Cartoon corner: off the reel
There’s many a way to bring animation and cartoon characters to life. From the ultra high-tech world of 3D motion graphics to traditional methods such as stop motion, pen & ink and cut out bits of cardboard. However you see it, it’s all about making masses of pixels move.
With more talent than ever bursting with ideas to make their vision a moving reality, there’s certainly not a shortage of engaging new content that’ll light up your screen.
Continuing our on-going series, we pick out some of the latest animated shorts that caught the eye and our attention.
We hope you’ll appreciate the craft and love that goes into all of these pieces of work as we jump into a bunch of fun from cartoon creators based in Germany, Mexico, Canada, USA and the UK.
FJAAK – Snow
Directed and animated by Raman Djafari, the mighty FJAAK video for ‘Snow’ tells the story of a character following an inner calling – taking a spiritual journey of partnership, love, pain, destruction, growth and rebirth. All put together in a style that melds the urban and primitive styles with striking use of blues and red.
Technicolor Fabrics – Levitando
Artist Daniel Barreto from Guadalajara in Mexico brings to life this vividly colourful and splash like animation for Mexican band Technicolor Fabrics’s track “Levitando”. Making the most of flowing movement, forms and blended patterns, his work is anything but dull.
The Second Coming – Eoin Duffy
A video for TED Ed, Irish filmmaker Eoin Duffy who lives and works in Vancouver brings to life this magnificent poem by W.B. Yeats with a minimalist yet angular approach.
Brain Wave – Jake Fried
Short, dense yet immensely intense – Jake Fried uses ink and white-out to generate hallucinatory vistas of personal evolution. This is no exception! Modifying and shooting images over and over to create a mind-bending animation that evolves at a frenzied pace – you’ll want to watch this on repeat for a while to truly grasp the level of detail.
Aeroplane – Alexandra Lund
Written and directed by Alexandra Lund – Aeroplane is a colourful, abstract expressive exploration of the kind of thoughts that get into your head, and then put down roots to make them happen (or at least that’s what the description says). Make your own mind up…
