French Student Sets Internet on Fire with Animation Inspired by Moebius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyazaki

The inter­net over in Japan was lit ablaze last month by a stu­dent film. Titled “Celles et Ceux des Cimes et Cieux” (“Girls and Guys from the Sum­mits and the Skies”), the short is a gor­geous­ly ani­mat­ed trail­er for what looks like an amaz­ing yet-to-be-made fea­ture film. Cre­at­ed by Gwenn Ger­main, who is study­ing at the French art school Créa­pole, the ani­ma­tion is also a love let­ter to leg­endary film­mak­er Hayao Miyaza­ki. You can watch it above.

“I’ve been told by a friend of mine that all the movies that I’ve made are essen­tial­ly the same!” That’s what Miyaza­ki said to me dur­ing a round­table for his children’s movie Ponyo. Though the sto­ries vary from movie to movie, his world is imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able and remark­ably con­sis­tent. He cre­ates uni­vers­es that are won­drous and mys­ti­cal.

He has an almost shaman­is­tic rev­er­ence for nature; rocks, trees, rivers, and oceans all seem to be alive and aware. And he pop­u­lates his world with shape-shift­ing crea­tures like the rav­en­ous masked blob No-Face in Spir­it­ed Away; the Great For­est Spir­it in Princess Mononoke, which looks like it was yanked straight out of Japan­ese mythol­o­gy; and per­haps his most delight­ful cre­ation, the Cat Bus from My Neigh­bor Totoro, com­plete with head­light eyes, a Cheshire grin and a warm, womb-like inte­ri­or. It was this whim­si­cal cre­ation that report­ed­ly impressed The Emper­or him­self – Aki­ra Kuro­sawa.

It’s no won­der why Japan­ese neti­zens went crazy for “Celles et Ceux des Cimes et Cieux.” Germain’s short seems sprung from the same world as Miyaza­ki. The giant bugs look like some­thing out of Nau­si­caa of the Val­ley of the Wind. The ambigu­ous­ly Euro­pean archi­tec­ture looks like some­thing from Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice and those pur­ple amor­phous worms look like some­thing from Spir­it­ed Away.  Heck, Miyaza­ki him­self even seems to be in Ger­main’s short – that beard­ed old guy at the end of the movie is a spit­ting image of the famed ani­ma­tor.

Ger­main cred­its oth­er influ­ences aside from Miyaza­ki: Syd Mead, the con­cept artist who cre­at­ed those fly­ing cars in Blade Run­ner and the city of the future in the upcom­ing Tomor­row­land, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the bound­less­ly imag­i­na­tive French illus­tra­tor Moe­bius. Their influ­ence might not be as obvi­ous as Miyaza­k­i’s, how­ev­er.

In any case, I am seri­ous­ly look­ing for­ward to see­ing a fea­ture length ver­sion of “Celles et Ceux des Cimes et Cieux.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists (1996)

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

Japan­ese Car­toons from the 1920s and 30s Reveal the Styl­is­tic Roots of Ani­me

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Watch Sherlock Hound: Hayao Miyazaki’s Animated, Steampunk Take on Sherlock Holmes

With such majes­tic, painstak­ing­ly craft­ed films as Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, My Neigh­bor Totoro, and Princess Mononoke, Hayao Miyaza­ki has made his name as Japan­ese ani­ma­tion’s pre­em­i­nent artis­tic vision­ary — and quite pos­si­bly ani­ma­tion’s pre­em­i­nent artis­tic vision­ary as well. But before he co-found­ed Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, the house that has become syn­ony­mous with Miyaza­k­i’s kind of lush, uni­ver­sal­ly appeal­ing, and award-win­ning films, he worked on var­i­ous kinds of ani­ma­tion, for dif­fer­ent media and pitched at dif­fer­ent lev­els of seri­ous­ness. One of the most notable projects of the end of that chap­ter of his career trans­posed the adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes into a world of anthro­po­mor­phic dogs.

The Ital­ian-Japan­ese co-pro­duc­tion Sher­lock Hound aired as a tele­vi­sion series between 1984 and 1985. Of its 26 episodes, which sent the cor­gi Sher­lock Hound and ter­ri­er Doc­tor Wat­son after a vari­ety of thieves and on all sorts of adven­tures across a steam­punk Lon­don, Miyaza­ki direct­ed six.

