hydra: homunculus.

“Homunculus” is a bizarrely absurd twist on two concepts; one ancient and one psychological. The first of an annual series of experimental shorts from HumbleTV’s in-house team Hydra, “Homunculus” begins as a study of things too small to be seen and too slow to be known. Air and gas and bacteria that slowly rot, pulling at the molecules and fibres of the natural world until they decay. Time, slowly pulling away at the insides of everything alive.

After that, things get really nasty.

Described by Hydra as “…taking its title from the Latin word for “Little Human”, the piece is an associative mashup between the two concepts behind the word: The first being middle-age alchemical beliefs that “little men” could be spontaneous generated from dead or decaying matter.  The second being Carl Jung’s usage as a personification of pure id.  These ideas, combined with our love of Dutch still life’s “beautiful decay,” sowed the seeds for this unique little monster of a film.”

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They began be sealing off an entire still life inside a plexiglass box and used multiple DSLRs shot a frame every 5 minutes for 11 days to document the slow (and noble!) rot. After that the entire Hydra team spent 4 months, from character conception to scoring, to complete the final HD short.

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alex roman: the third and the seventh.

It’s still messing with my head, but this entire gem of a video is CGI. Like a vision brought into a reality so startlingly real that it almost can’t be believed… yet, there it is. The amount of detailed work that director Alex Roman would have had to put into “The Third and The Seventh” boggles me. His dedication and deft eye is matched only by his extraordinary vision.

An examination of the way we visually record the physical world we live in, chronicling our 3-dimensional reality through a 2-dimensional visual, “The Third and The Seventh” is  a fantastic glimpse into a future world of impossible beauty. Or, rather, hopefully through the inspiration of his vision, a world of possible beauty.

Unlike a grand fantasy, impressive but unattainable, Roman’s detailed, modern, sparse film seems dreamy, yet so close to the truth as to almost be real. It’s like an understandable improvement, an attainable evolution into a world of architectural, environmental, intellectual, elemental, and ecological fusion. A place where all of our potential has been realized.

To me, it feels like fleeting second immediately after you’ve woken from a dream, where for a moment that dream is your entire, thrilling truth.

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Now that you’ve seen it, can you believe that none of that is real footage? This isn’t VFX, it’s fully (painstakingly, amazingly) created with a mix of 3dsmax, Vray, After Effects, and Premiere.

For proof, watch Roman’s compositing vid, where he’s show us his process.

Via Feed

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eb hu: lucky.

I’m like a kid in a candy store today. Scanning through my usual go-to sites is turning up a treasure trove of new work from some of my favourite directors from right before the holidays.

I’m going to start sounding really superlative, but after Robert Seidel’s “_Grau” yesterday, here we have another work from the creator of one of my favourite pieces of motion design ever. Works like these are the reasons I started blogging, so this is emotional stuff for me here.

I first discovered director and animator EB Hu with his breathtaking “Josie’s Lalaland.” Quite simply, it’s one of the most simple, sincere, and exquisite works of art I’ve ever seen.

Like “Josie’s Lalaland”, “Lucky” is noble and compassionate. Hu is not afraid to confront our fears, demons, and ugliest deeds, but does so in such a delicate but impacting way. Clean lines, emotive visuals, sharp edges, and everything in perfect balance to let the emotion of what we’re seeing take focus. It’s the vigour of his subtle touch that strikes me. His work compels us, in dignified and glorious tones, to remember that all life is to be cherished, and, without scolding, reminds us that it is our own lives that are without value if we allow ourselves to forget this.

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And if, for some reason, though I can’t imagine what it would be, you didn’t click on “Josie’s Lalaland” earlier, here it is as well, because it’s simply too beautiful for you to not see. I will not forgive myself if you don’t watch this video, right here, right now.

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Via Motionographer

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robert seidel: _grau hd.

Prepare to have your mind blown. I couldn’t be any more thrilled about this. My first post of 2010 kicks off the year in epic style with the HD re-release of Robert Seidel’s 2004 masterpiece “_Grau.”

Seidel is one of my absolute favourite digital artists in the entire world. I’ve posted before, with my adoration, about his groundbreaking video for Zero 7’s “Futures”, his amazing large-scale outdoor projection “Processes: Living Paintings”, and his gorgeous video installation “Vellum.”

Posted publicly for the first time in HD, “_Grau” has only been seen before at this level of quality and detail at galleries and festivals. To me it’s a trailblazing work, that perfectly personifies Seidel’s digital/organic style clash and attention to detail that first made me fall in love with his work.

