29 December 2011

The Brute's Passion

Back in medieval days you knew where you stood. If you landed in a prison then you knew what to expect from the resident torturer – and the resident torturer knew exactly what to do with you. Unfortunately, when your newest prisoner is a witch then the normal rules may not apply, especially when her original captor forgot to relieve her of her wand!

This is René Hoekstra’s graduate project at at the Utrecht School of the Arts where he was responsible for the animation of this very funny short. It is very much in the ‘old school’ as it were. In fact it reminded me, oddly enough of Tom and Jerry shorts, despite the absence of cat and mouse! Some of the sound effects seem familiar,too!

The music is supplied by Bart Delissen with sound design by Hessel van Hoorn.

1 December 2011

Consurgo


A little girl plays with her ball in the street which goes in to the road. Her father goes after the ball to retrieve it for his little girl – with disastrous consequences.  What happens after that? Well, it wouldn’t be much of a story if he dies, really would it? Something wonderful is about to happen (with apologies to Dave Bowman for paraphrasing there!).

And something wonderful does indeed happen – and you can add the words bizarre, strange, outlandish and any number of other adjectives in to the mix. This steampunk style animation isn’t quite beyond description, but you really should see Resurgo (which means to arise in latin) to believe it!  It is the work of several ex students from the Utrecht School of Arts in the Netherlands - Tom Hankins, Rene Hoekstra and Gijs van Kooten.

Together these exciting young animators make up Colorbleed, a  small, fresh 3d animation and VFX studio, based in Holland. Their specialties range from character animation, visual effects, technical and creative direction. They have already done some impressive TV work and are always on the lookout for new challenges – one of their major goals is to work with some big producers (so hey, Mr or Ms Executive, if you are reading this get over to their website before someone else snaps them up!).

You may think that you haven’t heard of Colorbleed before. Well, take a look at another of their shorts, Mac 'n' Cheese which you may well have seen as it went well and truly viral a few months ago!