Wanted to put the spotlight this morning on two young animation filmmakers whose work has caught my attention and who I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more from in the future.

Irene Kotlarz, the director of the upcoming Platform Animation Festival introduced me to the work of Miwa Matreyek, a recent grad out of the CalArts Experimental Animation program whose films combine CG, illustration, live-action and live performance. There’s the sense of a well-formed artistic voice throughout her films, which is uncommon among younger filmmakers. Her work can be viewed at SemiHemisphere.com. Be sure to check out the “Digitopia” video.

Moving on, a few months back I posted a link to a rather experimental bit of CG called RGBXYZ. At the time, I didn’t know who had produced the shorts. It turns out that the filmmaker is David O’Reilly from Ireland. More of his work can be seen at DavidOReilly.com. It’s always exciting to see somebody taking CG into a more stylized direction, especially when they’re as fearlessly experimental as OReilly has shown himself to be. He has a digital short called WOFL which has some fascinating compositional ideas and camera moves. I was also surprised to find out that he did the animation for Shynola’s Beck music video “E-Pro,” which is also posted on his site.