The Joy of Books

in Animation, Books | January 10th, 2012

Last year, “crazedad­man” and his wife reor­ga­nized a small book­shelf and record­ed the project in an endear­ing stop motion film. This year, they took things to the next lev­el, spend­ing “sleep­less nights mov­ing, stack­ing, and ani­mat­ing books at Type book­store in Toron­to.”  The rest speaks for itself. Don’t miss oth­er videos for book lovers right below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

A Secret Book­store in New York City

Books Savored in a Lov­ing  Stop Motion Film

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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Tim Burton’s The World of Stainboy: Watch the Complete Animated Series

in Animation, Art, Film | January 9th, 2012

In his 1997 book of draw­ings and verse, The Melan­choly Death of Oys­ter Boy & Oth­er Sto­ries, Tim Bur­ton imag­ines a bizarre menagerie of mis­fits with names like Tox­ic Boy, Junk Girl, the Pin Cush­ion Queen and the Boy with Nails in his Eyes.

“Inspired by such child­hood heroes as Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl,” writes James Ryan in the New York Times, “Mr. Bur­ton’s slim vol­ume exquis­ite­ly con­veys the pain of an ado­les­cent out­sider. Like his movies, the work man­ages to be both child­like and sophis­ti­cat­ed, blend­ing the inno­cent with the macabre.”

One of those ado­les­cent out­siders is Stain Boy, a strange kind of super­hero:

He can’t fly around tall build­ings,
or out­run a speed­ing train,
the only tal­ent he seems to have
is to leave a nasty stain.

Some­times I know it both­ers him,
that he can’t run or swim or fly,
and because of this one abil­i­ty,
his dry clean­ing bill is sky-high.

In 2000, Bur­ton extend­ed Stain Boy’s adven­tures (and com­pressed his name into one word) with The World of Stain­boy, a series of short ani­ma­tions com­mis­sioned for the Inter­net by Shockwave.com. “For some sto­ries you have to wait for the right medi­um,” Bur­ton said at the time. “I think (the Inter­net’s) the per­fect forum to tell a sad lit­tle sto­ry like this one. Stain­boy is a char­ac­ter that does­n’t do much. He’s just per­fect for four-minute ani­ma­tions.”

Bur­ton cre­at­ed a series of sketch­es, water­col­ors and pas­tel-accent­ed gray-on-gray wash­es and brought them, along with a script and sto­ry­boards, to Flinch Stu­dio for trans­la­tion into Macro­me­dia Flash ani­ma­tion. Twen­ty-six episodes were planned, but only six were com­plet­ed. “Stain­boy was an exper­i­ment in devel­op­ing rev­enue streams for the Web,” writes Ali­son McMa­han in The Films of Tim Bur­ton: Ani­mat­ing Live Action in Con­tem­po­rary Hol­ly­wood, “but it did not suc­ceed, at least not finan­cial­ly.”

The Stain­boy char­ac­ter was res­ur­rect­ed briefly in late 2010, when Bur­ton invit­ed fans to com­pose a new Stain­boy adven­ture in brief install­ments via Twit­ter. Bur­ton pieced togeth­er a sto­ry using the best tweets. (You can read the final result here.) Mean­while, the orig­i­nal Web ani­ma­tions have con­tin­ued to attract a fol­low­ing. You can watch the com­plete six-part series below in HD. As you will see, some episodes intro­duce new char­ac­ters — Stare Girl, Tox­ic Boy, Bowl­ing Ball Head and the rest:

Episode 1: Stare Girl

Episode 2: Tox­ic Boy

Episode 3: Bowl­ing Ball Head

Episode 4: Robot Boy

Episode 5: Match­stick Girl

Episode 6: The Ori­gin of Stain­boy

You can find the Stain­boy videos on our list of Free Online Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­cent: Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Tim Bur­ton: A Look Inside His Visu­al Imag­i­na­tion

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Orson Welles Narrates Plato’s Cave Allegory, Kafka’s Parable, and Freedom River

in Animation, Film | December 28th, 2011

Orson Welles. A bril­liant direc­tor. A tal­ent­ed actor. And not a bad nar­ra­tor of ani­mat­ed films. We know one thing. The whole is often greater than the sum of the parts. So, today, we’re serv­ing up three ani­mat­ed films nar­rat­ed by Welles, plus some clas­sic radio broad­casts.

We start with an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry from 1973. The alle­go­ry is the most well known part of The Repub­lic (Down­load – Kin­dle), and Welles reads the famous lines deliv­ered by Socrates. Per­fect cast­ing. This is hard­ly the first ani­ma­tion of the cave alle­go­ry. Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life has a roundup of 20 ani­ma­tions, but we’re always par­tial to this bril­liant ver­sion done with clay­ma­tion.

In 1962, Orson Welles direct­ed The Tri­al, a film based on Franz Kafka’s last and arguably best-known nov­el. The film begins aus­pi­cious­ly with Welles nar­rat­ing an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of “Before the Law,” a para­ble from The Tri­al. And then the dra­mat­ic film unfolds. Lat­er in his life, Welles told the BBC, “Say what you will, but The Tri­al is the best film I have ever made. I have nev­er been so hap­py as when I made that film.”

