Hunger (1974)

The film Hunger inspired a generation of computer animators in Canada. This short is created by Peter Foldes under the auspices of the National Film Board of Canada. Hunger includes striking computer-generated interpolations of key poses drawn by hand and painstakingly digitized into the computer software.
NRC (National Research Council of Canada) scientists Nestor Burtnyk had programmed a complete key frame animation package that allowed the creation of animated sequences by providing only the key frames. The National Film Board in Montreal was contacted and thus a project to allow artists to experiment with computer animation was launched.

The first experimental film involving freehand drawings, called Metadata, was made by artist and animator Peter Foldes. This led to a more substantial collaboration on a 10-minute feature called Hunger/La Faim about world hunger and about rich and poor countries. The film took a year and a half to be created.
It became the first computer-animated movie to be nominated for an Academy Award as best short for "its trailblazing progress in the development of software and techniques for computer assisted key framing for character animation". It received other honours, including the Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival and other international film awards.



This films is a satire of self-indulgence in a hungry world. Rapidly dissolving, reshaping images, made with the aid of a computer, create a stark contrast between abundance and want. A man eats, at first sparingly but soon, his appetite grows to gluttony, greed and gratification of every desire. The nightmare that finally haunts him is the one that hangs over our desparate world.
Hunger remains a landmark of early computer animation.
You can buy Best of the Best - Strange Tales of the Imagination.

All America City

by Joseph Tripi

SELECT AWARDS & EXHIBITIONS


• 11/2006 Parsons FEAST Group Exhibition New York, NY

• 11/2006 SVA BFA Photography Mentors Program New York, NY
One on one mentorship with Elisabeth Biondi- Visuals Editor of The New Yorker

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• 10/2006 SVA BFA Photography Gallery – 2 Floor New York, NY
Solo exhibition of Rustbelt Revival series.

• 09/2006 1635 Wharton St. Philadelphia, PA
Solo exhibition of Rustbelt Revival series.

• 09/2006-05/2007 SVA Special Photography Award New York, NY
Scholarship based upon photographic merit and GPA.

Collision (2005)

Collision seems to be an abstract reflection on the clash of cultures which forcibly merges American quilts and Islamic patterns into beautiful kaleidoscopic scenes. I'm not sure this film is an original depiction of aesthetics into politics or an abstract satire based on the geometry of flags. Why couldn't it simply be a film about RGB, the three video color channels red, green and blue?
For an American audience, particularly, the sound cues must really help identify which culture the shapes and colors represent. Many Americans will only interpret this short as a disturbing yet potent piece of abstract political filmmaking. Personally I enjoy Max Hattler's film for its aesthetic quality.

The colours work well as do the sounds effects. The transitional movements into different shapes remind me of Oscar Fischinger's works. I can also see motifs of Islamic art in the patterns. The sound might be a collision but the video ends with the ambiguous sound of fireworks, which can either be destructive or celebratory. In the end the colors smash together into a manic color wheel of harmony. Thus this work can be interpreted in a radical number of ways.

The Process

"The is a journey and exploration through a personal 'pleroma', an imaginary landscape populated by strange, wondrous creatures and archetypal characters. Throughout the creation of this story, readers will find that the art will vary radically from chapter to chapter. This relates to another stop along the way; that of the journey of the artist. By exploring this personal world, I also hope to expand and develop my own visual idiom by experimenting with new ways of making art and storytelling. Even this introduction is by no means permanent. I will be updating it and finetuning it as the story develops. Everything here is in flux and part of an exploration and investigation into life, creativity and spirituality."

You can continue to read The Process by Joe Infurnari.

The Music Box (1932)

The Music Box was directed by James Parrott, produced by Hal Roach and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and it's one of the longer shorts for its time. 

The film is a partial remake of their 1927 silent short Hats Off, which was filmed at the same location and is today considered a lost film. Hats Off was itself remade in the same location in a film called It's Your Move starring Edgar Kennedy in 1945. But the inspiration to build a comedy around those steps apparently came to producer Hal Roach even before Hats Off. 

Although The Music Box won the first Academy Award for Live Action Short Film (Comedy) in 1932. This little classic is generally regarded as the Stan&Ollie's best film. 

The Laurel & Hardy Moving Co. have a challenging job: hauling a player piano up a monumental flight of stairs to Prof. von Schwarzenhoffen's house. Their task is complicated not only by a sassy nursemaid and the impatient Prof. von Schwarzenhoffen himself, but also by the force of gravity, which repeatedly pulls the piano back down to the bottom of the stairs. 

What could have been one joke repeated over and over to the point of monotony, became, instead, a comic fugue with innovative variations. Stan and Ollie labor with a mighty effort but obtain minimal results: the beauty lies in watching the team work out one hilarious routine after another. 

This film is slapstick of a very high level, born of the utmost frustration. 

