Adam Swaab - SHOWREEl 2012

SWAAB - great showreel from 2012

Macro Christmas - Neon

An interesting piece and making of, by Neon

It's nice to see a unique take on the traditional Christmas short.

Definately worth a watch, click through to view the making of section.

MTV Summer by MIRARI & CO.

It's extremely cold outside, lets think warmer with this smooth summery spot for MTV.

Produced by Mirari & Co

I love the colour grade on this!

I think its also worth posting their 2012 Reel here too, a good use of colour and visual simplicity throughout.

Motion Design Studios

I  used to love the "cream of the crop" list available on Motionographer, but understandably they were getting fed up constantly updating and maintaining their lists, and were being constantly badgered with requests for inclusion into the crop.

Having said that, I loved to use the list to "bookmark" if you like, the main studios and keep up-to-date with the latest and greatest. A great source of inspiration and development.

So, I thought I would build my own list;

WOW - Martyn Ashton, skills on a road bike!

Check this guy out,

Skills on a ROAD BIKE!!!!

Thanks to +Andrea Kuszewsk

Prometheus VFX breakdown - MPC

This MPC breakdown takes us into how they created the alien planet, space environments, alien space-crafts, an explosive crash scene sequence.

SPOILER ALERT! - like you haven't seen this already though!
 

TRAILER - Skyfall

Well, Happy James Bond Day Everyone. Skyfall their latest offering enters the public domain in about 2 weeks.

Released October 26th 2012.

SHORT - La mano de Nefertiti

Really cute (well polished) short by a Spanish outfit El Señor Studio specialising in character based animation.

The animation is fluid, and pacy. This allows the viewer the opportunity to understand the piece irrespective of the audio (Spanish!).

Beautiful rendering too, really vibrant, toy-like colours in the short.

Skyrim Cops

Classic bit of Machinima story making here!

Skyrim offers a great platform for this due to the shear size and complexity of the game. I think we are gonna start to see a lot more of this as games become more environmental and expansive. Hat tip to the Source Film maker software, playing of the back of the borderlands / Valve game engine.

Cadbury Olympic Idents - by Piranha Bar

These are lovely, I love the simple fluidity of the movement, indicative of the actions driven the particle streams. The colours are perfect!

REEL - Charlie CO 2012

This is  a tidy American reel, great collection of work from Charlie CO.

Sponsored By.....

I guess those who don't know me personally would think me a fairly tolerant, happy go lucky individual, but......

.....its when I experience: situations, corporations, associations, and of course individuals, making stupid decisions based on corporate affiliation or responsibility that enters into my professional domain that I jump up - throw my dummy out of the pram and yell (pointlessly) at the monitor in amazement and disgust.

SIGGRAPH 2012 : Emerging Technologies

As usual, here are the teaser videos for the Siggraph 2012 conference in August.

Looks to be some really interesting developments this year, can't wait!

SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies presents adventurous robotic experiments, pre-production prototypes of glasses-free 3D displays, speculative plant-based interfaces, force-feedback haptic displays, and other futuristic systems, all available for hands-on interactions. Experience the latest systems before they become hot topics in mainstream media and blogs at SIGGRAPH 2012, 5-9 August in Los Angeles, California

SHORT - Rosette

Winner of the WTF prize at this years awards, this project Rosette by Romain Borrel, Gaël Falzowski, Benjamin Rabaste, and Vincent Tonelli at Supinfcom is France, tells the tale of a woman whose love affair with her butcher leads to a very carnal exploration of the joys of meat, it probably isn’t safe for work. But it is very funny!

It has the feeling of something with a "JAMES BOND" abstraction crossed with a pure fascination with all things Pork?!?!?

This is brilliant non-the-less.

SHORT - Sascha Geddert for FMX 2012

This is a trailer for his latest Short film shown as the intro to FMX 2012. The Short looks amazing!

In the vastness of space, there’s a a small speck of rock inhabited by the most peculiar lifeforms: Dark little dots that start to replicate fast and begin to show signs of intelligence. „Globosome“ tells the story of the rise and fall of these little creatures.
This film is inspired by the special times we’re living through on our own planet. We're at the crossroads. The question is what makes humans actually different from bacteria in a petri dish. Surely we have culture, science and art but what does remain of these achievements if you look at our world from a global perspective. The Film will be released in Summer 2012.

 

BBC EURO 2012 - Titles (Framestore)

Well, I know this is a little late to the mark on this, but the Euro's finished in glorious fashion last night with Spain taking the title once again, and its time to look back and reflect on some of the tech, content and footage from this years competition. Its gonna be a big year for Sport, it certainly has been for us so far, but it has been for everyone else in the industry too. We are starting to see the fruits of everyone's labour's over the past 3-6 months now being used in broadcast. First up is the charming title Sequence from the BBC. Their opening titles shows a stylistic view of an "EPIC" battle preparing to commence. The flags and emblems from all the competing countries animate on in a huge stand-off around some stylised "Eastern European mountainous backdrops"

Well, I love it. They have not tried to go too far, or too real, they have found the perfect balance between character and style.

"Gratulacje"

 

SHORT - Agni's Philosophy FINAL FANTASY

WOW, this is a fantastic REALTIME experiment from Square ENIX studio and Luminous Studio in Japan, shown this year at E3 2012.

This piece was developed as a Tech demo to explore the capabilities of the much anticipated "next gen" consoles to be released next year.

"The LUMINOUS STUDIO game engine aims to bring about greater productivity within game production teams, while simultaneously offering an environment to create games of fantastic quality. Furthermore, the LUMINOUS STUDIO game engine is planned to support game consoles, PC, smartphones, and the web, encapsulating the many platforms of the next generation of quality.

AGNI'S PHILOSOPHY showcases the level of quality that Square Enix is aiming for in next generation games.

Syndrome Reel - 2012

A really nice reel, from this LA firm - there specialise in music genre combining a good collection of both live action, CG, and VFX disaplines seen across their work for the past 5-6 years.

SHORT - Blik by Polder Animation

"A young boy moves to a new neighbourhood and falls in love for the first time, with the much older girl next door."

A lovely story, told with great, simple visuals. The viewer is really taken on the journey of discovery by the younger character. Well done Polder Animation.

Cocaine Unwrapped by Platige Image

Platige Image has released there latest personal project, "Cocaine Unwrapped" an anti-drug social campaign created by Leo Burnett London and produced by Stink. 

The goal of the campaign is to raise awareness of the impact that cocaine production has on people across the world.