promising trailer:

This looks cool. Nice colors, not too smooth and great scenery. I'm in the mood for a polar expedition!

Pilote Tout en Haut du Monde / Longway North from Sacrebleu Productions on Vimeo.

Harry Smith: Heaven and Earth Magic

The first 9 minutes from Harry Smith's 1962 film "Heaven and Earth Magic". I find this absolutely amazing. Read more about Harry Smith here.

Terry Gilliam's animation craft

This wonderful clip shows a Python-era Terry Gilliam explaining his cut-out animation craft, as used in the Monty Python's Flying Circus series. I've always wondered how he was able to make such fantastically beautiful (lo-fi, but stunningly beautiful) animation with such limited resources, and I was delighted to find this clip, which explains the process in full. The beginning of the clip is a bit tedious but starting at the 4:20 mark we get into the actual hands-on process -- both the simplicity and the tenacity of it. Simply genius.



Via Coilhouse.

“Surrender, or I’ll release the lesbians”

I found this animation and it the original post said it is awesome. I saw it was 17 minutes and was about to let it pass. SEVENTEEN MINUTES! CRAP, AS IF I CAN FOCUS FOR THAT LONG!!!! I've got many more websites to browse on this lazy sunday afternoon, slightly hung over, before I start doing something constructive today. But it really is worth it. You might even want to see it twice, that would be 34 minutes. Crazy.

The External World from David OReilly on Vimeo.

Weekend WTF: Maruosa

The WTF to end all WTFs. (Warning: make sure to turn down the volume a bit first)

A Family Portrait

A Family Portrait from Joseph Pierce on Vimeo.

A nice subtle short animation. Nothing's mentioned but everythings told. Very clever.

Salad Fingers 9

It's out of the bag:

Black Sunrise

Master animator Nick Cross, I mentioned him before in this post, is working on a feature length animation; Black Sunrise. Looks like his usual theme, oppression of the working class, world disorder, government violence etc. Can't wait to see it.

Black Sunrise - Trailer from Nick Cross on Vimeo.

Upcoming project...

Since David Firth has now publicly announced this on his Twitter, I guess I won't have to be secretive about it any more; I'm composing the soundtrack for the next episode of his popular and creepy "Salad Fingers" cartoon series, the first new episode in four years. This'll be my first collaboration with Mr. Firth since 2008's stop motion "Crooked Rot", which I wrote about earlier on this blog.

Not familiar with Salad Fingers? Familiarize yourself with this, a representative early episode from 2004.

Francoise Gamma

This is some wonderfully strange, mysterious and beautiful stuff. I love it.

UPDATE: More (colourful) work here!

Odboy & Erordog, episode 2

There's finally a good recording of the chamber quartet for my "Odboy & Erordog, episode 2" piece, and I'm proud to present the whole work for all to enjoy online. The possibility of a commission for episode 3 is around the corner, so cross your fingers and maybe we'll soon get to see what fate has in store for the poor boy and his dog.



(Thanks to The Peärls Before Swïne Experience, Studio Element and the Society of Swedish Composers for making the recording possible.)

about pigs and foxes

Watch this interesting shortfilm by Nick Cross, great animation and awesome music in this dark tale of a pig society turning into a place where foxes rule.

The Pig Farmer from Nick Cross on Vimeo.

After I watched it I was confused a little, there must be some social commentary goin' on here, but I find it hard to see who's who in this story. First, the small pigman is a happy, hardworking man. When something gets taken from him he gets mad and goes out for retribution. So far, so human, I would say. When he leaves his farm it has the 'Arbeit macht frei' sign at the gates.

In the woods he finds the guys who stole from him, wants to make 'em pay for what they did, but instead he gets seduced into lustfull pleasures. Poor guy! The drugs they give him trigger the horror that follows, visions of pig-society flash by; Pig politicians rooting for war, pig bankers living large, corrupt pig general and banker dividing a chopped up girl. Then the twintowers explode. The foxboss whispers in piggy's ear and he goes off on a rampage, resulting in the killing of fellow pigs attending a snob-party. Piggy gets arrested, convicted and put in jail, where the foxes have already put lots and lots of them.

