"The Snow Queen" trailer
"Arrietty" Will Be Ghibli's Biggest US Release Yet
How Much is a Ward Kimball Painting Worth?
Ricky Garduno, RIP
Follow @CartoonBrew on Twitter
YouTube
Vimeo
RSS
Follow Cartoon Brew on Facebook
|
|
|
|
TAG FOR “Shorts”Cartoon Brew's home for up-to-the-minute, unedited announcements and press releases direct from industry sources.
October 7, 2010 1:51 pm
Colored pencils, cut-outs, and graphite pencil are eloquently blended in Indians. The folk art mixed-media approach does a nice job of evoking warm autumnal feelings. It was made by Louise Cailliez at ESAAT, a French school in Roubaix. (Thanks, Jipé) 3 Comments » posted in Shorts, Student, cut-out, France, Louise Cailliez 
October 7, 2010 4:04 am
Stand-Up (2008) by Joseph Pierce made a strong impression on me when I saw it at Annecy a couple years ago. Since then, I’ve searched every so often to see if Joseph had posted the film on-line, and he’s finally made it available. I’m happy to report that Stand-Up holds up and then some. This was Pierce’s graduation film produced at the UK’s National Film & Television School, and since then he’s gone on to direct the short film A Family Portrait, which won the Grand Prize at the Stuttgart animation festival earlier this year. As a generality, rotoscoped animation doesn’t do much for me. It mostly leaves me scratching my head and wondering why did they even bother to animate it in the first place. Animation can be (and should strive to be) much more than a watered-down impersonation of reality. Pierce gets that, and uses roto as a means to an end. The quirky visual style of Stand-Up is exhilarating, as is the way that Pierce’s creative animation weaves in and out of the underlying roto. The main character’s agitated graphic transformations push far beyond the live-action source, illustrating both narrative and psychological aspects of the unsettling story. The story itself, loosely structured but thoughtful, is a look into the world of a boozing stand-up who uses his routine to make a startling confession. The inherent ‘creep’ factor that is an annoying by-product of the rotoscope process actually feeds into the film’s style and makes the comedian’s tale that much more disturbing. It all adds up to a short film that you won’t forget anytime soon. Watch Joseph Pierce’s Stand-Up. (Thank you, Celia Bullwinkel, for the link) 9 Comments » posted in Shorts, Student, Joseph Pierce, Rotoscope, UK
October 6, 2010 7:01 pm
The Eagleman Stag is a new short by 26-year-old London-based animator Mike Please, who is a graduate of Royal College of Art. It has some nice translucency and film grain effects that lend the computer animation a handmade feel. Oh wait, it’s not computer animation: This trailer had me totally fooled when I saw it. By paring down his stop motion models to their rawest element—unpainted foam—Mike achieves strikingly distinctive look. A few months ago, I purchased a hot wire foam sculpting tool on a whim, so intrigued was I by the device after watching a live demonstration. I’m even more fascinated by the possibilities of foam after watching this trailer. 10 Comments » posted in Shorts, Stop Motion, Michael Please, The Eagleman Stag, UK
September 30, 2010 1:19 pm
Above you’ll find the trailer for Nine Nation Animation, a theatrical compilation of nine indie animated shorts that opened yesterday in Manhattan at the IFC Center (323 6th Ave. at West 3rd St). It’ll be playing a one-week engagement with multiple showings a day. The show was reviewed by the NY Times and Slant Magazine. Having seen most of the shorts myself, I concur with the positive reviews and encourage readers to check it out. The shorts in the program are: Deconstruction Workers by Kajsa Naess (Norway) The distributor is World According to Shorts, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing short films to broader US audiences. Over the next couple months, Nine Nation Animation will also screen at the Cable Car Cinema in Providence, RI; Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas; Detroit Institute of the Arts; George Eastman House in Rochester, NY; and Cornell Cinema in Ithaca, NY. For a regularly updated list of playdates, visit the film distributor’s website. No Comments » posted in Shorts, Nine Nation Animation
September 30, 2010 12:30 am
Great animated films can be created anywhere. Case in point: this inventive 13-minute cut-out-style short, animated, illustrated and directed by Iranian Azadeh Moezzi. Azadeh, a professional animator, illustrator and painter, recently created her first film as director, co-producing in collaboration with Tehran’s Documentary and Experimental Film Center, DEFC). The full short is online on animacam.tv (on the “Watch Videos” page of their online animation festival). The trailer is posted the below. 4 Comments » posted in Shorts, Azadeh Moezzi, Iran
September 24, 2010 8:51 am
When I bumped into Stephen Neary a couple nights ago, he told me about his new animated piece “Toxie” which debuted on NPR.org this morning and can be seen here. Produced for the show “Planet Money,” Toxie reenvisions a toxic asset as a cute but destructive pet creature. Stephen directed and animated, and Connie Li Chan provided assistant animation and backgrounds. The piece communicates a difficult concept quite effectively, and there’s some really nice character animation to boot—an impressive accomplishment especially considering their turnaround time was just three weeks. 8 Comments » posted in Flash, Shorts, Connie Li Chan, Stephen Neary
September 24, 2010 4:27 am
This is the trailer for The Experience, a Jimi Hendrix-themed short that was produced to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of his death this year:
The combination stop-motion, live-action and CG short was made by the French collective Pirates Pépères whose twelve members have an average age of 22. Like Nina Paley and her film Sita Sings the Blues, these guys made their animated film without bothering to license the music. Now they’re trying to raise $6,700 to license Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” from Experience Hendrix, the company that manages his musical estate. Afterwards they plan to release the film on-line. 4 Comments » posted in Shorts, Stop Motion, The Experience
September 24, 2010 2:17 am
The first time we wrote about Kirsten Lepore, she was studying at Maryland Institute College of Art where she’d made an inventive hand-drawn short called Story from North America. Now she’s a grad student in the experimental program at CalArts, and she’s turning out some top-notch work. Bottle is the story of an unlikely friendship between a clump of sand and a pile of snow—a far more engaging concept than it may sound and the type of story that can only be told through animation. Kirsten uses stop motion to create a believably bittersweet fantasy within the natural outdoors, and her masterful storytelling has the ability to make us both smile and reach for a box of tissues. If the heartwrenching final shot of the film is too much, here’s a brilliant and funny bit of animation she did that’ll cheer you up. |
ADVERTISEMENTS
EVENTS
RECENT BREW TV EPISODES By Sitji Chou. A man tries to understand the futility of creating human connections when they’ve been impeded by the microcosmic void between material particles.  By Nikolas Ilic. A story of a Scottish sheep farmer who shears his sheep and tosses them cliff side…  By Dylan Hayes. Lesson 1: Everyone gambles, not everyone loses. Lesson 2: The world is full of traps. Lesson 3: You cannot win if you don’t take risks.  By Jean Yi. A personal and humorous exploration of being the ‘Nice Girl’ and coming to terms with the label and all its different meanings.  By Ferg Brennan. A lonely fisherman catches an unusual fish, which he decides to keep as a pet. |
