LTV21

Hominid from Brian Andrews on Vimeo.

I know this is an ancient topic, but it deserves a place in this tribute to LTV. I originally drew up this draft when KT was hot and viral, but I still think it needs to be included so…

I wish this was one person’s particular style and wasn’t so prevalent… it appears to be an animation class exercise that has tons of contributors on YouTube.   But something like this is almost a fun modern version of Stick Figure Theater, taking dialog from a movie and creating animation around it.

But there are so many examples, I can’t just pick one animation and one artist as a nominee for LTV: Modern.  So here are a couple of fun examples just for.. well.. fun.

V for Vendetta:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Q0dfrbr10

Fight Club – Chemical Burn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuiKJ0rRTAo

Fear and Loathing in Typography:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIujke_cLxc

Saw this a while ago but have no idea what led me to it. Here’s the original site I found it on:
http://ticklebooth.com/2009/07/matthias-sturm-blood-and-thunder/

A video by Tobias Stretch.

http://vimeo.com/5772524

Blood And Thunder by Matthias Sturm from Tobias Stretch on Vimeo.

More videos and other art by Tobias Stretch:
http://web.mac.com/tobystretch/Site/Film.html

More music by Matthias Sturm:
http://www.myspace.com/mslucifermusique

I first heard about this from The Animation Show’s site (a great animation site and traveling animation show created by famed animator, Mike Judge).

Getty has an amazing archive of photos and video. They are one of the foremost archives of such things. You’ve probably seen dozens of their stock photos and video before (check the credits when you go to the movies, you’ll see Getty mentioned none too few times). In 2008, they teamed up with London-based Short & Sweet, a weekly short film gathering, to host a film challenge. The four selections shown are all really great, but two stood out as potential LTV fodder.

The winning selection was called “Photograph of Jesus” by Laurie Hill. The animation starts about 60 seconds into the video. Some great use of the Getty archive with some serious cutout stop motion action:

http://vimeo.com/2362113

Photograph of Jesus by Laurie Hill in association with the Getty Images Short & Sweet Film Challenge from Hulton Archive on Vimeo.

The second may be more of an LTV bumper type thing, but still trippy enough to be included. So here’s you’re two-fer bonus prize.. Jasmin Jodry’s “Star Games”:

http://vimeo.com/2362236

Star Games by Jasmin Jodry in association with the Getty Images Short & Sweet Film Challenge from Hulton Archive on Vimeo.

The other two videos are pretty good too. Definitely check out “Perrington Stud” by Big Red Button and “Long Jump” by Ian Mackinnon & Dominic Parker.

Check out the Getty film challenge site and the four winners in nice light-boxy video displays here:
http://filmchallenge.gettyimages.com/

Thanks to Pig Jockey for posting this animation a few months ago.

I like the song (“Two Weeks” by the band Grizzly Bear), but if you replaced it with something a little creepier, this might be a prime LTV candidate. Either way, it’s a well made animation. Great job, Gabe Askew.

Two Weeks – Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

For all the great and wonderful and odd animations that appeared on LiquidTV, we can’t overlook the filler animations that would appear before the opening credits, bumpers on commercials or between other animations. Sometimes horrifying, but they’re the glue that bound it all together. This certainly could have qualified.

From the YouTube description:

“Tony Vegas’ Animated Acidburn Flashback Tabu. This short is Vince Collins’ Life Is Flashing (Before Your Eyes). A bell, a cup, a duck. Of course.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9J27RaDr5M

A beautiful animation coupled with a haunting tune.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTysF1E4Ft0

Music by Kwoon ( http://kwoon-music.com/ )
Animation by Yannick Puig ( http://www.yanim.net/ )

Guerre Naïve (site appears to be down, currently) is a cool little animation that has an interesting mix of styles, bright colors and lighting, and a fun little exercise in CG animation. At times the CG reminded me of the “almost looks stop-motion” quality that things like “Lucy, Daughter of the Devil” did, but much subtler.

I don’t read much French or Japanese, but it seems to have come out of Superinfocom, an animation school in France.

From what I can tell, music was done by Yann van der Cruyssen and this guy, Bruno Mayor, appears to have done some of the fantastic artwork used. And this Remoz guy calls it “my short movie”, so maybe that’s the HMFIC to congratulate for all this

More stuff from Superinfocom Valenciennes here and here.

Fans of animation (and who else would be reading this at all) would do good to click on most of those links for more great art and animation.

Guerre Naïve from Guerre Naïve on Vimeo.

Not strictly an animation, but weird enough to have made a great filler/bumper for LTV.

A fantasticly dark and poignant animation about..well.. the history of evil.

YouTube Link

Description from YouTube:

Animated Documentary-Mockumentary about Evil in western civilization from Ancient Greece to present day.

After all the comments I feel like some clarification is in order, but firstly, to you guys that liked it:

Thanks, you’ve made my day.

The film was intended to show what people have believed in and pointed to as evil throughout history. It was meant to get you to think about what evil really is. It is meant to show that when we get too obsessed with “evil” we might end up taking part in it ourselves.

One has to separate evil and human cruelty. Human cruelty is people not being nice to one another. Evil is soemthing else, it is something we have created, a word and a concept for things that are not acceptable. It is a label for things that we do not understand and dont want to understand.

But is evil really ever a complete explanation for anything?

A lot of bad deeds has been done in the name of good. The people that did them ment good, are they evil?

OK, and finally,
This video is not meant to:

-blame wester culture and people for all the “evil” in the world. I’m european, and thought that I better stick to my own history.
-blame religion for all the evil in the world.
-claim that God is dead. (It is simply a reference to the philosopher Nietzsche, look him up.)
-offend anyone, race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.
-claim that Elvis was evil.
-be an exact and complete account of the actual events that has taken place throughout history.

This was a student project, hence the “unfinishedness” and abrupt ending. I ran out of time. I might update it later.

It was animated frame by frame in flash and composited and textured in AfterEffects.