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:

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.