Koji Morimoto is one of my favourite directors and animators. You may not recognise his name but if you have a remote knowledge of Japanese animation I’m sure you would recognise his work (Akira ring any bells?). While he is perhaps most famous for animating on large anime films and series I am personally most fond of his work as a director – he directed “Magnetic Rose” by far the best film on the “Memories” anime shorts DVD, and directed “Beyond” on the original “Animatrix” DVD (again my personal favourite of the collection). As a director his films have a distinct style, inhabiting dreamy scifi worlds not far removed from our own (and, of course, the animation is always phenomenal). Anyway, I heard there was an artbook of his lurking around so after much hunting I managed to get myself a copy, and it didn’t disappoint.
My last post was about 2D and 3D animation, well here is a short film that combines the two to an enchanting degree. It’s a couple of years old now but still looks absolutely fantastic.
I watch a lot of short films on youtube and this one really blew me away. The story isn’t particularly fantastic but visually it is just beautiful with some charming character animation to boot. 3D elements have been frequently implemented in to 2D animation (see “The Iron Giant”, “Futurama” or even “Spirited Away”) but this takes it to a new level, embracing the combination rather than trying to hide it.
As you may or may not have gathered from the posts of this blog so far one of my greatest passions is animation and animated film. There has been some really great stuff out already this year (“Kung Fu Panda” and “Wall:E” specifically) but every time I go to the cinema I am dismayed by the complete lack of 2D animation coming to our screens. It would certainly be wrong to say 2D animation is dead but I definitely find it difficult to muster much enthusiasm for the sparse upcoming projects from this fading school of animation. (more…)
Check out this tailer for a short film called “In the Fall of Gravity”.
This is being made by a guy called Ron Cole, who is basically reinventing stopmotion animation by implimenting cable control to his stop motion puppets. This gives the puppets a really unique look, with facial animation that is more expressive and realistic than anything seen in stopmotion before! Really impressive and inspiring stuff.
