A short film by Osvaldo Cavandoli from the La Linea TV series which aired on Italian TV from 1971 – 1986. This film is a great example of minimalist design: less is more!
The influence of the La Linea films can be seen in contemporary motion graphics and commercials, for example Raimund Krumme’s commercial for Hilton Hotels.
“Dancing Couple” for Hilton Hotels from Acme Filmworks on Vimeo.
Deadsy, directed by David Anderson, written and narrated by Russell Hoban, 1989, is one of the films that typify the creativity coming out of the UK in the 1980s, back when Channel 4 showed challenging and innovative films. Integrating animation with rotoscoped footage and manipulated video, it typifies what Alan Cholodenko describes as the way that animation complicates our view of what is real as opposed to what is imaginary:
‘… in a certain sense animation may be thought to be that which indetermines and suspends the distinction between representation and simulation, what makes it impossible to say which is which, as it indetermines and suspends all things.’[1]
[1] Alan Cholodenko, The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation (Sydney: Power Publications, 1991) , 21–2.
The Lost Continent is a blog covering British animation. It’s been going since 2009 and has an extensive coverage of many forgotten gems. Thoroughly recommended!
I first became aware of the work of Tabaimo after her Boundary Layer exhibition at the Parasol Unit last year. In her work, unsettling animations are projected across several walls or custom-built spaces to form a continuous image. Tabaimo’s installations uncover the shadow image of conventional domesticity, such as Japanese Kitchen, 1999, or public spaces such as toilets, public conVENience, 2006. Here is an interview with her from the Moderna Museet in Stockholm:
The latest version of the CHATTER project will be shown at Bar Sequence for one night only on:
6 – 11 PM THURSDAY 14th JULY
2011
@ Bar Sequence, 43 Essex Road, London, N1 2SF
http://www.barsequence.com
This evolving installation of animated talking heads investigates meaningless blather and the babble of crowds, reminiscent of conversations on Facebook or Twitter. Created by media artist, Birgitta Hosea, it includes crowd-sourced contributions from international artists and animators*.
*Isak Ãkerlund | Daniel Arce | Javier Barboza | Maliha Basak | Adriani Bastouni | Laura Cechanowicz | Lisa Chung | Chris Colman | Cecilia De Jesus | Silvia Villar Espina | Seti Erfan | Pru Feria | FF | Safiya Greensword | Birgitta Hosea | Chen Huang | Mark Jackson | Daisy Jacobs | Miguel Jiron | Ashley Jones | Gregory Jones | Patrick Jones | Linda Jules | Amy Lee Ketchum | Brandon Lake | Hannah Lau-Walker | Karl Lawson | Yang Liu | (Emily) Chunhui Meng | Prakash Mohanty | Stefano Morandin | Louis Morton | Ourania Mourta | Rodrigo Ortiz | Eric Tortora Pato | Ignasi Pi-Sunyer | Stephan Pretorius | Silvia Sardellaro | Emma Shorey | Tom Sito | Frankie Swan | Natasha Tonkin | Jovanna Rebecca Tosello | Sam Watterson | Josh Wedlake | Christopher Wilder | Dan Wilson | (Michelle) Hsiu-chi Yang | Krisztina Zaja | Ying Zhang
Finally, here is a video of the first version of the installation in the USC Cinematic Arts Gallery. It’s always quite hard to document video installations because of the light levels, but this gives an overall impression of the space, the different languages and accents spoken by the animated characters and of the experience of moving around the video monitors and wall projections. ‘It’s like being in a really noisy party’, said one of the attendees at the private view.
This tutorial shows a version of using symbols in Flash for lipsyncing.
Pictures of the Chatter installation at USC Cinematic Arts Gallery, Los Angeles from October 29th to November 6th 2010.
Animators from all over the world contributed short animated loops of characters in conversation.
Thanks to USC Cinematic Arts gallery manager Lisa Mann and her team who built the show – Herb, Gary, Carl and everyone else. Also thanks to Laura and Javier who also helped out.
Expanded Animation 