Offset The Evil "Clown Flower Time", "Lollipop Gift Parade"

This film was created by the agency Clemenger BBDO with animation by Yukfoo Animation, and was commissioned by Sega. In this video, colorful images of clowns singing and dancing are interspersed with images from the violent and disturbing video game "Condemned 2". A jingle for a couple of flash games on offsettheevil.com includes lyrics about playing the cartoonish mini games to make up for committing many virtual acts of sadism in the "Condemned 2" game. The animation company's website can be found at www.yukfoo.net, and the YouTube videos for "Clown Flower Time" and "Lollipop Gift Parade" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcnjQeCfgjA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDmatDhA1vA&NR=1 respectively.

I think the commercial is going for the irony factor, since it contrasts bright, colorful, and sweet imagery with extremely disturbing images from the video game it is promoting. I found this commercial to be very amusing, not only for the aforementioned irony factor, but also on the level of the extremely bright aesthetic in itself. It helped stand out what would be yet another violent video game. It's definitely one of the more creative video game ads that I have seen.

Ford Kuga "Light Painters: Reject the Ordinary"

This film was created for Ford by the agency Wunderman Italy, produced by Indiana Production Company and PIPS:lab, and directed by Tak Kuroha. It involves several people doing what is known as light painting, a technique where long exposures taken at night of moving hand held light objects around creates drawings of light in the film exposure. In this film, light images created include a turntable station out of a bench, a soda can made out of a trash can, flowers out of sidewalk poles, and a candle out of a fire hydrant. At the end of each spot, the Kuga logo is drawn with a flashlight. The director's site can be found at www.takkuroha.com, and the site for PIPS:lab, where the light painters in the video came from, is at www.pipslab.nl. Some of these videos can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC17QW_HQZ4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdwdXEvYtBs&feature=related, and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BcX6YA2VeU&feature=related.

I love these films. I don't see what they have to do with the car they're promoting; in fact, I don't remember even seeing the car itself in any of the films. However, they are very eye catching. There really seems to be no message to the videos beyond the light painting itself, other than the tagline "Reject The Ordinary", which I assume is promoting the uniqueness of the car itself, which is a compact Euro SUV crossover. I would be interested in this video no matter what company the video is for. It's really quite a generic ad campaign, as you could switch the Ford Kuga product with almost anything. The novelty of the light painting ends up selling the product instead of the product selling itself. It makes me more interested in seeing more light painting than making me interested in the company it's advertising.

STASH 74.01

NORTON "LUNDGREN VS UNICORN"
Viral :48

Client:
NORTON FROM SYMANTEC

Agency:
ARC WORLDWIDE/LEO BURNETT

Director:
RYAN EBNER

Production:
HIS PRODUCTIONS

VFX:
MASSMARKET

This was lame, but entertaining. Flight hanger, pedestal on the left, soldier on the right. On the pedistal is a little unicorn, much like a "My Little Pony" toy. The soldier looks like an older, and uglier, Dolph LUNDGREN. Everything was grey-scale except for these two figures, drawing your focus to them. After a few statement and questions, an option to allow or deny shows up. Allow is pressed and Dolph toasts the unicorn with a flamethrower. The unicorn, covered in ash, coughs.

---

---

I thought it was lame because it lacked reality. If you're going to promote a hacking and virus defense software, then make the threat known in the piece. Considering it was Norton, a software that is invasive enough to be considered a virus unto itself, I'm really not that surprised.

"Our biggest challenge was probably animating the pony to give it an innocent and oblivious feeling in each shot. Also a few subtle things like the tiny cough and the proud feeling after it made Dolph's head explode in glitter. We went back and forth on the color of the pony for a while as it closely resembled a "My Little Pony". That was hard to get away from as it, in itself, resembles a tiny toy pony...but the voice-over helped to describe it differently."

I noticed that the reference here indicated that there was more to this clip than was shown, so I am suspecting that it was edited as well.

Tools Used
Maya
Mental Ray
After Effect's Trapcode Particular plug-in
Flame
Nuke

STASH 79.26

SWORDSMAN "RISE OF THE EAST", "BAMBOO GROVE"
Game trailers x 2 1:37, 2:00

Developer:
PERFECT WORLD

Director:
WANG XIAO

Animation:
PERFECT WORLD

---

---

This pair of short pieces is meant to inspire curiosity in this new game that Perfect World has created. It is meant to inspire through the use of a classic Chinese legend and artwork.

The realistic look of the animation and my involvement in MMORPGs drew me to this short.
I recognized the style in general as a game trailer from watching productions for Guild Wars, GW2, Diablo, D2, D3, Rift, WOW, ...

Oliver Xu, film distributor/video editor, Perfect World, Beijing: "The Swordsman book has a huge influence on Chinese people and most of them are quite familiar with the stories and characters. We can say that each Chinese has a Swordsman in his heart. So, how to create the characters is a big challenge for us. We hope to perform this famous story in a brand new way and at the same time we can't sway a lot from the original work."

