» I, pet goat II by Heliofant

It's name comes from the short story George W. Bush was reading along, on the morning of September 11 of 2001, with a group of schoolchildren at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota County, Florida. "The Pet Goat" from the book Reading Mastery II: Storybook 1 by Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner. 

This great short film is a "surreal" symbol orchestra on today's human condition. It’s packed with symbols of spiritual, philosophical and conspiracy matters remixed with our recent history and culture. The story is less of a narrative and more like an interpretive dance on America’s war on terror, religious fundamentalism, militarism, totalitarianism, deceitful media, exploitation, etc. If you are interested in a brief description of some characters you can visit the gallery section in Heliofant's site. 

Motion capture was used for about half the animation adding a much needed real touch to the surrealism and it's theatrical staging.

Heliofant is a new animation studio based in Montreal.

"HELIOFANT IS A NASCENT INDEPENDENT COMPUTER ANIMATION STUDIO FOCUSED ON CREATING EXPERIMENTAL AND CHALLENGING CONTENT. BRINGING TOGETHER ARTISTS FROM THE FIELDS OF DANCE, MUSIC, COMPUTER ANIMATION AND VISUAL ARTS, THE COMPANY IS VERY INTERESTED IN EXPLORING THE COMMON GROUND THAT UNDERLIES MANY SPIRITUAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITIONS IN A LYRICAL FORM."

The great driving score was created by Tanuki Project.

» Martin Allais, Pilot Evolution

I tried to find more info about Martin Allais but there is no much data about him in his site or in the web, it's not clear if he is from Spain or Venezuela, or where did he study, but he is definitely a good director. He is represented by Boolab. 

This is a campaign promoting Pilot brand’s latest models, the Frixion, whose main feature is that it lets you both write and erase.

» Xaver Xylophon and Laura Junger, Joy Of Destruction

"Joy Of Destruction" it's a film about the human drive to destroy and the entertaining value that's attached to it. It was made using paper collages and stop motion.
Xaver Xylophon, 25, studied Visual Comunication at KHB Berlin Weißensee, he did a 10 week internship at Foreign Office, one of my favorite studios. Now he is releasing this great piece with Laura Junger, 25, a  bachelor from La Cambre in Brussels, a visual arts school.

» Cédric Blaisbois, NSFW

Cédric Blaisbois is a director and producer based in France. He works with Partizan, an award winning production company with offices in London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, Shanghai and Mumbai. The amazing thing, besides the raw, gore and violent images, is that he also did the vfx. I know that the night vision effect helps to cover some stuff, but the edition and vfx are really cool and well done. This music video for Huoratron´s track "Corporate Occult", under Last gang Records tells the story of an after hours drunken one night stand that becomes a blood feast soul massacre. Maybe a great analogy.

» The Animation Workshop, Mighty Antlers

Mighty Antlers is a bachelor film project from The Animation Workshop, a school in Denmark, with strong reputation due to the top education they provide for the international industry. This short film was created by Sune Reinhardt, Mikael Ilnæs, Michael L. Fonsholt and Jouko Keskitalo. The story is great and the images are carefully treated; lighting, textures, characters, animation, environment, etc., are all packed and styled together, awesome job from this students. There is a making off here.

» Field, Muse

Field is a studio for digital art and graphic design based in London. Led by Marcus Wendt and Vera-Maria Glahn. Their projects take shape in illustration and animation, interactive installations and realtime generative visuals. Field has created work for global brands and cultural institutions, while their experimental films and installations have been shown at festivals and galleries around Europe and in the U.S. This experimental short film, "Muse", was commissioned by Netfilmmakers gallery. Their concept is based on how inspiration is now digitally delivered or acquired by taking a deep breath under the vast digital ocean of data and information, at least is what I understood, and that it's know a whole different process to filter such data and reflect its input. Beautifully done. Soundtrack by David Kamp. Chect out this other video in which they used mocap to create a digital choreography here, making of here.

» Andrei Muratov, GTLK

Andrey Muratov is a director and prodcuer based in Moscow, Russia. There is no much info about him out there, except hi runs a company named Proxell. He made this piece for Gosudarstvennaya Transportnaya Lizingovaya Kompaniya, a finacial company in Moscow. He directed and produced it, the sound was made by Nebulo. The images are quite rythmic and beautiful, sure he's talented.

» The Thomas Beale Cipher by Andrew S. Allen

I watched this film a couple of months ago and I wanted post it immediately but I waited and researched more about the story behind it. The story says that a group of men came across with a treasure while on expedition in New Mexico, and they buried it in Virginia. One of them, named Thomas Beale, left three cipher texts with a friend, who forgets about it for more than 20 years. One day realizing that Thomas is not coming back, he opens the box and tries to solve the ciphers. Being unable to, he passes along the texts to a friend, James Beverly Ward, who cracks one of the three ciphers, but not the one that actually gives the precise location of the treasure. More than a hundred years go by, and no one had been able to solve the remaining two ciphers texts, if it exists, may still be out there, buried in Virginia. Everything now known about the Beale Cipher is based on a single text, published by Ward and submitted to the Library of Congress in 1885. The first cipher text allegedly describes the location of the treasure. The second text, the only one deciphered, explains what the treasure is, and the third supposedly details the names of the people that should get the treasure. Some people say that it´s all a hoax perpetrated by Ward, but the tale of the Beale ciphers, as I found on the web, continues to intrigue codebreakers and treasure hunters. Also, there is a Cheyenne legend dating from around 1820 which tells of gold and silver being taken from the West and buried in Eastern Mountains.

