Tamás Patrovits (aka “Patro”) is a 40 year-old Hungarian animator and illustrator - and also the president of ASIFA Hungary. Six months ago he started an online Flash cartoon series for one of Hungary’s biggest news sites. Says Patro:
I make these alone, sometimes with a musician. All the shorts are made in 5-10 days, and are about our Hungarian public life and political bullshit - created with with old-style graphic design mixed with Flash animation. The series becomes more popular every month. Please take a look my blog site. Unfortunately its in Hungarian, but I plan English subtitles in the future.
If you enjoyed this one, here are 9 reasons not to ride a bike in Hungary.
Bio-Bak is the wacky and inventive Flash portfolio site of Dutch artist Coen Grift. It’s packed with bits of animation, sound effects and puzzles. I spent at least half an hour navigating the interactive playground that Grift has set up and enjoyed every moment of it.
(via Waxy)
“Inside a Boy” is a fresh-looking music video for the group My Brightest Diamond. It’s directed by Spanish artist Rafa Toro. He says that he made it “with a tight schedule (barely a month and a half) and low budget (I made every step of the production, including design, animation, editing, etc…).” The illustrations in this vid are a treat for the eyes and the real highlight of the piece. This is Toro’s first major freelance animation assignment and I hope it’s not the last.
Warner Bros. Motion Comics division has created new series of Peanuts Animated Comics to bring a group of Charles Schulz comic strips to life. They are now available through Apple’s iTunes Store. Here’s a sample:
If you need a hit of old-school Charlie Brown, here are several suggestions: 1. Check the Brew TV episode we posted last week. 2. Slate posted a nostalgic article on the DVD re-issue of the Peanuts holiday specials. 3. The Slate article also includes a link to a 1985 Peanuts documentary posted on YouTube.
(Thanks, Alex Rannie and Variety’s Hal Blog)
To teach himself Flash CS3, Russell made a fan video for the song “Water Curses” by Animal Collective. The result is a fun-to-watch piece of abstract animation. He writes in the video’s online description:
I started making this in an attempt to learn Flash CS3. There are two basic layers in this animation, a flash layer at 24fps, and a stop motion powdered charcoal layer at 12fps. They are mixed together in nifty ways with After Effects. I started to get a hang of things in the second half of the video, so, sorry if the first half isn’t as interesting.
There are more details about the making of the video posted on his blog Music to Video.
Animator David Essman posted this piece he animated on the Cartoon Brew Facebook group. The humorously animated film pokes fun at “liberal Democrats’ fantasies of how an Obama Administration would instantly change things for the better.” It was written and designed by political cartoonist Ted Rall.
It’s Labor Day in the United States. I’m still at Cinecon. What better way to spend a holiday than with the latest from that looney luchador from Ecuador (who just moved to Toronto), Makinita (aka Andres Silva):
Fran Krause created the signal film for this year’s Rooftop Films screening series. It’s animated nicely in Flash.