In the Miyaza­ki-direct­ed episode “Trea­sure Under the Sea” at the top of the post, for instance, the detect­ing duo go after a sub­ma­rine pur­loined by recur­ring antag­o­nist of both Holmes and Hound, Pro­fes­sor Mori­ar­ty, who here takes the form of a wolf.

“The Sov­er­eign Gold Coins” finds Hound and Wat­son in pur­suit of that seem­ing­ly more tra­di­tion­al stripe of crim­i­nal known as a safe­crack­er, and in “Mrs. Hud­son is Tak­en Hostage,” their land­la­dy (who seems con­sid­er­ably more youth­ful in Miyaza­k­i’s vision than the matron in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s) goes miss­ing, though her kid­nap­per bad­ly under­es­ti­mates the dif­fi­cul­ty of pulling off his plan under Hound’s watch. Miyaza­ki would direct three more episodes (“The Stormy Get­away,” “The Crown of Maza­lin,” and “The Four Sig­na­tures”) before a rights dis­pute with Conan Doyle’s estate threw a wrench into pro­duc­tion. The show lat­er went on under oth­er cre­ators, and U.S. view­ers can see the whole, still-delight­ful run on Hulu, but Miyaza­ki did­n’t look back — and see­ing as Nau­si­caä had come out that same year, he did­n’t need to.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch John Cleese as Sher­lock Holmes in The Strange Case of the End of Civ­i­liza­tion as We Know It

Down­load the Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mas­ter­piece

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

Hear the Voice of Arthur Conan Doyle After His Death

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­maFol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recreated in an Adorable Paper Animation

Yea, and there was a rejoic­ing all round the land last week when Show­time and David Lynch final­ly worked out a deal to bring back Twin Peaks after ini­tial reports that Lynch had backed out.

So while we wait for 2016, check out Matthew Fuller’s re-cre­ation of the Twin Peaks title sequence in ani­mat­ed paper cut outs. Fuller’s rough hewn cre­ation is adorable, stay­ing true to the lan­guid pace and dreamy objects of the orig­i­nal. (I had kind of for­get­ten that very large log on dis­play at the one minute mark.)

Fuller just start­ed this YouTube chan­nel And the World Was Paper two weeks ago, kick­ing it off with a recre­ation of the new Star Wars trail­er. He is also promis­ing a new paper video every fort­night, so be sure to sub­scribe.

Mean­while, this paper ver­sion of Twin Peaks isn’t the first time the titles has been recre­at­ed. Check out Filthy Frack­ers 8‑bit ver­sion here:

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed con­tent:

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Van Gogh’s 1888 Painting, “The Night Cafe,” Animated with Oculus Virtual Reality Software

Vin­cent van Gogh’s 1888 paint­ing, “The Night Cafe,” now hangs at the Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Art Gallery, accom­pa­nied by this descrip­tion:

In a let­ter to his broth­er writ­ten from Arles in the south of France, van Gogh described the Café de l’Al­cazar, where he took his meals, as “blood red and dull yel­low with a green bil­liard table in the cen­ter, four lemon yel­low lamps with an orange and green glow. Every­where there is a clash and con­trast of the most dis­parate reds and greens.” The clash­ing col­ors were also meant to express the “ter­ri­ble pas­sions of human­i­ty” found in this all-night haunt, pop­u­lat­ed by vagrants and pros­ti­tutes. Van Gogh also felt that col­ors took on an intrigu­ing qual­i­ty at night, espe­cial­ly by gaslight: in this paint­ing, he want­ed to show how “the white cloth­ing of the café own­er, keep­ing watch in a cor­ner of this fur­nace, becomes lemon yel­low, pale and lumi­nous green.”

