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!

Horizon

This very cool image by talented young photographer Joeri Bosma immediately caught our collective eye at Kuriositas because of the clever composition of the picture – most effective being the way that the horizon and the water mark on Joeri’s clothes line up so smartly.  This took us, inevitably, over to his Flickr Photostream where there are numerous cool images to look at.  Thanks, Joeri, for giving us permission to feature this picture on Kuriositas.

Eliza Rickman - An Introduction

It’s always great to show new and unusual talent here at Kuriositas.  Although Eliza Rickman has been around a little while I had not heard about her until she was pointed out to me by Kuriositas reader Jill Simpson.  If you haven’t heard of her then do take a look at the video for the excellent single Cinnamon Bone, above.  I hope Jill does not mind if I use her own words, but it encapsulates the artist very well.

“This girl used to busk at my local farmers market, and she is AWESOME!!  She gave up her apartment, job and pet cat, and embarked on a nationwide 'tour' (in restaurants, coffee shops and even a lighthouse!), playing for tips, to fund a recording session to record her music, and 2 music videos.  She just completed a successful Kickstarter project (asked for $5k, got $11k!), and she's just super-talented and mysterious and whimsical. 

“The video was shot backwards at double speed and she backwards lip-synched the whole thing.  Haunting and beautiful! I sound like a publicist!  But I'm just a really big fan and think she deserves some exposure.

“I saw her again recently at the Pasadena Make Music festival here in Los Angeles, and heard a lot more of her music.  The more I hear, the more enthusiastic I become.  Her sound and style are really refreshing, and her voice is just superb and expressive.  Yeah, maybe I should become her publicist!”

Jill, thanks for the introduction to this wonderful and exciting new artist.  I loved the bareness of this, not to mention the very catchy tune as well.  In some ways she reminded me of a cross between Kate Bush and Siouxsie Sue.

Take a look at her video for Black Rose, which you can watch below.  Cool music and super stop motion animation – what more can I ask for? 

Please, folks, keep your ideas coming – without you this blog would not be half as interesting!