we worked in groups and everyone had a bit of a say which gave really random, quirky ideas. Thats the way I enjoy getting ideas for stuff like this cause you can get other peoples opinions in the early stages and it helps you to develop your own from there.

Research, exisiting stop motion

Intervelometer from Kunal Sen on Vimeo.
I found this stop motion through another art blog and really liked the way that they used different times of day and perspex to create interaction between characters and the surroundings. The group which created this posted this statement about what inspired them -

We picked ‘Human’, ‘Wild Card’ (which gave us freedom to do what we wanted!) and a music track (which we had to use somewhere in the film).
‘Intervelometer’ attempts to explore the essence of animation (for us!)- Persistence of vision, light, human form and time. The film also pays tribute to Eadweard Muybridge, an iconic figure in both- Photography and Animation.

I also looked into Eadweard Muybridge to find that he was the creator of the zoopraxiscope, and also a pioneer in stop motion, his techniques are still being used today.

Also found this -



which when I watched at first I thought that the guy had just run it backwards, then I realised that you can see each wet line from the previous drawing, so I'm guessing he actually wiped it down each time..which then made me think EFFORRRRRRRT but it does give a really good effect

First blog :)

I expect to learn how to use more than just photoshop :|

I want to go into music video editing.. like this :)