A nice 3D treat for you this monday morning: "Alarm", a masterfully rendered animation directed by Jang Moo-hyun from the independent team of MESAI. You will be drawn into it because of its soft visuals and life-like environment rendering. You'll be stuck to it because of the compelling storytelling. You will be caught by your boss, procrastinating and drooling over whatever you were doing. You can thank me later.
A brilliant and compelling animated short by director Sejong Park, Birthday Boy presents the korean war, viewed from the perspective of a young boy named Manuk, as he is playing in the streets of his local town. This short was nominated for an Oscar in 2005, and was awarded at SIGGRAPH 2004 and BAFTA in 2005. (Thanks, Llamame Lola!)
Logitech recently launched a viral campaign to promote their webcams. The campaign features funny sitcom shorts about couple relationships and work reality - all tied up with webcam sauce. While I salute the idea of going viral, I feel like it's an incomplete effort. I fell on Part Two ("Our Secret") of the videos on the Adverblog blog, and at the end of that video Logitech invited me to watch Part One ("Working Late") on their website at http://logitech.com/quickcam. Part Two was funny enough to have me want to check Part One out, so I actually headed there. Well (as you will see if you click), instead of the promised video, I'm greeted with a full page, full corporate-format selling pitch on the Logitech Quickcams. Can't find a single link to the video. Wow. Not.
If you're going to do viral, assume the decision - don't just throw some bucks into it as a sideshow. Make sure your content is consistent, and that people will experience something authentic and captivating from start to end. For example, instead of sending people to their corporate website, Logitech could've created a page called "Only The Webcam Knows" on which people can post their funny little webcam secrets (rated All Audiences, of course), and also see the Logitech shorts - which they could then send to 5 of their friends. Much better word-of-mouth follow-through.
Anyways, I'm just rambling - here are both videos. Interesting enough to share with friends? You be the judge. (Thanks, Adverblog!)
If you haven't seen this brilliant short from Stephen O'Reagan (based on a screenplay by Terry Bisson), please reserve the next 7 minutes and 22 seconds of your life for this jewel.
I cannot say enough good about Channel Frederator. I've just discovered them recently as I was (patiently) browsing the net on my PSP.
Channel Frederator is actually a Cartoon Blog that's updated every tuesday. It's made by the people, for the people: People like you and me (but also professional studios) send in animation shorts, and 4 or 5 of them are featured on every episode. The short movies feature different techniques, from high-tech digital stuff to very simple doodles. The episodes watch themselves in a breeze.
Frederator has acquired an incredible amount of popularity on the web, they have a huge and very faithful fanbase, and that's all simply because it's fun to watch cartoons.
You can download them directly to your PSP, with the RSS feature. If you have a PSP, all you need to do is to head to www.channelfrederator.com, and click on "Subscribe via RSS". (as you may see, you can also click here, but I wanted you to visit their site). Doing so will add an RSS link to your bank, from which you'll have access to all 50 episodes.
Of course, you can do it on your PC as well, but it's not as much fun as to watch your cartoons in bed with your PSP :)
Here's a sample cartoon from Frederator Episode #8, something that'll stay in your head forever. Song from Australian band TISM. Enjoy.
Here's a fantastic short movie by Neil Blomkamp, titled "Tempbot". Tempbot is an experimental robot hired by this company to perform late-night tasks, and generally act as a normal employee. A normal overworked, underpaid employee. The movie was awarded Best Overall Film at Creativity's NoSpot Film Festival 2006. No wonder - this is the best thing that happened to movies since Blade Runner. And before that, Woody Allen. Watch it now.
Backspace is a project featuring a series of visual performances, "designed to inspire the imagination", as described by their author - a certain Stephen W. from Australia. I should've featured this as part of my "inspiration tuesdays", but I just found out about it this morning - and we're wednesday. So, that's that.
The first episode is titled "FLOAT". Watch it here. I will be showing more episodes as they come out.
The Blue Men once again, telling us in their own special blue way that we need to save our blue earth. A nifty video, for lack of a better word. Enjoy. (Thanks, AdArena!)
This is a classic. I devote my time making sure every generation sees this. I cannot say enough about this 10 mins of animation. It's brutal. Watch this now. Probably the inspiration behind most of The Electric Company stuff (see below).
I'm a freelancer and free thinker in the field of marketing and communications, trying to continually expand the known universe in my little mind -- and yours.
