Another eye catching and energetic short from new director Steven Briand AKA Burayan. ‘Proteigon’ was filmed over the course of two months during an internship at Partizan.

Briand has recently graduated from studying experimental animation at EnsAD, École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, in Paris. He’s also spent a semester directing an animation short at CalArts. Read a nice interview with Kickstartboom about his graduate piece, ‘Friction.’

credits:

with Luca Fiore

Music by Nodey & Omar
Sound design by Moritz Reich

Realized with the help of Nathalie Lapicorey, Zeynep Gizem De Loecker, Benoit Masson, Vincent Nguyen, François Colou and Fabien Chambert

A finely crafted and charming animated short coming out this month, by Emma De Swaef and Marc James Roels. The film is co-produced by Beast Animation, Vivement Lundi!, Polaris Film Productions and il Luster Films. Read further as Director Emma De Swaef graciously speaks with us about the production:

How long is the film and when did the production take place?

16 min. 30 sec. From construction to post-production, it took a year – from January 2011 to January 2012

Can you tell us about the production?

We constructed most of the sets and puppets at a lovely French studio called Vivement Lundi!, then put everything in a big truck and drove to the Belgian studio Beast Animation for the shoot. We shot in rotation on three sets: a small one for interiors and two larger sets for exteriors. Marc James Roels and I dressed and lit the sets on one platform while the two others were being animated on. The shoot took four months and by the end we were sleeping in the studio next to the sets on a very uncomfortable fold-out bed so we wouldn’t waste any time commuting!

Who animated?

Andreas De Ridder, Alice Tambellini, Steven De Beul and myself. The animation posed extra challenges as we wanted specific parts of the the wool to move at every frame, so even if there was no movement we had to touch the puppets before taking an image- being careful not to touch any of the fibres on the set around it. Wool also ‘breathes’, so we couldn’t take overnight breaks, every shot had to be finished in one day: this usually meant very long days for the animators.

Before ‘Oh Willy…’ Alice had never animated with Dragonframe so she was a little nervous about that, but she picked it up straight away—it’s a very intuitive program.

Can you tell us about some of the tougher shots to pull off—creatively or technically?

The biggest challenge was the fact that everything is made out of wool or textile. This made animating the puppets extremely difficult. Nearly all the shots were conceived based on these limitations. We also wanted to retain the fuzzy, wiry texture of the wool so green-keying was almost immediately ruled out. We have a very lo-tech approach and wanted to create a sense of wide open space on set without relying too much on post-production. Every element in every shot was a real on-set element so we had to come up with all kinds of on-set solutions to make everything look ‘real’. For example, distant objects needed to be scaled down and diffused to create a sense of distance, we strapped wool to the lenses to create foreground fog, we made huge diffusion panels using cheap plastic and created clouds by suspending bits of freshly cut sheep’s wool on chicken wire.

How did the film idea start?

We were inspired by Diane Arbus’ photos of people living in nudist colonies.

-Emma De Swaef

Thanks Emma, beautiful work!

Animator Chris Butcher races away with the top prize in the ‘Open: Stopmotion’ category of the 2011 Redbull CANIMATION Awards, a new yearly competition in England offering budding animators an opportunity to progress their skills and careers in the field through a series of prizes. Winners are awarded internships at top animation studios: Aardman, The Mill, and 12foot6. Their films are also featured in this month’s ‘Ad Break Takeover Documentary’ on Channel 4 in Britain, as well as taking part in the British Animation Awards Public Choice Tour 2012. We speak in depth with Chris about his approach.

Chris is a 2009 BA (Hons) Animation Graduate of the University of Bedfordshire and is also a Barbican IdeasTap Award Winner 2011. Here he speaks with Dragonframe about his film and early inspirations:

In the Red Bull piece, I wanted crisp white lighting and backgrounds. In my other work I’d always used angle-poise lamps which gives everything a really incandescent orange look, as if lit by street light. So I found a disposable baking tray (the kind of thing you could fit a turkey in) and attached two strip lights inside. It worked superbly, because the naturally shiny surface reflected the light and the sides acted as barn doors to focus it. I attached that to a broom handle; which in turn was tied to a hat stand – my guerilla lighting rig. In all, I went through 23 cans of Redbull to construct the car, and two chemically dependent kidneys to use the cans! I shot with a Canon EOS 450D and worked the Dragonframe keypad controller with my feet to capture shots, leaving my hands free for animation.

The biggest challenge was in the final sequence, when the four cans crush simultaneously to become wheels. I had to get the cans to their tie down points and then secure them, without it looking forced. To achieve this, I used the auto-toggle function to align the cans near perfectly between the two frames.

One of my first animation inspirations was when I was a kid watching ‘The Golden Child’ with Eddie Murphy; the bit in which a Pepsi can gets animated so it dances to “Puttin’ On The Ritz”. I’d say my biggest influence would be the work of Jan Svankmajer. There’s a part in ‘Jabberwocky’ where a pen knife is being animated on a tabletop like a gymnast traversing the floor. What I really like is the objects in his work are often un-anthropamorphised, in that they retain they’re rigid nature and move as if of their own volition rather than seeming to be manipulated.

I never use green screen or composition because I feel it somehow cheats the audience. I’ve never been good at CG work because I’m really tactile and just cant get a mouse to do what my hands can. Dragonframe makes my work so much easier and enjoyable- to see instant results gives me drive to churn out more shots; it suits my needs to the letter.

- Chris Butcher

Thank you, Chris, and congratulations! -Dragonframe

Read another interview with Chris by Skwigly Online Animation Magazine.

This is the equally engaging film that won him the Barbican IdeasTap Award last year:

Caleb Wood created this subtle and powerful hand painted animation for his degree project at RISD. It is reminiscent of the opening of Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Rashomon‘- but with a dog and cat. It really shows just how much can be communicated, using the most basic of materials, through hands-on artistry, great compositions and sound.

To resonate with the client company’s strengths, the piece celebrates handmade craftsmanship and the use of recycled materials; a whimsical and entertaining variety show of classic animation techniques.

Concept & Creative Director: felicelimosani.com
Director: Federico Galvani @ happycentro.it
Illustration and Props Design: Andrea Manzati, Carlotta Perbellini, Andrea Donà
Animation: Federico Padovani, Federico Galvani, Andrea Manzati
Set Design: Federico Padovani, Giulio Grigollo, Roberto Solieri, Carlotta Perbellini, Andrea Donà
Director of photography: fedebarebone.com
Video Compositing: Massimiliano Mazzi @ darkside.it
Production: Felice Limosani Studio
Music: “Akro Bat” micahdahl.com