Holy awesomeness!! I want a pet AT-AT!!

Check out this cute little VFX short by Patrick Boivin:

“Friendly banter and the odd over the top cuss, loads of bravado but no false pretense, and all our jokes at no one else’s expense.”

Two powerful short films from UK director/animator Matt Frodsham. Last year, he put out “Blokes” which was the winner of the Shortcuts Film Festival.

This year, he’s back with “Two Inches to the Right”. “Basically, I shot footage of myself for the motion capture then edited and exported to an image sequence and traced away in Photoshop any spare minute I could get with a Wacom tablet doing a black and a white layer… back into After Effects, lots of blending modes and a few keyframes and not a lot to the compositing…”

Beautiful and moving. Check out both shorts below. Absolutely amazing:

Blokes

Two Inches to the Right

After a long hiatus from posting, I’ve returned to post a new music video from the legendary Massive Attack. The song is called Splitting the Atom from their new album Heligoland; and the amazing video is directed by Edouard Salier. Check it out:

Massive Attack-Splitting the Atom-directed by Edouard Salier from edouard salier on Vimeo.

Click to see a full list of credits

A well executed short film by Laurie Hill and Annex Films, a London based production company. Laurie Hill takes us on a trip through the photo archives. Great animation style and great humor make for a great mix. Getty Images and Short & Sweet short film challenge winner: ‘Photo of Jesus’. Check it out!

Super compositing. My first guess is that they filmed each shot as a static shot, then zoomed in so they could pan around and make it look like a hand-held.

How did they really do it? I have no idea; you tell me…

From the director of “Battle of the Beans” and “Sea of Glasses” comes “Life is Beautiful”, a new commercial by The Escape Pod for OfficeMax. Great design work, and very well executed. Check it out!

Read on to see credits

The Mill is currently creating some of the hottest commercials on TV.  They bring a wicked mix of 3D, live action, seamless compositing and some seriously creative ideas. If you’ve seen their work, I’m sure you can agree that these guys know how to turn heads.

Their 2009 showreel is nothing short of spectacular. It is packed full of their latest and greatest, and to top it off, they cut it to an awesome track by Trentemoller -- “The Forest”. Check it out!

Nokia recently put out 2 ads for their Nokia N96 featuring the legendary Bruce Lee. The first of the two commercials shows Bruce Lee thumping two opponents in a game of ping pong. They took an old recording and with some compositing trickery, made it look like he’s actually playing ping pong.  When I first saw it, I thought it was actual lost footage; it’s so well done. Of course, it’s not real, but they did an amazing job of making it look as seamless as it gets.

Nokia hit the nail on the head with these commercials and to no surprise, they have become the latest addition to the viral hall of fame. I mean, how could you go wrong? Have a commercial with the legendary Bruce Lee using his insane nunchucks skills to sell phones! Whoever came up with this idea has definitely got a promotion coming.

Check out the Ping Pong version first, then scroll down and click through to watch the other commercial. Prepare to be amazed.

Click here to watch the second commercial

A new Acura commercial by a52.com, a studio located in Santa Monica, California. This video is a beautifully crafted piece of motion design work.

Check it out:

View a high quality version of this video here.

Read on to see a full list of credits

This is an old video now, but a classic in my opinion. When this came out, it got a lot of attention from the animation community. Even today it’s still a great piece of work.