The can­vas, though dry and most­ly flat, does a per­fect­ly good job of cap­tur­ing the life force that ran through that 19th cen­tu­ry French café. That’s an under­state­ment, of course. But I sup­pose there’s no harm in ani­mat­ing the already ani­mat­ed scene with some new-fan­gled tech­nol­o­gy. Above, you can see Mac Cauley’s “immer­sive vir­tu­al real­i­ty” trib­ute to Van Gogh, which he cre­at­ed for Ocu­lus’ Mobile VR Jam 2015. On a page ded­i­cat­ed to the project, Cauley writes:

My main goal with this project was to see what kinds of styl­ized 3D ren­der­ing could be expe­ri­enced through VR. I have always been drawn to the paint­ings of Van Gogh and I imag­ined it would be amaz­ing to be inside one of these col­or­ful worlds. While the GearVR offered cer­tain chal­lenges with its tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions com­pared with a PC, it forced me to pri­or­i­tize and real­ly define what makes a Van Gogh paint­ing unique.

While cre­at­ing the envi­ron­ments of these paint­ings in 3D space I’ve had to expand on areas that can’t be seen; rooms behind doors, objects hid­den from view, peo­ple turned away from the view­er. It’s been an inter­est­ing process in using ref­er­ence mate­r­i­al from Van Gogh and oth­er expres­sion­ist painters but also imag­in­ing what might have been there, just off the edges of the can­vas.

The win­ners of the Ocu­lus Mobile VR Jam will be announced in June. More cre­ative takes on famous paint­ings can be found below.

via Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 3D Tour of Picasso’s Guer­ni­ca

Edvard Munch’s Famous Paint­ingThe Scream Ani­mat­ed to the Sound of Pink Floyd’s Pri­mal Music

Dripped: An Ani­mat­ed Trib­ute to Jack­son Pollock’s Sig­na­ture Paint­ing Tech­nique

Late Rem­brandts Come to Life: Watch Ani­ma­tions of Paint­ings Now on Dis­play at the Rijksmu­se­um

Van Gogh’s ‘Star­ry Night’ Re-Cre­at­ed by Astronomer with 100 Hub­ble Space Tele­scope Images

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The Animated Dostoevsky: Two Finely Crafted Short Films Bring the Russian Novelist’s Work to Life

You can expe­ri­ence Dos­to­evsky in the orig­i­nal. You can expe­ri­ence Dos­to­evsky in trans­la­tion. Or how about an expe­ri­ence of Dos­to­evsky in ani­ma­tion? Today we’ve round­ed up two par­tic­u­lar­ly notable exam­ples of that last, both of which take up their uncon­ven­tion­al project of adap­ta­tion with suit­ably uncon­ven­tion­al ani­ma­tion tech­niques. At the top of the post, we have the first part (and just below we have the sec­ond) of Dos­to­evsky’s sto­ry “The Dream of a Ridicu­lous Man,” re-imag­ined by Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Alexan­der Petrov.

The ani­ma­tion, as Josh Jones wrote here in 2014, “uses painstak­ing­ly hand-paint­ed cells to bring to life the alter­nate world the nar­ra­tor finds him­self nav­i­gat­ing in his dream. From the flick­er­ing lamps against the drea­ry, dark­ened cityscape of the ridicu­lous man’s wak­ing life to the shift­ing, sun­lit sands of the dream­world, each detail of the sto­ry is fine­ly ren­dered with metic­u­lous care.” A haunt­ing visu­al style for this haunt­ing piece of late Dos­to­evsky in full-on exis­ten­tial­ist mode.

Just below, you can see a longer and more ambi­tious adap­ta­tion of one of Dos­to­evsky’s much longer, much more ambi­tious works: Crime and Pun­ish­ment. This half-hour ani­mat­ed ver­sion by Pol­ish film­mak­er Piotr Dumala, Mike Springer wrote here in 2012, gets “told expres­sion­is­ti­cal­ly, with­out dia­logue and with an altered flow of time. The com­plex and mul­ti-lay­ered nov­el is pared down to a few cen­tral char­ac­ters and events,” all of them por­trayed with a form of labor-inten­sive “destruc­tive ani­ma­tion” in which Dumala engraved, paint­ed over, and then re-engraved each frame on plas­ter, a method where “each image exists only long enough to be pho­tographed and then paint­ed over to cre­ate a sense of move­ment.”

