Our latest selection of animation and ‘cartoon’ capers to feast your eyes on
There are many methods, styles and means of making animation – bringing characters, objects, places and spaces to life.
Ultimately, it’s all about finding coherent ways of telling all important stories and communicating messages through making masses of pixels move in some shape or form on our side of the screen.
Whether you revel in pieces of material shot frame-by-frame, multi- media mash ups, mixing of ink and paint, traditional hand drawings, etchings to more modern machinations that involve the manipulation of graphics on a computer screen. Whatever you prefer, there’s never been more exciting time for artists to express ideas and make their vision a reality.
Continuing our on-going series, we pick out some of the latest animations that caught our attention. We hope you’ll appreciate the sheer level of effort, love and creative brilliance that goes into these seemingly short pieces of work. As we focus on a bunch of fun from cartoon creators based in the USA, Russia, Australia and the UK.
John Roseboro – Saints of God
Cady Buche and Travis Barron of studio ‘Unlimited Time’ from Portland create this beautifully simple mix-mash of live and generated footage. Resulting in this lovely animation for John Roseboro’s track “Saints of God” where all the elements are kept to a minimum, colour palette is dialled down to reflect the soft nature of Roseboro’s composition.
ford. – Fruit&Sun
Taken from his album “The Color of Nothing”, Utah-based producer ford.’s “Fruit&Sun” gets a vibrantly colourful treatment from talented Los Angeles-based director, Mitch Pond. Building on the visual style of ford.’s album artwork, the video rolls you subconsciously through the songs journey. All pieced together by the cycle of minimal elements that are both fruit and sun.
Kasseta – Rewind the Tape
Dive headlong into the bizarrely brilliant 3D computer animated video world made by Yanzi for electro hip hop artists Kasseta on “Rewind the Tape.” The world of Matrix meets the sci-fi glare of GTA on steroids, the realms of fantasy and game world mesh into a meta-commentary on reality.
Steffie Yee – The Lost Sound
Using cut plasticine, coloured pencil, paper and ink, Sydney-based animator and illustrator Steffie Yee explores the inheritance of language in her family and what’s lost, when a language is lost in this hypnotising short: “The Lost Sound”.
Frank Leone & Teardrop Estates – Shoulder Wire
Bristol maestro of ruff-house animation – Ruffmercy (aka Russ Murphy) – continues his quest for hand-painted, world domination that transcends the temples of nirvana. As his latest collaboration with US musicians/producers Frank Leone & Teardrop Estates comes together on “Shoulder Wire”, revel in primal soup of painted Super 8 film, comped together in after effects and lofi footage of New Wave dancers & Jazzercise: the magic spills forth once again.
