J-Sport By Masanobu Hiraoka

Animated by Masanobu Hiraoka, who directed that one awesome music video by Yoshiharu Abe, this little spot for Japanese sports channel J-Spot delivers a nice dose of his distinct fluid animation style that we've come to love over time. It's all about those silky smooth transitions, and the Vampire Weekend track used (Cousins) provides a perfect accompaniment to the quick tempo of the animation. Short and sweet.

Space Shower TV's Amazing TV Idents

Japan's answer to a lack of music video dedicated television channel came in the form of Space Shower TV, who took advantage of MTV phasing out the classic formula that made them so successful by appropriating the rich combination of memorable idents and go figure, music themed programming. While it seems like a no-brainer to most audiences who grew up with the classical formula on their music channels, try explaining that to modern day, out of touch corporate overlords running these networks.

We've featured their amazing 30-45 second idents before, but the extremely prolific channel has put out dozens more, pushing the envelope with some truly imaginative new mediums of delivery, including glitch art, pixel hacking and more. Examples like Otsuki Strong's amazing PC Engine tribute to retro Japanese anime dating sims (Above), Memory Crush or YKBX's glitch/anime Electronica kind of make me long for the days that channels had more of a strong visual identity compared to what we get these days. Check out just a small handful of idents created recently for the vibrant channel after the break.

Lumbre's Channel Idents Are Eye Searingly Good

The Buenos Aires based animation and design collective called Lumbre just released their awesome branding package created for the regional 'Sol Musica' channel for 2013, offering a set package of awesome, colorful visual idents with a cohesive feel created for the first all Spanish music channel. Completely done in traditional animation, the theme is definitely high energy and fluid, similar in feel to the equally amazing Cartoon Network Summer Collab animation mashup. Amazing eye searing idents paired with the nearly ska-like music of the Argentinian/Spanish rock group called Tequila, track is Y Yo Que Se.

Why Are We Not Home Yet?

Reminiscent of a glitched out version of Kubrick's 2001, George Fasswald's Why Are We Not Home Yet is an exercise in motion graphics using software like Cinema4D, Aftereffects and Realflow. These types of bite sized projects, held together by a loose narrative or abstract concept can be used to market the motiongraphers abilities to companies looking for ident artists.

Check out a few other samples of the Austrian artists work after the break.

Synchronized Drops

Space Shower TV is currently Japan's largest music channel, and rightly so by adopting the practices that MTV abandoned in favor of reality TV and phasing out music as their emphasis. We covered their bite sized creative idents recently, created in a flurry of different mediums, and their recent 'Synchronized Drops' is a longer form piece, probably intended for late night broadcasting.

The 60 second spot was directed by Kosai Sekine and used no post processing, instead relying on shooting at a frame rate that matched the frequency of the speaker, resulting in the water appearing to free in mid air and run upwards. I had no idea that such an effect was even possible, but after a little research it turns out that the effect is known as a stroboscopic phenomenon. You learn something new every day, no? Check out the making of after the break!

Space Shower TV Idents

Space Shower TV is a Japanese produced equivalent of MTV which was spun up within the last few years, and as part of that formula they've also created a ton of idents for their channel. The 30 to 45 second mini ads were created by a huge range of Japanese talent, including Hiroto Kato of the recent Lupin reboot.

I went through all of them and picked out five more idents showcasing just how wide they went with the initiative, featuring everything from pop art and 3D to stop motion and anime flavored shorts. Check them out after the break, and take a second to grieve over what MTV has unfortunately become here in the US.

4Seven Idents By ManVsMachine

These are some pretty damn incredible, slightly mind bending idents by the folks over at ManVsMachine, a UK based design collective with a focus on brand development. I've always loved idents, and they definitely play an incredibly important role as a creative, visual stamp to help networks present their brands to viewers. Check out more of ManVsMachine's work after the break!

MTV Night Videos By Emil Sellström

This series of idents were created for MTV Europe's after hours music program (Yeah, MTV is still an actual music channel overseas). I absolutely loved all the callbacks to iconic retro artists and series like Moebius and Tron mixed with his absolutely bizarre, angular protagonist that inhabits all of them. Looking back I kind of realized that these idents were bite sized little morsels of hyper creativity that sparked my imagination. I'm glad they've managed to stick around despite the onslaught of awful reality TV and crappy mass market music. Speaking of which, have you guys had the chance to listen to the latest Offspring track? My ears are bleeding.