The PEN Story, Olympus

This is a great stop motion piece for the Olymus pen showing a journey through time and through life. It was made from over 60,000 photo's, 9,600 prints and 1,800 phot's had to be shot again. There was no post-production which i find very impressive and very skilled.

This piece I can relate to alot. Not because of the life story but because of certain shots. For example New York, paragliding and the history of motorcycling in the family. Actually, most of it reminds me of my dad and what he has done through life. He grew up with bikes and continued using them when going through the army then swapped them for paragliding later in life before starting to get back into biking again now. The only thing that is not right is the running a marathon part because he said he would never do but who knows. I love this piece and sure he will too.

The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello

If I haven't lent this to you already and you have half an hour spare watch this. I've posted the blurb underneath as it can tell you more than i can about it but all I can say is that it is very well done and worthy of winning the BAFTA. It is a great story well written and well produced and will keep you interested. Even though it is not mentioned in the blurb, I do believe there were some Lotte Reiniger influences (such as The Adventures of Prince Achmed). Enjoy!

The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello Blurb:

Nominated for an Oscar and for a BAFTA award, Jasper Morello is a short feature made in a unique style of silhouette animation developed by director Anthony Lucas and inspired by the work of authors Edgar Alan Poe and Jules Verne. In the frontier city of Carpathia, Jasper Morello discovers that his former adversary Doctor Claude Belgon has returned from the grave. When Claude reveals that he knows the location of the ancient city of Alto Mea where the secrets of life have been discovered, Jasper cannot resist the temptation to bring his own dead wife Amelia back. But they are captured by Armand Forgette, leader of the radical Horizontalist anti-technology movement, who is determined to reanimate his terrorist father Vasco. As lightning energises the arcane machineries of life in the floating castle of Alto Mea, Jasper must choose between having his beloved restored or seeing the government of Gothia destroyed. Set in a world of iron dirigibles and steam powered computers, this gothic horror mystery tells the story of Jasper Morello, a disgraced aerial navigator who flees his Plague-ridden home on a desperate voyage to redeem himself.

Also winner of the Grand Prix award at the Annecy Animation Festival, Jasper has also won the top honours at the Canadian Film Centre's Worldwide Short Film Festival, Best Animation at Flickerfest 2005, Best Animation at the Sydney Film Festival Dendy awards and Best Animation at Toronto worldwide shorts.

300 end credits

Anyone that knows me knows that i love silhouettes and Frank Miller's Sin City. This is a good combination of the 2. This is Frank Miller's 300 end credits that is 2.5D. I like the way the camera moves through the animation. The transition between silhouettes is really cleverly put together. The camera rotates around the layers slowly revealing the 2D images. Because of the use of space the composition is really well balanced, between the black and white and the different hues.

The end credits tells the story you have just seen but it still manages to captivate the audience. This is closer to the novel and therefore shows the link between the 2. This reminds me of an animation I found that won academy award winning shorts in 2005. It is called the The Extraordinary Explorations of Jesper Morello and i will be putting up a post about that shortly.

The Beatles, Pete Candeland

This is the opening cinematics for game The Beatles™: Rock Band™ which is being released on the Sept 9th. This introduction to the game was produced by Pete Candeland who works at Passion Pictures.

Here he has managed to capture the life and the journey of the four superstars as well as putting in subliminal messages referencing to Beatle's songs and albums. He manages to take history and throw it into the 21st century by producing this modern take on a timeline. Pete has used a combination of 2D and 3D animation in this piece. The 2 dimensional work is used for a vintage 60's look towards the beginning of the animation. This then progresses into 3 dimensional animation towards the end showing how times have change and more to the point how technology and the band moved forward. Giles Martin has also managed to thread some of the Beatle's famous tracks together to produce the soundtrack to the piece. The songs are then reflected in the imagery used, showing a clear connection and a good collaboration.

The Gorillaz

You may recognise the animation style from his other pieces that have been aired all over the globe. Pete Candeland was responsible for the 8 music videos produced for the band "Gorillaz" as well as "The journey to the east" that was produced for the BBC 2008 Beijing Olympics coverage. On the Beijing project he worked with Rob Valley to produce these films that were based on the traditional Chinese folklore.

Concepts for "Journey to the far east"