2nd Annual AniBOOM Awards winners announced

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You Suck at Photoshop 6

   Post from: Motionographer

G’Day from Sydney, with news from my adopted home town of a major new project for Australia’s first channel ABC1, orchestrated by local moving image luminaries zspace. You can watch a montage of the idents here, or see some of the completed spots here.

Zspace fought off stiff competition to create a complete set of new idents for ABC1. The idea kick-starting zspace’s pitch was simply ‘one’ and how ABC1 (Or ‘Auntie’ as the broadcaster is endearingly known) represents everyone.

With 7 years of experience working with ABC1, Jean Christophe Danoy felt it was really time to push the boundaries of what they could achieve for their client. So zspace brought in the talents of their first choice of Australian animators and directors, as well producing a good number of idents in-house, to create a refreshingly diverse body of work.

Each ident is about a personality, be it Joe Public or an Australian TV ‘face’ and what they do in their day to day. So live-action footage directed by zspace was used as a base upon which to build animation illustrating the VOs. I particularly like the blue-collar characters, like ‘SES’ (State Emergency Service) by motionographer’s own Jon Gorman and ‘Farmer’ by Mighty Nice. The personalities have a relaxed Australian charm that’s really brought home in the animation treatments.

It’s great to see broadcasters like ABC1 embracing innovative motion-graphics like this. And more power to zspace for pitching heavily on concept as opposed to styleframes, freeing them and their assembled directors up to develop ideas and designs as production progressed.

For mograph thunder from down-under, look no further…

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U.S. Online Video Views Top 10 Billion in December

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Beautiful CG and an almost poetic concept power “ATG Vinnare V75,” a new spot from Swedish studio FilmTecknarna.

Translation of the end-tag: “Winners 75 - live horsepowers on TV4 Saturdays at 6.05 PM”

Credits:
Title: “ATG Vinnare V75″
Client: Kanal 75
Directors: Jonas Dahlbeck and Joakim Hanski Norgren
CG-modelling and animation: Jonas Dahlbeck and Boris Nawratil
Agency: Kanal 75 - inhouse
Production company: FilmTecknarna Animation

   Post from: Motionographer

It seems more authors (or their publishers) are turning to the power of animation to promote their works. First it was former poet laureate Billy Collins, then Douglas Coupland, and now it’s Toby Barlow, who’s peddling his new werewolf novel set in LA, “Sharp Teeth.”

The book’s official website will feature all the animations, but right now there are a couple to share from Radium directors Limbert Fabian and Brady Baltezore.

The shorts are based on excerpts from Barlow’s book, but they’re not simply illustrative works. Although they’re created in wildly different styles, both shorts play with metaphorical devices and suggestive visuals to go beyond a simple say-cow-see-cow approach.

Check out Limbert’s excerpt | Brady’s excerpt

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Bad Mirror - The Vicious Five by JANCL (via Royale Blog)

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“Tickle Party,” a Zune Arts film from Friends With You

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Argentina-based Punga and Rodrigo Valdés of The Meastros teamed up on this surreal spot for Steren GPS systems. It’s a kooky but friendly romp styled in the vein of early animation master Max Fleischer.

Punga’s been mentioned here a few times, but this is my first time to run into The Maestros. They’re a Mexico City-based production company with some solid talent on their roster, including Punga, Fulltank and others. Worth a quick spin.

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The Dawn of Japanese Animation: Feb 13-16 in NYC

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