I have a liking for 1950s sci-fi monster films - Them!, Tarantula, The Beast from 50,000 Fathoms, you get the idea, that’s why I’m rather enamored with this fun little promo for electronic Dutch duo Baskerville’s track “Reloaded”, in which “a scientific experiment goes terribly terribly wrong.” It was written and directed by Marieke Verbiesen and the puppet design is by Neeltje Sprengers. You can keep the music, just gimme the fabulous monsters.
Artist Will Sweeny makes the leap from designing club flyers, t-shirts and illustrating graphic novels to animation and the result is gorgeously psychedelic.
This video has been selected for the Guggenheim Museum’s YouTube Play biennial of creative video. The inaugural event showcases the most innovative online video from around the world and the judges including Stefan Sagmeister, Darren Aronofsky, Takeshi Murakami and Laurie Anderson.
Canadian animator Richard Williams is best known for his work on Roger Rabbit, but he’s been making inventive commercials in the UK and USA since the late 1960s.
Animation maestro Richard Williams (The Thief and the Cobbler, Who Framed Roger Rabbit) found great success doing animated commercials in the UK, but his greatest goal was to learn from the great animators of the past, like Ken Harris, Art Babbit, Grim Natwick and Milt Kahl, and pass their knowledge on to his own studio and the animators of tomorrow. Richard was successful in doing this and many animators who worked under the brilliant, mad perfectionist went on to found their own studios, and to work on the great Disney films of the late 1980s and 1990s.
Richard never quite finished his dream project The Thief and the Cobbler (viewable on Youtube in a Recobbled Cut), as it was eventually financed by Warner Brothers, who went cold on the idea and took the film away from him.
These days Richard is known for having written perhaps the best book ever written on animation- The Animator’s Survival Kit. Every animation student should have one, and probably does.
Enjoy these wonderful animations from Richard Williams.
This live action take on Wiley E. Coyote and The Roadrunner cartoons by Apache Pictures is fun. The actor playing the Roadrunner actually looks a bit like the original.
I don’t know if this is part of a showreel or the beginning of a viral campaign for an energy drink. Whatever it is, it works.
This is kinda wow. Alex Heller‘s beautiful film of one lonely doll’s desperate attempt to be accepted by a group of Barbies, may not sound like a winner, but trust me it is.
It’s made from 1,554 images, shot on a Nikon D60, and bound together by the blissful sound of Belgium’s Scala & Kolacny Brothers - which, I might add, is an odd title for a choir of female singers, who are conducted and accompanied by two brothers, Stijn and Steven, and hence, no doubt, the name.
According to the dictionary, the definition of the word genius includes:
n., pl., -ius·es.
Extraordinary intellectual and creative power.
That’s good enough for me, for by this definition, digital animator John Butler is a genius.
If you don’t know John’s work, then here’s a good place to start - an article Richard Metzger wrote up for Dangerous Minds, taken from an interview carried out with Butler earlier this year.
John is that rare and distinct thing, a creative talent with a unique and powerful vision - one that informs his analysis of current events into original speculative fictions. Underpinning this, John uses the terms and language of the military and financial sector, subverting them to reveal their true meaning.
All of which can be seen in his latest presentation The Ethical Governor, described as:
This presentation demonstrates a prototype of the Ethical Governor, a key component in the ethical projection of unmanned autonomous force.
In an exclusive interview with Dangerous Minds John Butler talks about the ideas behind The Ethical Governor and how they reflect today’s political, corporate and military world.
“I’ve been very interested in all aspects of what is now branded as the Long War, which I see as a war between Finance and Humans, rather than East versus West, Capitalism versus Islam, or whatever.
A military invasion to secure resources and a financial austerity package to placate bondholders are all part of a unified process. It’s just that force is applied in a somewhat cruder manner in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Africa.
What I’ve done is transposed the action to the Homeland, where it will eventually arrive anyway. The Drones are Chamber of Commerce assets, part of the elite Milton Friedman Unit.”
What is the inspiration for the presentation?
“The piece is based on actual systems being developed in universities right now in anticipation of fully autonomous war fighting. What I’ve done is resynthesised an academic presentation to reveal it’s true intent.
The language comes from the Military Educational Complex, but has been rewritten by the Butler Brothers to fictionalize it, and therefore make it more effective.
Concepts like the “Ethical Adaptor” actually exist. I liked that aspect most of all, the calibration of guilt, and the option to override the Ethical Governor when convenient.
I think that says it all about battlefield ethics. I like the idea of robots being “in Harm’s Way”, one of my favourite phrases.
How does this relate to what’s happening just now in the world?
“The anti IMF riots in Greece and the protests in Ireland and here are attempts by Humans to react to the Process.
Young people in Britain have no access to home ownership now, which is a detail that might have been overlooked, so they seem to have less to lose that Thatcher’s generation.
What are you working on next?
“Thinking up a companion piece just now, provisionally called Triage. It would be great to project this somewhere soon, as part of a Forum for the Future.”
Update
John Butler has forwarded Dangerous Minds an article on War Machines: Recruiting Robots for Combat from the New York Times, which confirms much of The Ethical Governor‘s theory, including:
“A lot of people fear artificial intelligence,” said John Arquilla, executive director of the Information Operations Center at the Naval Postgraduate School. “I will stand my artificial intelligence against your human any day of the week and tell you that my A.I. will pay more attention to the rules of engagement and create fewer ethical lapses than a human force.”
Dr. Arquilla argues that weapons systems controlled by software will not act out of anger and malice and, in certain cases, can already make better decisions on the battlefield than humans.
This is sort of a dark and depressing take on mental disorders by Winnie the Pooh and characters. I don’t know about you, but these kinda gave me a serious case of the sads.
I know little to nothing about Japanese manga comics and even less about Mexican/Spanish TV. That doesn’t keep me from enjoying this goofy scene from TV show ‘Los Cabelleros Del Sobaco’ based on a manga created by Masami Kurumada.
Inspired by vintage fashion and sci-fi magazines, cook books and advertisements, collagist and animator Jean Lecointre created a bunch of indescribably hilarious short films for French TV called ‘Turkish Delights’ and ‘Oasis More Fun’. If you dig pastry porn, the noirish world of palmiers and psychotic fruit, you’ll love this.