"The biggest technical challenge we've met is the animation of clothes. Since the thesis of this CG is martial arts, the clothes are all much looser than normal. The collisions of the long robes and sleeves was very difficult to perform. Because we wanted to ensure high quality animation throughout the piece, we purchased an additional three workstations solely for the calculation of the garments."

"Red and yellow have special meanings in traditional culture. In Chinese history, these two colors are always used in celebrations and they are also the symbols of power."

Tools Used:
Mental Ray
3ds Max
Maya

Shape Shifter

D.Nielson
short film

STASH 76.01

Shape Shifter

Director: ALEX WEIL

Production: CHARLEX

Animation/VFX: CHARLEX

The short film Shape Shifter, is a visual FX test of the studio: a dark car is seen traveling through hills or mountains near dusk. The car enters a tunnel then through to a different dimension were it starts falling into parts that fall of the road. Some of the parts become a cougar while others become gazelles; the black robotic cougar chases the black robotic gazelles. Once the cougar catches one of the gazelles they fall apart and pieces of them fall into some water where they become fish that swim around for a while. Then after that one of the fish leap into the air and changes shape again becoming an eagle. The eagle then flies into a tunnel in a mountain and finely changes back into a car.

I think this film was a great exercise in creativity as was stated in the information from the Stash website. This was not for any commercial gain as far as I know, but it could be used as a demo to future clients seeing as CHARLEX has filmed a number of commercials in the past, even one for Star Trek.

What caught my eye was that the graphics would need little work to make a near to life CGI movie or OVA (Original Video Animation) for Voltron and Robotech.

One Rat Short

D.Nielson 101
Short Film

Stash 22.09

One Rat Short



Director: ALEX WEIL


VFX/animation:
 CHARLEX

The animation of the animals was incredibly life like. It starts out with the camera fallowing a nearly empty bag of cheese puffs on an elevated train track. The bag grabs the attention of a rat; the rat fallows the bag to the ventilation duct of a lab that uses rats for experimentation; drugs or behavior not sure which or if its meant to be undefinable. The main character of the film falls through the duct, nearly getting killed by the ventelation fan and lands inside the lab after seeing a female rat that catches his interest. After falling the rat tries to get close to the female rat and gets caught buy a robot that runs the lab. The tram-way rat gets tranquilized and prossessed by the robot. When the rat wakes up he finds himself in the same cage as the female rat and a number of other white lab rats. At this time the now empty bag of cheese puffs reenters the film and bumps the robot; the robot starts up and reads the bar code on the bag, which just happens to be the same bar code tattooed on the female white lab rat. With the robot confused and trying to grab the bag the robot runs itself into the cages knocking itself out. This shuts down the robot, releases the rats and opens the door to the outside. The tram way rat looks for his female interest. They run for the door, part way there the robot reboots itself and sees that the door is open, it shuts the door trapping the white lab rat inside the lab and the tram way rat from the elevated tram is now stuck out side.

If this idea had been taken to a 2hr movie this short could have been used in flash backs for The Secret of Nhim.

This work was not used for a commercial use, but could be used as a demo of their proof of creative production.

The American Dollar "Anything You Synthesize"

Genece Klein 101

The American Dollar ”Anything You Synthesize”

Music video

Descriptive Contents:

Director: Kasper Verweij

Production: Onesize

Animation/design: Onesize

Role: Concept/Design November 2008

Format: HD 720p

Length: 278 sec.

Kasper Verweij is the owner of the Onesize Motion Direction Designs. Onesize is a Dutch, Amsterdam based creative studio, founded in 2001. This group of talented designers and artists create Music Videos, Audiovisual Art, Animations, Commercials, Character Designs, VFX and games. They focus on motion graphics, animation, visual effects and live action direction and production for film and television.

What Happens: The video combines elements and images into a whole story in one. It starts out with an image of a decaying desert world, buzzing flies on the screen, the film reverses and moves back in time showing scraggly trees slowly coming back to life. It’s continuous moving of time, showing climates of rain, snow, night and day. The same realistic landscape is shown going from left to right as a bleak dead desert turning into a lush green beautiful spring time landscape. The moody music of American Dollar plays in the background, no words are spoken.

Additional Background: This link is the official website of the Onesize Motion Directors and producers of the video The American Dollar, “Anything you Synthesize” http://www.onesize.nl/

This link is on YouTube and it shows the video “Anything you Synthesize” by the American Dollar band. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSU49AFzgtw

This link is the official website for the American Dollar Band and also shows the video http://theamericandollar.info/

On the website for Onesize they have some information they share on the process they take to produce a film. They start out with a 3D computer image that’s a simple shape called a wireframe. The 3D projection-Breakdown starts with a original raw image, PRE grading, 3D Geometry, Camera Projections, Camera Move, Background paint, Composite, Post Pan and Post effects then the Final shot, Manobada, Rhythms & Hues and The tweaking process. This information was for a commercial they did on another project but I thought some of these steps were probably used for the video “Anything you Synthesize.”

