What if there really is no heaven? What if there really is no time? These are two of the queries put forward in Australian filmmaker Kew Keilar's International Motion Art Awards-winning video "Logical Questions to God." Keilar calls the piece an "immersive music video," in that it features a song by noted Australian singer-songwriter Jeff Duff, who also makes a cameo appearance. "My use … Read the full Story >>
How do you visualize the economic impact that a major public university has on a state? That was the mission facing Santiago Uceda, an art director at Oregon State University, when he was given the job of creating a 30-second commercial for OSU. Uceda co-directed and animated the International Motion Art Awards-winning spot, which broke down a staggeringly abstract number--$2 billion--into real-world concepts like … Read the full Story >>
"Art and science serve the same function: to keep alive the feeling of wonder about the world we live in. I am driven by the search for a truth that lies below the perceptible world," writes artist Bryan Christie in an artist statement for one of his video installations. For Christie, who has worked as a medical illustrator and the art director of Scientific … Read the full Story >>
Some monsters may be more likable than others--but that doesn't mean their lives are any less emotionally fraught. In Typsetter Blues, a three-minute animated story from Canada-based filmmakers Hector Herrera and Pazit Cahlon, a loveable guy named Harold falls for a new coworker, who unfortunately falls harder for someone else. It's a classic love triangle, featuring a main character with three eyes. "The project … Read the full Story >>
"Peter Hamlin and Nina Frenkel took this song on a dreamy, animated ramble, and we're totally dumbstruck and thrilled with what they came up with," notes the blog of the Brooklyn-based folk-rock band Little Silver, describing the music video for "Stolen Souvenir," the lead track from their debut album. The video, reflecting the animation work of Frenkel and Hamlin's background in motion design, illustration, … Read the full Story >>
The International Motion Art Awards competition is truly international in scope, and this week we spotlight Sajjad Sabour, an Iranian animator who was named an IMAA winner for a five-second motion-graphic piece about three very important colors--red, green, and blue. Sabour, who lives in the city of Tabriz, created the piece for an Iranian motion-design contest that was judged by Farshid Mesghali, the noted … Read the full Story >>
"Motion to me is an obvious next step. But just because something moves, it doesn't mean it will work or be interesting," says Craig Cutler, the noted New York-based photographer known for his conceptual approach to commercial work. Cutler's move into motion follows along the same creative lines, exploring ideas and process. Design is central to both his still and video projects--he calls himself … Read the full Story >>
Brooklyn, NY-based illustrator, graphic designer, and animator Andre da Loba's "On Thoughts," a personal motion-art project based on a picture book, was three years in the making. Combining illustration, animation, and a poem written by Emilio Remelhe, the 2:30 piece takes viewers on what da Loba calls "a coming of age journey through transformative moments lived, lost, found and yet to come." After sporadic … Read the full Story >>
Ana Mouyis and Zachary Zezima met on a boat while both were students at Parsons School of Design, and now they make videos together. Their collaboration began in 2012, when Mouyis was approached by Mush Records to create a music video for the emerging Canadian band Holobody. The video that the duo made, for the song "Riverbed," explores timeless themes of life, death, and … Read the full Story >>
"The animation work I do often migrates back and forth from static to moving image and back again," notes Jonathon Rosen. "Paintings and illustrations are reconfigured, layered, and animated, and illustrations and paintings can come out of the video as modified or collaged stills." Rosen's style is on full display in his International Motion Art Awards-winning video piece, a personal project that features a … Read the full Story >>
Unlike other filmmaking competitions, the International Motion Art Awards features work from a variety of mediums, including motion design, motion photography, and motion illustration. That's only natural, given that the IMAA contest comes from the same people behind the American Photography and American Illustration competitions. This week we spotlight IMAA winner Brian Cronin, a Brooklyn-based illustrator who turned a piece of commercial artwork created … Read the full Story >>
The task facing veteran British illustrator Tim Marrs was daunting: Create an advertising spot for Chrysler parts-and-service company Mopar that would, as he puts it, "articulate the firm's sense of history and passion for motoring." That sense of history--75 years' worth--had to be encapsulated in just 30 seconds. And Marrs had exactly one weekend in which to create a range of ideas for the … Read the full Story >>
"I usually describe myself as suffering from creative A.D.D.," says Toronto-based illustrator and animator Balvis Rubess. "I'm interested in most things creative, and, once I get interested, I dive headlong into that endeavor." Rubess, who once worked as a junior designer in the R&D department of Porsch AG, in Weissach, Germany, and created a series of popular pop-up books for Melcher Media in New … Read the full Story >>
In 2012, PBS's Independent Lens series aired a two-part documentary called "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide," which spotlighted a number of people doing extraordinary things to empower women around the world. The job of creating a main title sequence for the documentary fell to US design and production company Thornberg & Forester, which created a remarkable 75-second piece mixing … Read the full Story >>
Last year, while taking a children's book illustration class at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, GA, Denise Plauche got her first chance to experiment with animation. "Typically, this class involves producing a book of ten illustrations," she says, "but professor Julie Mueller-Brown, after discovering the work of illustrator Takahiro Kimura and animator Rui Miyoshi, asked our class if any of … Read the full Story >>
When she was attending the Rhode Island School of Design in the 1980s, photographer and filmmaker Jill Greenberg created a body of work she describes "drawings, paintings, and sculptures of little disgusting men in suits." In 2012 she returned to the theme, creating a 6:30 slow-motion video that comments witheringly on the culture of power and entitlement. The work was inspired by a dinner … Read the full Story >>
A number of weeks ago, we featured animator Rob Donnelly's International Motion Art Awards-winning short for Slate magazine's online "Dear Prudence" advice column. For that piece, which illustrated a call for help from a woman who found out her boyfriend had been secretly taking naughty pictures of neighbors, Donnelly was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's classic film "Rear Window." It wasn't Donnelly's only IMAA-winner, however: … Read the full Story >>
In the "Peanuts," comic strip, Charley Brown's beagle Snoopy often sat atop his doghouse and imagined himself as daring World War I ace dueling with the dastardly Red Baron. The hero of Brooklyn-based illustrator-turned-animator Richard Borge's IMAA-winning short "Rooster" is a toy chicken who dreams of being a World War II pilot. Borge created the delightful 1:16 animated piece for a competition in which … Read the full Story >>
What does it take to overcome difficult, even frightening circumstances? Courage, and some luck, says Alejandro G. Antonio, a recent graduate of New York's Fashion Institute of Technology whose two-minute animated short "Going Home" was selected as a winner of the first annual International Motion Art Awards competition. "The idea behind my animation came from my own experiences as an immigrant and the difficulties … Read the full Story >>
"I believe tablet displays such as the iPad should not be considered a threat for other media--books, comics, movies--let alone a substitute," says Rafa Alvarez, who completed his MFA in illustration at New York's School of Visual Arts last year. For his thesis project, Alvarez created an interactive e-book for the iPad that takes viewers inside a story by allowing them to interact with … Read the full Story >>
