Video: iPhone Diorama

iPhone Diorama by Mike Ko

Created with Maya, After Effects, Pftrack. Rendered in Vray.

Short Film: Subwar

“Subwars” by Sean Soong

An old man enters a subway car. Nobody offers him a seat. Violence ensues. Student Sean Soong created this film at Communication University of China, The Animation School.

Short Film: Chop Chop

Chop Chop by Birdboxstudio

Any plan that requires a horse to remember its right from its left is a bad plan.

Short Film: Mac ‘n’ Cheese

Mac ‘n’ Cheese

When you find yourself running scared and running out of energy, there's only a few options left to outrun your opponent through the southern desert. Stopping at nothing, watch these two guys wear each other out and rip through boundaries hitherto unbroken. Enjoy the ride!

Mac 'n' Cheese is an animated short directed and created by four students at the Utrecht School of Arts in the Netherlands. This roughly two minute animation took about five months to make, and about a bajillion peanut butter sandwiches.

Short Film: On The Water

"On The Water" by Yi Zhao

Fresh off the festival circuit this beautiful film, this metaphor for the cycle of life was the graduation film of Yi Zhao for the Academy of Art and Design/St. Joost in the Netherlands.

Video: Sometimes the Stars

Sometimes the Stars from The Audreys

"Sometimes the Stars" is a gorgeous new song from Adelaide, Australia band The Audreys, taken from their 2010 album of the same name. The accompanying short animated film, produced by Luke Jurevicius and directed by Ari Gibson & Jason Pamment, is about a lost girl’s journey through a surreal landscape, and her yearning to make a connection in this distant yet strangely familiar world.

Short Film: Red

Red directed by Jorge Jaramillo and Carlo Guillot

Red is a dark retelling of Little Red Riding Hood done as a bloody, stylish animated short.

Short Film: Luminaris

Luminaris directed by Pablo Zaramella

A bizarre, but ultimately romantic stop-motion film feature human actors.

Short Film: The Returning Tree

The Returning Tree by YuriSerizawa

Short Film: Sleeping Betty

Sleeping Betty by Claude Cloutier

Here is a modern take on an old story.  Betty is fast asleep and no one can wake her up despite their best attempts.  So, the king has no choice than to send for a prince (based on a certain HRH Prince Charles by the looks) in the hope that he will be able to awaken Sleeping Betty with a kiss.

This very funny romp is brought to us by the National Film Board of Canada and is, to be honest, a joy to behold. As with any animation there is usually one stand out character and for me this has to be the prince’s horse.  He manages to effortlessly steal virtually every single scene that he is in.

Princess Betty sleeps in a narcoleptic stupor. The king appeals to his subjects to wake her. A worthy Prince Charles lookalike has to leave his royal suburb to save the princess, but will Betty be wakened with just a kiss?

Drawn in India ink, this animation sets the Perrault classic in Claude Cloutier’s disjointed, anachronistic and playful universe.

Short Film: Blick

BLIK by Polder Animation

"A young boy moves to a new neighborhood and falls in love for the first time, with the much older girl next door." Brilliant animation, great atmosphere, and a really good story.

Short Film: Made of Imagination

Wes Anderson and Mark Gustafson of Laika/house apply their charming animation skills to this short ad for Sony Xperia Smartphones.

Lego Creation: Nausicaä Gunship

Gunship from Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Jon Hall

Short Film: Ruin

Ruin directed by Wes Ball

Ruin is an amazing short animated film set in a far-flung green post-apocalyptic future. Wes Ball has  been working in Hollywood for eight years doing graphic work for HBO - experience which comes across in this piece loud and clear.

Installation: Forms

Forms Installation at the National Media Museum from Nexus Productions

Forms is a multiscreen digital artwork commissioned by the National Media Museum for the exhibition In the Blink of an Eye: Media and Movement, which is part of the Cultural Olympiad program. This generative animation and interactive installation will display at the Museum from 9 March – 2 September.

A large projection of the animation will be displayed within the space, with a smaller split screen mounted on a plinth just in front to show not only the original footage of athletes on which each animation is based, but also the individual layers of that animation, which can be digitally peeled back by the viewer.

Short Film: Luna

Luna by Rainmaker Entertainment

Luna is something like a dark love story.  A caterpillar is stuck inside a street light but finds that he has company.  Unfortunately, he is trapped and in his current form and unable to escape the street lamp.

Short Film: Mighty Antlers

Mighty Antlers from The Animation Workshop

A man drives his car furiously down a narrow road, surrounded by a vast forest. When he encounters a deer in the middle of the road he makes a villainous attempt to ram it. However this particular hit and run has jaw crushing, battering consequences

The film’s production blog and making of video demonstrate how the team treated each frame as a work of art, with landscapes and character designs that wouldn’t look out of place in a gallery.

Short Film: Invention of Love

Invention of Love directed by Andrey Shushkov

Short Film: The Story of Animation

“The Story of Animation” by David Tart

The Story of Animation is a tongue-in-cheek “cartoon modern”-styled educational short that aims to introduce potential advertising clients to the animation process. The short was written and directed by animation veteran David Tart, and the animation was supervised by Magnus Moller of the Danish animation studio Tumblehead.

Video: Cityscape 2095

Cityscape 2095 by AntiVJ

Cityscape 2095 is an audiovisual installation from AntiVJ that depicts an imaginary world city that’s less than heavenly. It’s the result of a collaboration between graphic designer turned animator, AntiVJ cofounder Yannick Jacquet, aka Legoman, and Marc Ferrario, aka Mandril, a French draftsman and cartoonist.

This installation, using a mix of drawings, video projections, and sound, shows the passing of a day in an imaginary city in fast forward. Cityscape 2095 puts the spectator at the summit of a tower facing the horizon. The design of this imaginary city is marked by numerous architectural influences, making it both familiar, yet impossible to localize. The sound design created by Thomas Vaquié reinforces this disturbing strangeness.

Cityscape 2095 by Mandril & Legoman by Lego_Man