You can buy Laurel & Hardy (Sons of the Desert/The Music Box/Another Fine Mess/Busy Bodies/County Hospital).

Nature 05

Sebastien Chort. After 4 years working for Blur Studio ( 3 years as Supervisor), he got hired by Dreamworks for a Lighting position. He started working on Bee Movie and then Kung Fu Panda.

One EskimO - Hometown (2007)

One eskimO are a four piece indie band from London, consisting of Kristian Leontiou (vocals), Adam Falkner (drums), Martin Waugh (guitar), Jamie Sefton (bass and horns). The band have since released the heartwarming 'Hometime' (early December 2007, U.K.). The video to Hometime is animated by Smuglling Peanuts and is currently circulating through the underground, appearing on MTV TWO's 120 Minutes session and online. The band's animated video has been nominated for the Public Choice award at the 2008 British Animation Awards.

The little eskimo spent most of the time wondering and thinking up stories and singing along to all the tunes that lived in his head. You see the eskimo loved nothing more than just to sing at home in his ark. It was here in his beautiful ark that he would figure out how to join the stories with the songs that floated around in his head.
Enchanted by the beautiful sound, three very curious animals decided to be brave and follow the noise.
This musical video is very sensitive, delicate and well drawn.
The humans beings are dead, sad and blighted creatures. How can't you think about your life?

La Piovra (Octopus)

Armin Barducci. He's the penciler of Aleph, Il Giocatore. His comics have been issued in various anthologies.

Second Growth

Bill Cone works as a Production Designer at a computer animation studio.

Hourly Comics

John Campbell. You can read Hourly Comics.

Allegretto (1936)

Allegretto develops itself as an invigorating contrast between overlapping, expanding concentric circles and flocks of angular, foreground shapes that sail across the screen in time to Rainger's jazzy score.
There's a series of white and pale green lozenges, irregularly distributed across a larger rhomboid shape composed of rectangles divided into red and deep green at each of whose tip hovers a scattering of white diamonds. Diamond and oval shapes in primary colors perform a sensual, upbeat ballet to the music of composer Ralph Rainger. The geometric dance is set against a background of expanding circles that suggest radio waves. Allegretto presents an intricate layering of a number of recurring motives.



This was the first film Oskar Fischinger made after he emigrated from Berlin to Hollywood in order to escape the increasingly difficult political situation in Germany. He made the film for Paramount as a kind of interlude in a longer musical film but the collaboration collapsed completely and it was never used.
He found that Paramount had changed the film project from Technicolor to black-and-white. Also, Paramount printed the black-and-white version intercut with various live action images, so it was no longer totally abstract.
Several years later, with the help of Hilla von Rebay, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (Guggenheim Foundation) allowed him to buy his short film Allegretto back from Paramount, so he was able to complete it in color as he had originally intended. Fischinger then redid and re-painted the cells and made a color version to his satisfaction. The layers of cels allowed Fischinger to develop rhythms, harmonies and counterpoints of forms, while the colors change from frame to frame to create lush hues on divisionist principles, achieving particularly luminous and chromatic hues that could not be produced by normal methods of animation photography (William Moritz). Fischinger was forced to finance the distribution of this film himself and was able to make only a few copies but the film was shown at museums and centers of advanced art all over the world. This became one of the most-screened and successful films of visual music's history and one of Fischinger's most popular films.
You can buy these: The importance of being Fischinger and Oskar Fischinger: Ten Films (DVD).

Robot Girl

by McBess.

Manhatta (1921)

Manhatta is the result of a collaboration between painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand (neither of the two had previous filmmaking experience and no connections to the film industry). It is a cinematic prose poem exalting the energetic and modern pulse of New York City.
This film is a rhythmic series of images, interspersed with verse excerpted from Whitman, fashioning an expression of the city over the course of a day. Their urban portrait begins at dawn as scores of people arrive in the city for a day of work. The ten minute film spans an imaginary day in the life of New York City, beginning with footage of Staten Island ferry commuters and culminating with the sun setting over the Hudson River.
It consists of 65 shots sequenced in a loose narrative in which the primary objective is to explore the relationship between photography and film.

Its many brief shots and dramatic camera angles emphasize New York's photographic nature. Strand and Sheeler exhibited Manhatta as both projected film as well as prints made from the film strips that were used like photographic negatives. They created a sense of life.
Manhatta can be viewed as a representation of New York City through the eyes of a still photographer (Sheeler) : camera movement is kept to a minimum, as is incidental motion within each shot. Each frame provides a view of the city that has been carefully arranged into abstract compositions. For the most part, the camera stays stationary to capture the images of the extraordinary cityscape. Sheeler and Strand aimed their camera from great heights in the city’s office towers. The city’s architecture repeatedly minimizes its inhabitants. Even the construction of these mighty edifices is not a celebration of human greatness. Manhatta is an abstract and often disturbing glimpse across a city that seems too large for its people.

Untitled

Kyle Cassidy