Seidel describes it himself as “… a personal reflection on memories coming up during a car accident, where past events emerge, fuse, erode and finally vanish ethereally… various real sources were distorted, filtered and fitted into a sculptural structure to create not a plain abstract, but a very private snapshot of a whole life within its last seconds…”

“Grau” roughly translates into English as “greyish – an achromatic color of any lightness between the extremes of black and white.” Here we have Seidel’s vision of the human spirit in limbo, not between extremes of the afterlife but the unknown moment between life and death. In it he structures the human soul into the most beautiful and terrifying embodiments of its own emotions: prismatic light, splintering bone, gnarled despair, silent torrents of hope, and silky liquid lightness that fades away within itself. It magnifies all of our greatest fears and yearnings and is something I’ve never forgotten. Seeing it again now, in its intended detail and nuance, is nothing less than incredible.

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Via Motionographer.

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selfburning: field.

An intense and amazing experimental short from Russian animation and experimental motion team Selfburning.

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etsuko ichikawa: traces of the molten state.

To create her works, which she calls glass pyrographs, Tokyo-born, Seattle-based artist Etsuko Ichikawa trails streams of molten glass, Jackson Pollock-like, across paper.

The resulting tendrils of ash, lacy yet fire-scarred, are both jagged and flowing. Like lightning piercing a very dry forest,  the organic reaction between fire, air, and earth is elemental. Cycles of existence tracing each other – both earth that grew wood to become paper and earth that was hewn into sand and then melted into glass. It’s a molecular home-coming; the lost long relatives of stone and arbour reunited, lifetimes later, evolved into higher states, through fire.

The resulting burnt etches, smoky (literally) and lithe, are described by Ichikawa as a “continuing investigation of what lies between the ephemeral and the eternal.”

Via Today and Tomorrow

makoto yabuki: white box.

I discovered Makoto Yabuki’s “White Box” through two very reliable sources: my boy HXFOUR sent it to me and I also saw it on Kateopolis’ epic Vimeo Channel.

This is like a visual toy box of everything I love: spontaneous colour, pencil crayons, bird song, clean white rooms, and anything to do with Japan.

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robert kilman + safwat saleem: and everything was alright.

I realize that I’m a massive dork. But I can’t help it. Following an important day in the life of a large stuffed bear (named “Bear”), Robert Kilman and Safwat Saleem’s “And Everything Was Alright” is one of the most poignant and lovely shorts I’ve ever seen.

There’s a purity of emotion connected to children’s things. Kids live in a universe so fully realized to them yet still nascent to grown-ups. Sometimes we forget how deeply we felt when we were little.  Bear is an amalgamation of a memory and a reality; is he young but living in an adult world, or is he old and continues to nurture his dreams despite his life? I think it’s both. Bear is an adult embodiment of our childhood inner-life. We carry those dreams with us no matter how old we grow or how far away they seem.

The sweet simplicity of this short broke my heart and then quietly fixed it again. I have been this bear. I know this bear. And I, too, have searched for my rocket ship…

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Part of an integrated series experiences to totally bring the story to life, “An Everything Was Alright” also shines as a children’s book, online, and an art exhibition.

onedotzero + karsten schmidt: adventures in motion 2009/10.

I frequently find myself wishing that I lived in London, for various reasons. Now another major one is just around the corner…

Onedotzero_adventures in motion is back and showcasing some of the world’s most innovative motion design from Sept. 9-13. The incredible lineup of screenings, installations, and more makes me drool. It’s visual Utopia.

For this year’s visual identity and festival trailer, one of my favourite digital motion artists, the bad ass Karsten Schmidt, teamed up with Wieden+Kennedy London to create sinewy, flowing, fluid tendrils of text that eventually link together to form the festival logo . All of the copy was gleaned from onedotzero’s social media portals or pulled from blogs and Vimeo comments, symbolizing the collaborative nature of the festival and of the viewers’ comments and feelings forming its foundation. I wonder if one of mine is in there somewhere…?

The result is nicely symbolic, pertinent, and deceptively difficult to create.

If anyone would like to fly me to London to blog from onedotzero, I’m totally down. Just putting it out there. Anyone…?

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radi0lab + will hoffman: 16: moments.

Call me a pussy, but I just cried like a baby watching this. In a similar vein to Chris Milk’s amazing “Last Day Dream”, Radi0lab and  Will Hoffman’s “16: Moments” delivers a bombardment of visual poignancy that’s a bit overwhelming. But in a good way. Like being drawn under by an ocean wave. Or blown out of a cannon. Or eating too much wasabi.

See, I get all emotional because at times like this you realize how universal these glimpses are. People really are very much the same. I had a sort of visual-synaesthesia episode watching this: I tasted parts, I touched others. I was only watching a lap top screen, yet I could smell things.

Powerfully engaging. Like taking your whole life and strolling it past a long hall of mirrors. When I looked I saw things I was, things I am right now, and things I will be…

Via No Zap