From world-renowned stop motion animator Barry JC Purves comes Tchaikovky, an animated interpretation of the life and work of the great 19th century Russian composer. The film will hit the big screens later this year. While working on the set, cameraman Joe Clarke shot a mesmerising series of time-lapses of the masterminds in action – Purves and Tchaikovsky:
He’s also uploaded some gorgeous stills from the film on his website.
I am exquisitely thrilled about this one!
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
(Shakespeare, The Tempest)
I saw this beautiful short animated feature at the Animateka film festival in 2009. It’s stayed with me since, like a line from Shakespeare or a poem by Rilke. Enjoy!
For his own jollies, illustrator Andrew Kolb turned David Bowie’s Space Oddity into a children’s book. What great fun! And he’s decided to share the whole of the book here.
Major Tom is one of my hero-explorers too. Unafraid of having his gaze shifted by the nebulous tides of his wonder, he marches out into … space.
Via The Paltry Sapien.
By 14 he had written five novels and penned a diary about the Nazi occupation of Prague. By 16 he had produced more than 170 drawings and paintings, edited an underground magazine in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, written numerous short stories and had walked to the gas chamber at Auschwitz.
Petr Ginz, Moon Landscape
From Wake Forest University and University of Florida comes a staggering documentary about this boy of wondrous creativity who had remained virtually unknown until in 2003 a particle of his paper dream, a drawing entitled Moon Landscape, journied into space on Space shuttle Columbia that never returned due to its tragic disintegration during re-entry.
Sydney based motion designer Patrick Clair specializes in visualizing information. Gorgeous visuals plus terrible information equals brilliant short animated documentaries.
Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus and How Green Is Your Internet? were both produced for Australian TV Program HungryBeast on ABC TV.
More of his work can be seen here.
In this gorgeous video by Jurjen Versteeg you can learn about the history of the title sequence in a nutshell.
[The] film refers to elements such as the cut and shifted characters of Saul Bass’ Psycho title, the colored circles of Maurice Binder’s design for Dr. No and the contemporary designs of Kyle Cooper and Danny Yount.
I am a great admirer of Saul Bass’ work. His title sequence for Hitchcock’s Vertigo taught me how to appreciate all the minute details of film as art, how to draw bridge-lines between the eye and the mind’s eye. Like in all great art, nothing is wanting, nothing superfluous. Not even nothing, fadeout. His title sequence for North by Northwest is another one of my favourites, enriched additionally with Hitchcock’s trademark signature appearance. Spot the Hitchcock!
mad verse: in the withering gusts a wanderer – how much like Chikusai I have become!
Renga is a genre of Japanese collaborative poetry dating back to the 12th century. Traditionally, it began with a three-line stanza, also known as hokku, with a 5-7-5 division of syllables. A season was to be implied with a corresponding word, namely, spring with blossom, autumn with harvest, and so on. This verse, isolated and with different semantic implications, became known as the haiku. In renga, however, another poet’s verse of two lines (7-7) was to follow and was to be linked in some way to the first. In the same way, the third verse, consisting – like the first – of three lines, by yet another poet was to be linked to the preceding verse. This pattern was then repeated. Usually, until a web of 36 verses was spun. The number of poets involved varied. The millennium old tradition gave birth to a vast variety of forms, but the principle of poetic dialogue remained present in all.
In a 2003 animated film, Winter Days, Kihachiro Kawamoto applied the renga principle to the art of animation. He had 35 different animators, himself included, collaborate on a film based on one of Basho’s renku (a freer version of renga) of the same name. Each of the animators got to work on a short segment based on one of the 36 stanzas Basho and 5 other poets wove together, Kawamoto doing two. Notable animators, such as Yuriy Norshteyn, Koji Yamamura, and Aleksandr Petrov were part of the project. The film opened with Norshteyn’s take on the opening stanza:
Here’s a marvellous animated Stanley Kubrick filmography created by Martin Woutisseth with a creative personal re-interpretation of the films’ symbolism.
My God, it’s full of stars!
Have you always wanted a penguin drawing lesson from Oliver Jeffers? Guardian has it for you!
A satellite ride with legendary set designer Gerry Judah will take you over devastated landscapes of post-apocalyptic narratives.
This very short documentary is a couple of years old but it still works like a strange lullaby. Accept the empty architecture. Fill it with dreams.