A Key Question: This film was a music video produce by Onesize for American Dollar. American Dollar is a rock band formed in 2005 in Queens New York. Onesize was inspired by their music and was commissioned to do a music video for them. Onesize says that they were trying to communicate an image of emotion that was felt in the music of American Dollar.

My impressions: I liked this music video. This film is full of emotions of gloom and darkness but also hope and life. You feel like you’re missing something, there’s an empty feeling and sadness. But then through the sound of the expressive music and the images of the landscape moving back in time, changing into a beautiful green lush land, you feel a hope and happiness as it comes back to life. Watching this film and listening to the music, makes you want to take a look at your life, think about the future and what’s in store for our planet. It makes you feel like slowing down. I wonder about the events happening in the world today. From natural disasters to our environment, how we contaminate our world and the effects of pollution, what could the future hold for our planet? Are we heading towards the image in this film of a lifeless, desert?

Tales of the Road: "The boy who didn't stop, look & listen"

Genece Klein GRCP 101

Tales of the Road: “The Boy Who Didn’t Stop, Look & Listen”

Descriptive Contents:

TVC: 40

Client: Department for Transport

Agency: Carat

Director: Smith & Foulkes

Production: Nexus Productions

Animation: Nexus Productions

This short film of The Boy Who Didn’t Stop, Look & Listen is created from the producers of Nexus Productions. They are featured on the 2009 January Stash CD cover and also have been on two other Stash covers in the past.

The Director Adams Foulkes and Alan Smith are London’s top directing team. They have many awards for their work including an Oscar for the 3D animated short film This Way Up, Gran Prix award, Gold award at Cannes Lions and an ITV award for Best commercial plus many more. They’ve done work for Coca-Cola, Honda, and Dream Works Paramount’s Lemony Snicket: A Series of Unfortunate Events, they also directed several sketches for the BBC’s animated comedy show Monkey Dust.

What Happens in this film: Tales of the road is about a little boy who is injured and looks back on his life before his accident. It’s a film about warning children of the dangers of the road. The boy has a broken leg and is sad because he can’t play football. The narrator says the boy used to love to play football all day long. It has a dark feeling of gloom and sadness as he thinks back to the time he crossed the street and was hit by a car. His broken leg prevents him from playing football as a ball rolls up beside him. The voice of the narrator gives an explanation of how the little boy wished he had crossed the street in a safe place where he could see traffic coming, so he could play football again. It doesn’t actually show the impact of the little boy being hit by a car but implies that’s what has happened. The background is dark; the boy has big sad eyes with a sad, worried expression, he is dirty and bruised, his leg has a cast on it and a crutch is under his arm. The film switches forward to a bright day when the boy was happy playing football, and then it shows his friends as they cross the street and how they have learned to look both ways before crossing. It has a unique background of soft colors that contrasts with the lifelike 3D figures of the children.

Additional Background: Attached is a link to the Tales of the Road website. There are games children can play, on how to be safe on the road.

I played one of the games. You use the arrow keys to direct a child on his way across the street. It helps you find the safest place to cross the street and get home safe. When you go across the street the wrong way, it says OH NO it’s only a short walk but there’s a better place to cross nearby, try again. Then, when you do it right the school patrol officer helps you get across the street and it says; that’s a safe place with a picture of a thumbs up. It shows how you can be street smart taking the cross walks, and at the finish line is says well done.

http://talesoftheroad.direct.gov.uk/

Attached is another website called Think Road Safety with a link to the Tales of the Road website, listed above. This site is part of the website of the Department for Transport, who is the client for the Tales of the Road short film.

http://think.direct.gov.uk/index.html

This link is from YouTube of the film Tales of the Road: “The Boy Who Didn’t Stop, Look & Listen”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqGSBQAaxXQ&feature=related

A Key Question: This short film is a commercial. It is trying to educate young children on the safety of crossing the street. The Department for Transport did this film to help children to be safe. There was research showing that young children between the ages of 5 and 9 are more likely to die in a road collision than from any other accident. They say children can’t judge how fast cars are going or how far away they are. This film was a way to get the message across, to help children to realize they need to choose a place where they can see clearly in all directions and where a driver can see them. It stresses to be safe.

My Impressions: Oh my gosh! I think this is a great film and should be shown on TV more often. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this film before.

It might be a bit dark for children but the gloomy image this film portrays is not as bad as getting hit by a car. Sometimes the blunt facts of life’s reality need to be conveyed, for the message to get across.

The people who made this film are extremely talented. The artwork and the expressions on the child’s face was done really wonderfully and the concept of saving a child’s life is enormous.

In my neighborhood there are children who cross the street in unsafe places all the time, rarely at a crosswalk. They streak across the busy road barely being missed by the traffic.

A few years ago there was a grown man who crossed the street by my house, he didn’t use a crosswalk and he got hit by a car and died. What a horrible, painful ending!

The meaning of this film has a great message for everyone.