Projecting this on (American) society, one could say the average Joe is put to work (in a camp) while the ruling class enriches itself. This system collapses, change comes and by trickery the foxes take over. Now average pig Joe is working for the foxboss who turns the whole capitalist system to his own benefit.

I come to this conclusion: A bad functioning government system has been maliciously taken over by private corporations. Average Joe is, after a bunch of titties in his face, even worse of.

What do you think? Or are we thinking too much??

Harryhausen has too much time on his hands

Here is a short stop-motion fairytale by the great Ray Harryhausen: Rapunzel, the silly tale of the longhaired girl in the tower. Lot's of work for one of what I concider the less exciting classic fairytales. And I wouldn't trust that prince either, he looks evil every now and than!

How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels

Craig Welch, 1996.

The Dictaphone Parcel

Dictaphone Parcel from Lauri Warsta on Vimeo.

Cool idea and nice execution: Girl sends a dictaphone from London to Helsinki and made an animation based on the sounds it recorded.

Marcus Fjellström in Deventer

A few pictures from the concert in Havenkwartier, Deventer, Holland, may 21st this year.
Enjoy :)

just funny...

paper animation

The Eagleman Stag - Trailer from Michael Please on Vimeo.

check this trailer out! It starts a little wiseass semi filosphical but soon starts looking VERY interesting. Nice atmosphere, would like to see the whole thing. I think the guy wants to upload it after it has been around on the festivals. Patience!

This might be interesting for musicians and visual artists alike. I came acros this abstract animation for an improvised musical session by two leaders of the avant-guarde jazz movement, Paul Plimley (piano) and Barry Guy (bass). (Whatch it here)I really enjoyed it and wondered at the same time what I would do for such a music piece. I realized I automatically think in a figurative way, faces, people, recognisable forms. Tilted, skewed and distorted maybe, but not complete abstract. But as it turns out, this guy, Michel Gagné can do both.

1 million views: Crooked (Orcus) Rot

Huzzah! The YouTube presentation of Crooked (Orcus) Rot has just reached over 1,000,000 views. I'm pretty sure that's the biggest (accumulated) audience I've ever had. Crooked (Orcus) Rot is a stop motion film by David Firth, for which I composed the music and sound design. It is also, according to The Daily Telegraph, "the 2nd creepiest thing on the internet".



David Firth is a talented English young man who shot to internet stardom around 2005 at the age of 22 with entertaining yet disturbing flash cartoons such as Salad Fingers and Spoilsbury Toast Boy. His sensibilities often call to mind the work of David Lynch and Tim Burton, but still he manages to sustain a personal artistic voice very much his own.

Crooked (Orcus) Rot is an amazing little short, which actually made it quite difficult for me to score. The fact that I instantly fell in love with it really raised the bar for me; I really wanted to do it justice and find the kind of music and sound design that fit the images perfectly -- supporting them and never getting in the way. The fact that the film itself is very much a kind of 'visual music' prompted a need for a specific kind of score.

The soundtrack is quite abstract compared to "conventional" music. No discernible themes, melodies, etc. -- I opted for a feverish atonal and timbre-driven score, attempting to erase the borders between music and sound design -- and thus the score hopefully fuses quite naturally with the film itself. My ambition was for the soundtrack to be a natural, organic continuation of the film, instead of just being a musical accompaniment running parallel to the it.

As for the overall sound design of the film, Firth provided the voices and foley effects (the physical sounds such as wheels spinning, a cigarette being lit, typing on the computer keyboard etc.) while I provided the more abstract sound design (intro sequence weirdness, the wobbling halo, sparks of electricity etc).

The great animator Peter Chung once said that "...animation is the creation of the illusion of spontaneity (...) because nothing is in fact less spontaneous than the process of animating." I think this is also very appropriate for the kind of soundtrack I created for this film; the aim was to produce a natural flow that feels effortless, when in fact it was long, hard, frustrating work to arrive at a result that felt "right". In the end I was pleased with my efforts, and to my great satisfaction Firth was very enthusiastic about the finished score. I hope you enjoy it too, and I urge you to check out Firth's site for more amazing and disturbing cartoons.