About Andrew S. Allen and the film aesthetics, he has embedded ciphers of his own in the film, there are 16 hidden messages, that´s kind of a interesting thing to do if you are already immerse in this story of mystery and riddles. He used a combination of old school hand drawn design and rotoscoping with fabric and paper textures. The look is simple and elegant, perfect for the story, it won numerous film festival awards. Check out the website here.

» Clemens Wirth, Macro Kingdoms

Clemens Wirth, Salzburg, Austria, is a multimedia art student at the University of Applied Sciences FH-Salzburg. He created this videos playing and exploring with a MP-E 65mm Canon lens, Macro Kingdom I, II and III are visual ongoing poems showing us the unseen micro world.

» Cultural democracy or mediocrity? PressPausePlay Trailer

"PressPausePlay, a film about fear, hope and digital culture". The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent of people in an unprecedented way, unleashing unlimited creative opportunities. But does democratized culture mean better art, film, music and literature or is true talent instead flooded and drowned in the vast digital ocean of mass culture? Is it cultural democracy or mediocrity? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with influential creators of the digital era. To name a few interviewees, Ted Schilowitz, founder, Red Digital Cinema Camera Company, Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, Scott Belsky, CEO & founder, Behance. The film was shot globally between August 2009 – January 2011, covering more than 150 hours of interview footage with international creatives and thinkers - representing the state of digitized culture today.

» 360 music video, "Are We" by Craig Wedren, directed by Tim Nackashi

Former "Shudder to Think" frontman Craig Wedren has released a new solo album, "Wand", which doubles as an 360 interactive film directed by Tim Nackashi. This is not the first 360 music video ever made, the Black Eyed Peas released an Iphone and Ipad app to watch it but you had to pay for it (I guess they just don't have enough money yet). Nackashi says that he wanted to do something more multifaceted than the typical music visual experience, he wanted to conjure the surreal qualities of the 70s rock films with the technological amenities we have today, so he shot this 360 degrees video that allows viewers/listeners to choose their own perspective of each scene. He says he used his dslr to do some tests first, he stitched 15 frames per second all around (we techy geek visual guys call that spherical projections) and got a clue how he must do it, I guess the entire video is shot with dsrl's but he didn't specify on the article I just read. He has on his website a video with a planar projection of the 360 stitch in case you're interested. I think 3d stereoscopic images are now on it's "boom", but 360 degree video is relatively a new frontier, some guys at MIT media lab are doing some interesting stuff with different concepts. According to Wedren this video shows a hero on his journey through mundane life and cotidianity. Watch this interesting film/music video/augmented reality here.

» Shyscapes

Misha Shyukin created this shortfilm as his graduation project at FH Aachen University (Germany). He asks to watch his "short-art-movie-video-thingy" with your eyes half closed. The great soundtrack is "Tristana" by Nils Frahm.

» Nuit Blanche

"Nuit Blanche" (January of 2010) it's an award winning short film directed by Arev Manoukian and produced by Spyfilms. The first time I watched it, a year ago, I was amazed by how they displayed the connection between two strangers, this hyper real poetic fantasy has no dialogue and the soundtrack itself is a critical and ever-present character on its own. The task of setting sound to this film was accomplished by cellist and composer Samuel Bisson. The great vfx work was done by Marc-Andre Gray, there is a making of in his website and vimeo. I just remember this great piece and decided to post it in case someone missed it.

» Alex Roman or ThirdSeventh or Jorge Seva

Even though this piece is from 2009 I just wanted to share it with those who have not met this artist yet. 

He was born in Alicante, Spain under the name of Jorge Seva, he uses "Alex Roman" as an artistic alias, and some people say he is the best CG artist in the world. After being trained in traditional painting at a few academies he discovered the CG world and moved to Madrid to work at a visual effects company. That did not last long due to the lack of demand of visual effects in Spain at the time. It was then, when he switched to the VIZ business. Currently, He works as a senior leading artist in a company based in Madrid. After considering there was a lack of respect for architecture he decided to start a personal journey: to experiment with a more cinematographic and/or photographic oriented point of view of some of his favorites architect's masterpieces. He did this great unprecedented short film called "The third & the seventh". He did everything himself, he even sequenced, orchestrated and mixed the audio based on some original scores. He used 3d Max, Vray and OnyxTree. He recently made a comercial work for Silestone, check it out in his Vimeo page. There is also a great interview in Autodesk's Area, with wireframe images and more info on the rendering. You can also give him a visit on his website thirdseventh.

» The external world of David OReilly

David OReilly has become very popular with his work, 2009’s “Please Say Something”, 2008’s "Octocat", and “WOFL2106”, which was the one that made me want to know more about him. Now he returns with this twisted, kind of dark, psychotic piece: “The External World”.After being premiered at the 67th Venice Film Festival, it’s now online. It's really intelligent, full of ideas and it just made me feel the necessity of creating stuff that says something, even in a weird way.

» Stefan Nadelman, 2.5d mastery among other things

Stefan Nadelman studied fine arts at Iowa State University in 1994, he began working in New York City as a print graphic designer, he transitioned to web design and then to web animation. In 2000, Stefan's first film, "Latin Alive" was included on the Best of Resfest DVD volume 1. By 2003, Stefan left the world of web-based animation for that of film and television. Shortly after, his next film, "Terminal Bar", won the Jury Prize for short film at the Sundance Film Festival. Among a variety of personal, collaborative, and commercial work, he has directed and animated shorts with Robert Smigel for Saturday Night Live's TV Funhouse, a music video for Menomena's Evil Bee, and the viral mini-epic short film about war called Food Fight. "I Say Fever" is the first video from the Ramona Falls debut album Intuit, under Barsuk Records. It was made beautifully by this talented artist, it has a fever-ish dreamy look and story.