The back­sto­ry behind this short ani­mat­ed film, Free­dom Riv­er, deserves a lit­tle men­tion. Accord­ing to Joseph Cavel­la, a writer for the film:

For sev­er­al years, Bosus­tow Pro­duc­tions had asked Orson Welles, then liv­ing in Paris, to nar­rate one of their films. He nev­er respond­ed. When I fin­ished the Free­dom Riv­er script, we sent it to him togeth­er with a portable reel to reel tape recorder and a siz­able check and crossed our fin­gers. He was either des­per­ate for mon­ey or (I would rather believe) some­thing in it touched him because two weeks lat­er we got the reel back with the nar­ra­tion word for word and we were on our way.

Filmed 40 years ago, Free­dom Riv­er offers some strong com­men­tary on Amer­i­ca, some of which will still res­onate today.

Final­ly, if you can’t get enough of Orson­’s voice, don’t miss The Mer­cury The­atre on the Air, Welles’ radio pro­gram that brought the­atri­cal pro­duc­tions to the Amer­i­can air­waves from 1938 to 1941. You can still find the broad­casts online, includ­ing the leg­endary War of the Worlds pro­gram from 1938 (lis­ten), and dra­ma­tized ver­sions of Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Car­ol (lis­ten) and Around the World in 80 Days (click the first item in playlist).

The short films men­tioned above appear in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, where you will also find some longer films by Welles.

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The Short Films That Saved Pixar

in Animation, Film | December 27th, 2011


When Steve Jobs became the major­i­ty investor in Pixar in Jan­u­ary 1986, the com­pa­ny looked noth­ing like it does today. Back then, Pixar was main­ly a tech­nol­o­gy play. It sold expen­sive Image Com­put­ers to gov­ern­ment agen­cies and med­ical insti­tu­tions along with ren­der­ing soft­ware. That strat­e­gy did­n’t pay off par­tic­u­lar­ly well. The com­pa­ny hem­or­rhaged cash; lay­offs ensued; and things were gen­er­al­ly look­ing bleak for the young com­pa­ny.

Pixar’s for­tunes changed, how­ev­er, when it tapped into the tal­ents of a young ani­ma­tor named John Las­seter. Dur­ing Pixar’s ear­ly days, Steve Jobs and co-founder Ed Cat­mull asked Las­seter to devel­op a short ani­mat­ed film to help show off the capa­bil­i­ties of Pixar’s hard­ware and soft­ware. He came up with Luxo Jr. (above), which turned two lov­able lamps into movie stars. The short film won first prize at SIGGRAPH, the annu­al com­put­er graph­ics con­fer­ence held in 1986. Lat­er Luxo Jr. was nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award.

In 1988, Pixar was still hang­ing on by a thread. But Jobs con­tin­ued to nur­ture Las­seter’s work and direct­ed pre­cious resources towards anoth­er short film. When giv­ing Las­seter funds ($300,000), Jobs said to the ani­ma­tor, “All I ask of you, John, is to make it great.” And that he did. The result, Tin Toy (above), won the ’88 Acad­e­my Award for ani­mat­ed short film, the first com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed film to win the award.

Tin Toy caught Dis­ney’s atten­tion, and they began to pur­sue Las­seter. But Las­seter stayed loy­al to Pixar, and before too long, Pixar and Dis­ney decid­ed to part­ner on the pro­duc­tion of Toy Sto­ry, which net­ted a prof­it of $330 mil­lion. Pixar dumped its hardware/software busi­ness and focused on mak­ing ani­mat­ed films from then on, before Dis­ney even­tu­al­ly pur­chased Pixar for $7.4 bil­lion in 2006.

If you’re look­ing for a lit­tle more ani­ma­tion, don’t miss The Adven­tures of André and Wal­ly B., the 1984 short film made by Las­seter at the Graph­ics Group, the unit with­in Lucas­Film that was even­tu­al­ly spun into Pixar. Also here we have the First 3D Dig­i­tal Film, which hap­pened to be cre­at­ed by Ed Cat­mull (1970). He co-found­ed Pixar and is now pres­i­dent of Walt Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion Stu­dios and Pixar Ani­ma­tion Stu­dios.

More Relat­ed Pixar Con­tent:

A Rare Look Inside Pixar Stu­dios

The Beau­ty of Pixar: 500 Scenes from 17 Films

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Watch Terry Gilliam’s Animated Short, The Christmas Card (1968)

in Animation, Art, Comedy | December 24th, 2011

In 1968, Ter­ry Gilliam was a young Amer­i­can car­toon­ist liv­ing in Lon­don. He was hav­ing trou­ble mak­ing a liv­ing from mag­a­zine work, so his friend John Cleese sug­gest­ed he get in touch with Humphrey Bar­clay, who was pro­duc­ing a slight­ly sub­ver­sive tele­vi­sion show for chil­dren called Do Not Adjust Your Set.

