Animation
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Damon Locks on New Projects Involving Animation, Prison Art and the Music of Sun Ra
Damon Locks is a visual artist and musician based out of Chicago. Throughout his career he has consistently found exciting and original ways in which to incorporate both visual and audio elements into his work, to collaborate, and to find a range of communities and venues within which to work. In two recent projects, New Moons for the Experimental Sound Studio and Freedom/Time, Locks uses animation to address unheard music from the Sun Ra archive and to work with inmates at Stateville Correctional Center, respectively. I sat down with Locks to talk about both projects. Filmmaker: I want to talk […]
by Alix Lambert on Dec 1, 2014 -
Five Questions for Ann Marie Fleming and Sandra Oh About Their Indiegogo Project, Window Horses
Currently raising funds on Indiegogo is an ambitious animated feature by filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming, Window Horses. With a lead character voiced by Sandra Oh, the film uses the medium of poetry to explore ideas of cross cultural exchange. From their Indiegogo page: In this coming-of-age story, Rosie Ming, a young Canadian poet, is invited to perform at a Poetry Festival in Shiraz, Iran, but she’d rather be in Paris. She lives at home with her over-protective Chinese grandparents and has never been anywhere by herself. Once in Iran, she finds herself in the company of poets and Persians, all […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 20, 2014 -
Short Film: A Tale of Momentum and Inertia
Sometimes enemies can be misperceived as friends… and vice versa. From Portland animation studio HouseSpecial is this short, A Tale of Momentum and Inertia, directed by Kameron Gates showing why the “shoot first, ask questions later” approach isn’t always the best. Gates has previously contributed effects works to such films as Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, King Kong and Hellboy. The short is currently on the festival circuit, but you can watch it above.
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2014 -
Creatures and Class Politics: Travis Knight, Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable on The Boxtrolls
The latest animated feature from Laika, the Portland-based studio that delivered Coraline and ParaNorman, is a surprisingly idiosyncratic blend of children’s adventure and political satire. Based on Alan Snow’s novel, Here Be Monsters, Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable’s The Boxtrolls is set in the steampunk-inspired British town of Cheesebridge, a ruthlessly classist society where, you guessed it, cheese is the unifying luxury good. The boxtrolls — little creatures who live in cardboard boxes — are the literal lower class. (They live underground.) The story kicks into gear as a human boy, Eggs, raised by the boxtrolls ventures above ground, meets […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 26, 2014 -
Watch David Lynch’s Animated 2002 Series Dumbland
Shortly after the release of his masterpiece Mulholland Drive, David Lynch took a little downtime to create an early incarnation of the webseries: the aptly titled Dumbland. A profane series of vignettes centered around an irascible man, the bizarrely hilarious episodes feature Lynch’s own chicken scratch and characteristically strong sound design. You can watch all eight of them above, and be sure to stick around for the dancing ants featured in the final episode.
by Sarah Salovaara on May 13, 2014 -
“What I Regret Most in My Life Are Failures of Kindness”: George Saunders, Animated
Author George Saunders’ 2013 Syracuse University commencement address dealt with the subject of kindness. Much in the same way that David Foster Wallace’s This is Water was turned into both an animated short as well as a tasteful stocking stuffer, so too Saunders’ rueful musings. Congratulations, by the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness is the name of the 64-page book, and an excerpt has been nicely animated by the folks at Serious Lunch.
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 24, 2014 -
Short Film: Luiz Stockler’s Montenegro
Meet Luiz Stockler, a promising animator who’s recently graduated from the Royal College of Art. Born in Brazil, raised in Wales and now a London resident, this is his second RCA project; his first, 2012’s Home, played at Slamdance in 2012. Just under 1:30, that was a mildly stroboscopic freakout on the topic of domesticity. You can view it here (NSFW warning: contains line drawing breasts and genitalia). It’s got a definite early Don Hertzfeldt vibe, which is expanded in the much more ambitious Montenegro to include that animator’s increasing melancholy as channeled through a very British sense of humor. […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 27, 2014 -
Loving Vincent: Animation in Oil
In an age when everything has already been done, it’s a rare feat to devise a way to make a film that no one has ever tried before. But that’s what the team behind Loving Vincent did when they decided to make their film about the last days of Vincent Van Gogh’s life by animating with actual oil paintings, each one executed by a professional artist on a full-sized canvas — in the style of Van Gogh himself, of course. As anyone who remembers the Van Gogh sequence in Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams knows, the effect of the master’s artwork on […]
by Randy Astle on Feb 27, 2014 -
Joseph Oxford and Bradley Stonesifer Create a World in Cardboard for Me + Her
Director Joseph Oxford and cinematographer Bradley Stonesifer created an imaginary world using cardboard boxes and rubber bands for their animated short film Me + Her. A labor of love that evolved over four years, their work was rewarded when the film was accepted into Sundance’s Short Film program. Oxford has worked in the industry since 2007 in a variety of roles, including production assistant and art director, but Me + Her is his first project as writer and director. Oxford first met cinematographer Stonesifer through a director friend, and they both worked on the film The Vicious Kind in 2008. […]
by Michael Murie on Jan 18, 2014 -
Michel Gondry on Old-School Animation, His Trademark Whimsy, and Plumbing the Mind of Noam Chomsky for Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?
Two highly unique minds converge in Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?, the latest from whimsical visionary Michel Gondry, who aptly subtitles his film, “An Animated Conversation with Noam Chomsky.” In the works for four years, this self-explanatory project from the artist behind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Dave Chapelle’s Block Party, and a veritable library of music videos is a charming and markedly low-tech doc that literally illustrates the insights of Chomsky, one of the greatest thinkers of our time. Ever-fascinated by the depths of the human brain, and ever-faithful in dressing his films with cartoon-like touches, […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Nov 21, 2013