If you’d now like to plunge into Dos­to­evsky’s lit­er­ary world and find out if it com­pels you, too, to cre­ate strik­ing­ly uncon­ven­tion­al ani­ma­tions — or any oth­er sort of project inspired by the writer’s epic grap­pling with life’s great­est, most trou­bling themes — you can do it for free with our col­lec­tion of Dos­to­evsky eBooks and audio­books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dig­i­tal Dos­to­evsky: Down­load Free eBooks & Audio Books of the Russ­ian Novelist’s Major Works

Crime and Pun­ish­ment by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky Told in a Beau­ti­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Film by Piotr Dumala

Watch a Hand-Paint­ed Ani­ma­tion of Dostoevsky’s “The Dream of a Ridicu­lous Man”

Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky Draws Elab­o­rate Doo­dles In His Man­u­scripts

Dos­to­evsky Draws a Pic­ture of Shake­speare: A New Dis­cov­ery in an Old Man­u­script

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­maFol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

An Animated Louis CK on How the Colonists Came to America and Screwed It All Up (NSFW)

I sus­pect par­ents of school-aged chil­dren will find much to relate to in the Lord’s frus­tra­tion with mankind, above, whether or not they’re prone to vent­ing in come­di­an Louis CK’s patent­ed NSFW lan­guage.

Who among us has not turned our back for a few moments, only to dis­cov­er upon our return the house in sham­bles, the nutri­tious snack we set out passed over in favor of junk.

(“Just eat the shit on the floor! I left shit all over the floor! Fuckin’ corn and wheat and shit, grind it up and make some bread—what are you doing!?”)

It’s no won­der ani­ma­tors are drawn to CK. His dis­tinc­tive voice and impec­ca­ble tim­ing have earned him a star­ring role as a talk­ing dog in a CGI fea­ture to be released in 2016. Pri­or to strik­ing it big with the series Louie, he was a fre­quent vis­i­tor on “Dr” Jonathan Katz’s couch. His over-the-top standup spiels pro­vide the unau­tho­rized flash ani­ma­tor with an embar­rass­ment of rich­es.

Cana­di­an film stu­dent John Roney, whose YouTube chan­nel boasts spoofs of Game of Thrones and the Mag­ic School­bus, keeps his visu­als under­stat­ed, min­ing CK’s 2011 per­for­mance at New York City’s Bea­con The­ater for the 2‑dimensional realm.

It could have been so much gross­er.

Turn down the sound and Roney’s adap­ta­tion could be high qual­i­ty children’s pro­gram­ming, the kind most of us god­like par­ents even­tu­al­ly accept as a nec­es­sary evil. Well, maybe not the part where those Aztec kids bowl Louis’ head down the pyra­mids (right above)…though they, like Roney’s oth­er mild­ly observed human and ani­mal char­ac­ters, add to the fun­ny. Here’s the orig­i­nal clip from the Bea­con The­ater show:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

Louis CK Crash­es Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis & Brad Pitt’s Very Awk­ward Inter­view

Jer­ry Sein­feld and Louis CK in Small Cars and Big Yachts, Get­ting Cof­fee

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

How to Live a Good Life? Watch Philosophy Animations Narrated by Stephen Fry on Aristotle, Ayn Rand, Max Weber & More

We recent­ly fea­tured a series of ani­ma­tions from BBC Radio 4 script­ed by philoso­pher Nigel War­bur­ton, nar­rat­ed by writer, per­former, and all-around wit Stephen Fry, and deal­ing with a big ques­tion: what is the self? Those four short videos called upon the ideas of thinkers as var­i­ous as Sartre, Descartes, and Shake­speare. This new fol­low-up draws from the intel­lec­tu­al wells dug by the likes of Aris­to­tle, Max Weber, Ayn Rand, and the Bud­dha to address a still big, some­what less abstract, but a per­haps even more impor­tant prob­lem: how do I live a good life?

Rand, as her many detrac­tors nev­er hes­i­tate to put it, thought the answer lay in fol­low­ing the high­est man­date, our own self­ish­ness. Bud­dhism, for its part, puts its stock into four noble truths: the inescapa­bil­i­ty of suf­fer­ing, the ori­gin of that suf­fer­ing in our own minds, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of chang­ing our lives if we stop crav­ing so many things, and the use­ful­ness of the Bud­dhist “eight­fold path” in doing so. Max Weber argued that the “Protes­tant eth­ic,” as defined by Calvin­ism, made cap­i­tal­ism itself into the big deal it has become today. And Aris­to­tle rec­om­mend­ed liv­ing vir­tu­ous­ly as a means of attain­ing eudai­mo­nia, or flour­ish­ing.

Alas, for all the impor­tant work done by these and oth­er thinkers, the attain­ment of a good life can remain pret­ty elu­sive for us mod­ern folk. Maybe we can do no bet­ter than learn­ing what our pre­de­ces­sors have thought and said on the sub­ject as best we can, and decid­ing for our­selves from there. But for­tu­nate­ly for us mod­ern folk, we have videos like these at our fin­ger­tips which make it not just quick and easy to take a first step toward that state, but which get us laugh­ing along the way. As with the rest of these series of ani­ma­tions on life’s big ques­tions, the best jokes appear sub­tly, so you’ve got to stay atten­tive — sure­ly one of the more impor­tant virtues any­one, ancient or mod­ern, can cul­ti­vate.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

140 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

What is the Self? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry on Sartre, Descartes & More

How Can I Know Right From Wrong? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions on Ethics Nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er

Learn Right From Wrong with Oxford’s Free Course A Romp Through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners

How Did Every­thing Begin?: Ani­ma­tions on the Ori­gins of the Uni­verse Nar­rat­ed by X‑Files Star Gillian Ander­son

What Makes Us Human?: Chom­sky, Locke & Marx Intro­duced by New Ani­mat­ed Videos from the BBC

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­maFol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

What is the Self? Watch Philosophy Animations Narrated by Stephen Fry on Sartre, Descartes & More

If you’ve fol­lowed our recent phi­los­o­phy posts, you’ve heard Gillian Ander­son (The X‑Files) speak on what makes us humanthe ori­gins of the uni­verse, and whether tech­nol­o­gy has changed us, and Har­ry Shear­er speak on ethics — or rather, you’ve heard them nar­rate short edu­ca­tion­al ani­ma­tions from the BBC script­ed by Phi­los­o­phy Bites’ Nigel War­bur­ton. Now anoth­er equal­ly dis­tinc­tive voice has joined the series to explain an equal­ly impor­tant philo­soph­i­cal top­ic. Behold Stephen Fry on the Self.

These four videos draw on Socrates’s work on what it means to know one­self (and the lim­its of one’s knowl­edge); Erv­ing Goff­man’s (The Pre­sen­ta­tion of Self in Every­day Life) Shake­speare­an obser­va­tion that we all play roles on this stage of a world; Rene Descartes’ famous dec­la­ra­tion “I think, there­fore I am”; and Jean-Paul Sartre’s con­cept of human exis­tence pre­ced­ing human essence (which, if it sounds a bit fog­gy, the video will clar­i­fy). Whichev­er of these thinkers’ claims sound most plau­si­ble to you, you’ll come out feel­ing a bit sur­er that, what­ev­er con­sti­tutes our selves — if indeed we have them — it isn’t what you might have assumed going in.

If the notions that we know noth­ing, that we have no fixed iden­ti­ties, that we cre­ate our­selves (and/or our selves) by our own actions, and that a trick­ster demon may be con­trol­ling your thoughts even as you read this seem too detached from every­day expe­ri­ence to eas­i­ly grasp, at least we have a sen­si­ble Eng­lish voice like Fry’s to guide us through them. The stereo­types may say that the peo­ple of that prac­ti­cal-mind­ed land don’t go in for this kind of talk. But I pro­pose a refu­ta­tion: specif­i­cal­ly, a refu­ta­tion in the form of a return by Fry to talk about two of his fel­low Britons, David Hume and George Berke­ley. They had a few things to say about the self — to put it mild­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 130 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es: Tools for Think­ing About Life, Death & Every­thing Between

A His­to­ry of Ideas: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain The­o­ries of Simone de Beau­voir, Edmund Burke & Oth­er Philoso­phers

How Did Every­thing Begin?: Ani­ma­tions on the Ori­gins of the Uni­verse Nar­rat­ed by X‑Files Star Gillian Ander­son

What Makes Us Human?: Chom­sky, Locke & Marx Intro­duced by New Ani­mat­ed Videos from the BBC

Has Tech­nol­o­gy Changed Us?: BBC Ani­ma­tions Answer the Ques­tion with the Help of Mar­shall McLuhan

How Can I Know Right From Wrong? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions on Ethics Nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­maFol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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