Robbert Bobbert is a character and album created by Robert Schneider of The Apples in Stereo. The new music video, We R Super Heroes, was directed by Puny Entertainment. Super Hero Guest Artists include: Jordan Crane (The Clouds Above, NON, Uptight), Gene Ha (Top 10, The Fourty Niners. DC Cover Artist), Craig McCracken (Powerpuff Girls, Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends), Chris McDonnell (Meat Haus, Vice Comics), Mark Todd (Whatcha Mean, What’s a Zine?) and Todd Webb (Tuesday Moon, Nickelodeon Magazine).

Among the many fine people I met at the Fredrikstad Animation Festival in Norway last year was stop motion artist Jan Rune Blom. He promised to send me a link to this music video for singer Helene Bøksle when he was done with it. He didn’t let me down.

After the singer was filmed, the stills were transferred onto paper, cut out, and shot as stop motion. He tells me:

There are no digital effects or digital post production on the piece. Everything was shot on a Canon 300D SLR camera, and all pictures were imported into Final Cut for editing.I really like working with a lot of analog details and solutions. And I like the “analog feeling” of the end product. My brother Tor Harald Blom made the original 2D illustrations of trees and animals. Everything else I did myself. I spent like seven to eight months working on this.

These behind-the-scene pics on Jan’s blog give a hint of the painstaking work that went into making this piece. The results are lovely.

Incredible eye candy in this new animated music video by Watermark, an illustrator’s collective based in New Zealand and Australia. With only 8 weeks from start to finish, they created a music video for Greg Johnson’s song I Got Opinions utilizing the creative talents of eight different illustrators and their distinct styles. You can see a hi-def clip on the Watermark homepage, and check out the production blog with storyboards, pre viz and stills, as well as the animators credits here.

(Thanks, Dave Follett)

“My Favorite Way” is a colorful and visually inventive video for Black Drawing Chalks directed by Marck Al at the Brazilian studio Nitrocorpz. Virgilio Vasconcelos, who was responsible for the CG animation, has posted some interesting ‘making of’ footage and production details on his blog. In his email, Virgilio also told me that two of the band members animated on the project.

CREDITS
Production: Nitrocorpz / Bicleta sem Freio
Direction: Marck Al
Dir.Photography: Jovan de Melo
Illustrations: Douglas Castro, Victor Rocha, Jovan de Melo
2D Animation: Douglas Castro, Victor Rocha, Jovan de Melo
3D modelling: Virgilio Vasconcelos
3D animation: Virgilio Vasconcelos
Aditional animations: Suryara Bernardi, Daryn Wakasa
Composition: Victor Rocha, Marck Al

What do you think? I much prefer this imaginative fan made video by Gabe Askew (below) over the official, professionally produced one posted on You Tube.

(via Motionographer)

Great-looking experimental music video for The Fiery Furnaces’ song “Charmaine Champagne.” It was directed by Phillip Niemeyer of Brooklyn-based Double Triple. Niemeyer writes:

It’s stop motion, and it builds on a lot of things we were just discovering when we did the Spoon video. Mike Reddy, illustrator for all of the Furnaces’ records is responsible for most of the art. We shot most everything on an art store light table. We photocopied many of these assets onto office transparencies. All the color comes from either paint, markers or silkscreen. The band was photographed and these were assembled into stop motion loops — no video. No digital motion — we wanted that janky look, even on the pans. We took some process photos and posted them here.

CREDITS
Director: Phillip Niemeyer of Double Triple
Artwork: Mike Reddy
Additional artwork (action painting): Hannah Cole
Animation: Phillip Niemeyer, Alex Marie Egan, Mike Reddy, Jeremiah Dickey, Christine Nguyen
Photography: Phillip Niemeyer and Ethan Finkelstein

Here’s a clever music video, animated by Greg Condon for the rock band Choo Choo la Rouge, using post-it note pads as flipbooks.

Here’s a new music video from JibJab and Weird Al Yankovic in tribute to the star of Uncle Croc’s Block, the late great Charles Nelson Reilly: