It was bound to happen eventually. After
a quarter-century,
26 Academy Awards, and an unparalleled streak of
eleven artistic and commercial triumphs, Pixar's latest project,
Cars 2, is
Certified Rotten. Critics have
assailed the film as a slick but hollow vehicle for Disney's
$10 billion-dollar Cars merchandising industry "lifestyle brand," replacing the original's serviceable tale of small-town redemption with
zany spy games,
hyperactive chase sequences, and even more
lowbrow aww-shucks potty humor from
Larry the Cable Guy. But it's not all bad news! Along with
a fun new Toy Story 3 short, preceding today's (3-D) premiere showings is a first look at next year's
Brave --
a darkly magical original story set in ancient Scotland featuring the studio's first female lead (and
director).
Evocative high-res concept art [mirror] is available at the official website, and
character sketches have leaked to the web, with the apparently striking teaser trailer sure to follow. Also, be sure not to miss the sneak peak of
Brave's associated short,
"La Luna"!
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 24, 2011 -
263 comments
Telephoneme: Even if your Alphabet Conspiracy succeeds and you destroy the books, machines have no minds of their own. They are easily confused by different voices and different accents. It is the brain of man that tells them what to do.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Aug 20, 2010 -
10 comments
Five years before
Toy Story proved to the world that pure CGI -- a field long relegated to the role of special effects -- could be an art form in its own right, Odyssey Productions attempted to do the same on a slightly smaller scale. Drawing on the demo reels, commercials, music videos, and feature films of over 300 digital animators, the studio collated dozens of cutting-edge clips into an ambitious 40-minute art film called
The Mind's Eye. Backed by
an eclectic mix of custom-written electronic, classical, oriental, and tribal music, the surreal, dreamlike imagery formed a rough narrative in eight short segments that illustrated the evolution of life, technology, and human society:
Creation -
Civilization Rising -
Heart of the Machine -
Technodance -
Post Modern -
Love Found -
Leaving the Bonds of Earth -
The Temple -
End credits (including names and sources for all clips used). But that was just the beginning...
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Apr 25, 2010 -
62 comments
The Steam Tank is a brief visual effects reel by Chris Paul, from the Vancouver Film School. It begins with a somewhat mundane steam powered tank attacking a mounted gun in a downtown building, but then replays the event shot by shot, showing the original filmed plate, and adding on each cgi component, to give a good idea of how cg & reality interface in an effects piece.
warning: link goes to direct download of 56MB QuickTime mov
posted by jonson
on Feb 7, 2006 -
13 comments
Bizarre music video featuring a cgi animated Nazi army composed of anthropomorphized piglets. The video is for a song called Shvayne by a 19 year old Russian singer named
Natasha Ionova, who performs under the name
Glukoza.
Video is embedded flash animation.
posted by jonson
on Sep 8, 2005 -
40 comments