Sub­ti­tled “The Fair­ly Point­less Show,” it fea­tured a group of pre­vi­ous­ly unknown actors includ­ing Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Ter­ry Jones, and attract­ed a cult fol­low­ing among adults. Bar­clay looked at Gilliam’s port­fo­lio and decid­ed he would fit right in.

For one ear­ly assign­ment, Gilliam was asked to pre­pare some­thing for a spe­cial show to be broad­cast on Christ­mas day, 1968, called Do Not Adjust Your Stock­ing. Look­ing for inspi­ra­tion, he decid­ed to vis­it the Tate Gallery. In The Pythons Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of the Pythons, Gilliam remem­bered the project and how it fig­ured into his emerg­ing artis­tic style:

I went down to the Tate and they’ve got a huge col­lec­tion of Vic­to­ri­an Christ­mas cards so I went through the col­lec­tion and pho­to­copied things and start­ed mov­ing them around. So the style just devel­oped out of that rather than any plan­ning being involved. I nev­er analysed the stuff, I just did it the quick­est, eas­i­est way. And I could use images I real­ly loved.

The result (above) is a hilar­i­ous free-asso­ci­a­tion­al send-up of tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas card motifs. In addi­tion to being aired on the show, The Christ­mas Card was incor­po­rat­ed into Gilliam’s short debut film from 1968, Sto­ry­time, which is part of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

For an update of Gilliam’s twist­ed take on Christmas–a dark­er rework­ing of his Malev­o­lent San­ta theme in The Christ­mas Card–look below for a draw­ing Gilliam post­ed a few days ago on his Face­book page. And as the man says, you bet­ter watch out!

via Bleed­ing Cool

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

Ter­ry Gilliam (Mon­ty Python) Shows You How to Make Your Own Cutout Ani­ma­tion

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Can Ants Count? Do They Have Built-In Pedometers? Animated Video Explains

in Animation, Video - Science | December 7th, 2011

Saha­ran desert ants are known to wan­der great dis­tances in search of food. Twist­ing and turn­ing on their way, the ants man­age to return to their nests along sur­pris­ing­ly direct paths. They sense direc­tion using light from the sky, but how do they judge dis­tance? By count­ing steps, appar­ent­ly.

As Nation­al Pub­lic Radio sci­ence cor­re­spon­dent Robert Krul­wich explains in this engag­ing lit­tle car­toon, a group of Ger­man and Swiss sci­en­tists have dis­cov­ered that by manip­u­lat­ing the stride of the ants halfway through their trip–by either length­en­ing or short­en­ing their legs–the ants would invari­ably over­shoot or under­shoot their return des­ti­na­tion. As Prince­ton biol­o­gist James Gould told NPR, “These ani­mals are fooled exact­ly the way you’d expect if they were count­ing steps.”

The exper­i­men­tal results were orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 2006. You can lis­ten to Krul­wich’s radio report on the research here.

via Phi­los­o­phy Mon­key

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ant Archae­ol­o­gy

Fire Ants Cre­ate Life Raft in 100 Sec­onds Flat

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Post-Apocalyptic Cover Art Created in Amazing Time-Lapse Film

in Animation, Art | December 1st, 2011

Dei Gaztelu­men­di is a young Span­ish artist. He was com­mis­sioned recent­ly to cre­ate a cov­er illus­tra­tion for the com­ic book mag­a­zine Xabiroi, and decid­ed to make a time-lapse video of the process. The result is a fas­ci­nat­ing look at how the artist begins with a rough sketch on paper and then builds lay­er upon lay­er of detail using the Adobe Cre­ative Suite soft­ware. Thir­ty hours of work are com­pressed into 11 min­utes. “A lot of emo­tion went into this paint­ing,” Gaztelu­men­di said on his blog, “since I made it as a gift to one of my bud­dies, who trag­i­cal­ly lost a leg in a motor­bike acci­dent about a year ago.” Gaztelu­men­di was born in San Sebas­t­ian, Basque Coun­try, Spain in 1987, and began illus­trat­ing chil­dren’s books as a teenag­er. He stud­ied ani­ma­tion at Sheri­dan Col­lege in Ontario, Cana­da, where his the­sis film was a whim­si­cal tale called Earlth & Moonch. Since grad­u­at­ing with high hon­ors last year, Gaztelu­men­di has been work­ing as a com­mer­cial illus­tra­tor, spe­cial­iz­ing in crea­ture and char­ac­ter art. You can see more of his work at Deisign.com.

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Address is Approximate: A Lovely Animated Film Made with Google Maps

in Animation, Maps, Video - Arts & Culture | November 28th, 2011

Next up: a love­ly film about a lone­ly desk toy that longs for adven­ture. Observ­ing the space around him, a robot finds a toy car and heads off on a road trip across the Unit­ed States, guid­ed only by Google Maps Street View. We start on the Brook­lyn Bridge and fin­ish on the Pacif­ic Coast High­way in Cal­i­for­nia. Parts of the video look like sequences from a Pixar film, they are so well made. In real­i­ty, the film was pro­duced, ani­mat­ed, filmed, lit, edit­ed and grad­ed by one per­son: Tom Jenk­ins.

A great treat to start the week.

via Flow­ing Data

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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