A music video for the track “Throw Me to the Rats” by the Tom Fun Orchestra. It’s directed by Alasdair Brotherston and designed by Jock Mooney, out of the UK’s Trunk Animation. I dig the quirky, humorous illustrations and choppy movement. Digital puppetry via AfterEffects and Flash is dime-a-dozen, but there’s a real energy and spontaneity when it’s created in the real world like this video. Brotherston explained in an interview:

“I had a good idea that I wanted to make a puppet theatre and film the action live in an effort to break from the perfectionism of digital animation that I was beginning to find a bit prescriptive and unspontaneous. I then decided to recruit an artist I knew from my time at Edinburgh College of Art called Jock Mooney as I knew that his illustration would be perfect for this job. He also brought some great ideas and a slightly perverted sense of humour as well as a spare room in which to do the shoot.

“The shoot itself turned out to be a bit of a nightmare and what had planned to be a fairly straightforward operation with most of the action caught in camera on set ended with myself and Jock setting up a green screen in his room and working puppets that were being held in place by jacket potatoes. Although it seems funny now, I distinctly remember being not that pleased at being holed up in a small room with blacked out windows, surrounded by several halogen lights on the hottest week of the year.”

CREDITS
Director:Alasdair Brotherston
Art Director: Jock Mooney
Producer: Shot On Site Media
Compositer: Dylan White
Puppeteers: Jenni Nylander, Natalie Ryde

This is a pretty incredible music video directed by UK’s Shynola, for Coldplay’s latest release, Strawberry Swing. It looks even better in High Def.

(Thanks, William Skaleski)

David OReilly is a name that requires little introduction on the Brew. His new video for U2’s “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” is a visual stunner. It was created in collaboration with designer Jon Klassen.

I’m a big fan of Weird Al Yankovic… and I’m digging his latest video, designed and directed by Divya Srinivasan. Read the lyrics here.

And cheer up Skipper Dan, John Lasseter started on the Jungle Cruise ride.

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A couple months back, I offered praise for Nullsleep’s music video “Dirty Rom Dance” directed by Plasticflesh (aka Stieg Retlin). Pleased to report that it’s now online. Retlin applies the visual tropes of 8-bit style graphics and glitch textures towards the creation of an energetic, propulsive piece of animation storytelling. It’s refreshing to see an honest expression in digital animation that isn’t rooted in traditional animation conventions.

London-based animator Murray John (check his very-cool reel) sent us his latest music video, created for musician Luke Jackson. below. Says John:

“I set out to capture the bitter sweetness of London life, using urban sketchy drawings on walls. All the stop motion photos were taken around London, and I added the drawn 2-D animation using After Effects.”

Love the song, love the video…

Your favorite animated music video for the next five minutes: Birdy Nam Nam’s “The Parachute Ending” directed by Steve Scott and illustrated by Will Sweeney. There’s a healthy dose of René Laloux and Moebius mixed in there, but the overall results are fresh and fun. According to Scott, it was influenced by Laloux’s Planet Sauvage, bad 80s kids cartoons, Metal Hurlant, Nausicaa and Prog Rock album covers. It was created over four weeks in Flash and AfterEffects.

Crew credits are:
James Littlemore - Editor / Compositor
Geoff McDowall - Animator
Ed Willmore - Animator
Roland Edwards - Animator
Dele Nuga - Digital Painter

(Thanks, Christy Karacas and Chris McD)

MGMT released a new music video tonight for their song “Kids” (directed by Ray Tintori). There’s only about a minute of animation in the video, but it’s one damn solid and creative minute. The animation was directed by Superjail co-creator Christy Karacas, and the animators on the piece were Karacas, Lizzi Akana and Henry Thurlow. The animation on the last shot is nuts! I want to frame-by-frame all that trippy goodness.