Category Archives: Great Animation Clips!

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Tabook- NSFW

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After winning the Best Animated Short at CineKink 2017, director Dario van Vree and producer Tünde Vollenbroek’s comical animation Tabook has now been released online. Tabook looks at the subject of sex in a fun loving way, highlighting the taboo that exists in society around embracing sexuality. 

While browsing the bookstore 19-year-old Gwen is unexpectedly drawn to a volume of kinky erotica, earning her disapproving glares from the other customers.

Director Dario van Vree has been directing animation since graduating from his studies at the prestigious KASK academy in Belgium. Having a specific eye for the weird, the inventive and the power of character performance, his work is characterized by clarity, humor and a love for paradoxes. Besides directing, Dario teaches animation at the Willem de Kooning Academy and is co-founder of the KLIK Amsterdam Animation Festival. 

Producer Tünde Vollenbroek is an animation graduate from the HKU and Animation Sans Frontieres, and is a producer at Studio Pupil, the production company that created Tabook. She is a chief European correspondent at Cartoon Brew and chief programmer of the KLIK Amsterdam Animation Festival.

Reineke Jonker helps the humour come alive with the priceless vocal performance we hear from lead character Gwen while animators Michael Sewnarian, Bonnie Mier and Tom Mourik created the colourful animated world Gwen inhabits. 

This film has been has been sweeping the boards at film festivals throughout the world, having been selected for 32 film festivals including in the Manchester Animation Festival 2016
, Athens Animfest 2017, KLIK Amsterdam Animation Festival 2016 and Anima Brussels Animation Film Festival 2017. Tabook was also included in the Selected Dutch Shorts 2017 and the Korte Film Poule 2017.

Tabook is now available online. 

Vimeo: vimeo.com/studiopupil/tabook

YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=JKqg9JWRZUU

Facebook: facebook.com/studiopupilanimation/

 

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Freezing a Muay Thai battle in time: Saddington Baynes premieres unique ‘Statue’ full-body 3D simulations

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Freezing a Muay Thai battle in time: Saddington Baynes premieres unique ‘Statue’ full-body 3D simulations

You can view the entire piece here.

LONDON, UK – 12th May 2017 – With the release of its Statue project, London-based creative studio Saddington Baynes has created a frozen moment of a Muay Thai battle, utilising full-body 3D photo scans created in partnership with body-scanning experts FBFX.

Saddington Baynes is well-known for pushing the boundaries of technical innovation in the creative industry, establishing its R&D arm SBLabs to showcase this in-house ability. For Statue, SBLabs used advanced procedural displacement techniques, complex shaders and dynamic particle simulations to deliver a fierce fighting showcase. The results are already sweeping up accolades across the creative community, including a Platinum in the Creativity International Media & Interactive Design Awards.

James Digby-Jones, Executive Creative Director at Saddington Baynes, comments: “We wanted to create a project to showcase our expertise working with complex simulations and highly detailed 3D talent, while also demonstrating our imaginative storycraft and VFX capabilities. The Statue project quickly picked up a Platinum award and we’ve entered it into others. It’s a great piece that shows off a variety of high level skills, applicable to multiple market sectors.”

Scanning and capture

To achieve unparalleled detail required meticulous planning. SBLabs blocked out early concepts in Cinema 4D to explore strong poses and the choreography and to direct the camera path.

SBLabs then approached SFX costume and 3D scanning specialists FBFX, who captured key moments of the Muay Thai battle in live action, as one at a time the combatants jumped and punched and kicked, all the while being captured as high resolution point clouds and image maps from multiple cameras. Besides being martial arts enthusiasts, both models were actually part of the Saddington Baynes team – a Production Assistant and a CG artist!

Andrew White, Creative Director at Saddington Baynes, comments: “FBFX helped us build separate scan captures in ZBrush with seamless results. They were a huge asset, delivering exactly what we needed in line with our vision”

Particle simulation

Alongside these scanned models, Statue also features complex Houdini simulations. The models land blows on each other, cracking open igneous husks to reveal the searing heat below. SBLabs ran a series of customised fragmentation and tessellation processes on the geometry with look development performed in Mantra.

Andrew White, Creative Director at Saddington Baynes, comments: “We found that by outputting some custom aov passes we could create a hot metal look inside Nuke. By using holdout mattes and base beauty elements, this gave us a great way to time and control the intensity of the heat effect.”

Based out of London, Saddington Baynes has a long history of technical innovation. Besides being the original pioneers of digital retouching in 1991, Saddington Baynes were also one of the first production studios to harness the potential of CGI in-house. More recently, the team developed an Engagement Insights® service – the world-first use of neuroscience techniques to measure emotional impact of imagery. Recent commissions include Honda’s pan-European ‘Real View Test Drive’ campaign.

About Saddington Baynes

Saddington Baynes is a leading creative production agency that has produced premium imagery for advertising agencies and brand clients for 25 years.

Saddington Baynes’ mission is to create sensational imagery that inspires brand devotion, with a focus on emotional reactions and engagement. To achieve this, Saddington Baynes developed its Engagement Insights® service – an entirely new way to measure the emotional impact of imagery, using neuroscience techniques.

http://www.saddingtonbaynes.com/work/favourites/statue

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CGI 3D Animated Short Film HD: “POILUS Short Film” by ISART DIGITAL

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A beautifully animated and rendered film but honestly the story left me a little wanting. I think it would have been better if it had been an alien enemy (because after all it looked nothing like another rabbit) and it was going to kill him and he played the harmonica and the enemy exploded because it couldn’t handle music, or at least if the enemy stopped attacking when it heard the music. Music soothes the savage beast sort of thing. What are your thoughts?

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Anime from 1917

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Check out this anime from all the way back in 1917 before everything they did looked the same. Before all the eyes got huge and before even the men looked like women.

… Long before it became known as anime, early Japanese animators honed their craft, producing cartoons that were both fascinating and fun. And you can watch them for yourself, reports the BBC, thanks to a new website celebrating 100 years of Japanese animation.

The site is the brainchild of Japan’s National Film Center, which celebrates the country’s long and rich film history as part of Japan’s National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. And it contains plenty of eye candy, even for those who mistakenly believe that Japanese animation begins and ends with “Sailor Moon,” Astro Boy or Spirited Away.

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Black Tie Only | Marvel’s Rocket & Groot | Disney XD

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Episode 3!

The Rocket and Groot shorts are animated by Passion Pictures, who were nominated for Best Animated Short at the Academy Awards this year for their work on “Pear Cider and Cigarettes.” They recently won an Annie award and are also behind the Gorillaz music videos. The shorts are based on a design by comic artist Skottie Young, whose numerous credits include New Warriors and the Rocket Raccoon comic book.

All 12 shorts will be available on the Disney XD app beginning Monday, March 27. The first four will also be released on Disney XD YouTube on Monday, March 27. A compilation of all 12 shorts will premiere Monday, April 10 (7:00 am, ET/PT) on Disney XD.