Roommate Wanted - Dead or Alive

'Roommate Wanted - Dead or Alive' is yet another graduation film from the venerable students of The Animation Workshop. The short opens with Adam, a financially-strapped medical student posting a desperately-worded roommate opening online.

Within minutes (as is the typical case for cartoons), Adam is greeted by Zack, the one and only response to his posting. Little did Adam suspect however that his plea for a roommate regardless of whether they possessed a pulse or not would yield a result for the latter. Can these two strangers manage to make it out together, and maybe even become friends along the way?

The Odd Couple

There's a lot to love about this short. What sets "Roommate Wanted" apart from the rest of the graduation films I've seen come out of the Workshop lately is that it is a purely physical, clay-mation puppet production as opposed to the 2D-3D animations we've seen up until this point.



It certainly wears its influences on its sleeve, with the exaggerated pantomimic gestures typically associated with Wallace and Gromite coupled with an over-the-top Vincent Price-esque narration rhyming throughout the short. I absolutely adore the intricate touches of detail,  the crooked xylophone-like grating of the radiator, the faded postcard stickers and leather of Zack's suitcase.
The slapstick tone of Composer Mathias Winum's score certainly is reminiscent of Frederic Bayco's iconic work. Check out more of the team's production work on their student Tumblr.

Throwback Thursday: Throne - Tharsis Sleeps

Nicos Livesey's video for UK-band Throne depicts an epic drama of interplanetary conquest and cosmic collision seemingly embroidered into the very fabric of space and time. Three astronauts are sent to the planet Mars on a mission to last open the volcanic crater dubbed "Tharsis" and seed a new foothold for human civilization. They end up getting more than what they bargained for when their bomb punctures a rift in reality, allowing for a whole mess of inter-dimensional prog-rock nonsense to spill out into the void.

What's most impressive is that this wasn't just computer-generated to resemble embroidery. Every frame was physically stitched and digitally-composted in post-production. Our hats off to the folks at Lucky Features and Dazed Digital for creating such a kick-ass music video!

'Playing With Power' Takes The Power-Glove To A Whole New Level

Nintendo's first foray into motion-control gaming, the Power-Glove, is simultaneously one of the most disastrous product campaigns the company has ever launched and one of the most iconic pieces of 1980's pop-cultural ephemera. And now, thanks to Dillon Markey, an animator at Stoopid Monkey Studios (Robot Chicken) and PES (Fresh Guacamole), it's the ultimate video-editing peripheral.

Though at first glance it looks like little more than nostalgic affectation for the aesthetics of yesteryear, Dillon's custom Power-Glove is a surprisingly practical, multi-purpose stop-motion animation tool. Equipped with blue-tooth enabled quick-keys, retractable tweezers for re-positioning small assets, and an suitably awesome fist-bump sound effect. Maybe Nintendo ought to get into the animation business?

SIRENS by Flight Parade

Director Simon Roberts delivers an absolutely gorgeous music video for Flight Brigade's latest single "Sirens". Featuring a combination of live action stop-motion and post-compositing, the video favorably brings to mind comparisons with the music video for The Shin's The Rifle's Spiral in its atmosphere and aesthetic.

Sirens follows the story of a boy and his family as the forest that they call their home is decimated in the creation of an otherworldly mountain of train tracks. The lighting and action perfectly complement the track, a beautiful folk-rock ballad about love, loss, family and sacrifice.

Cut Copy - "We Are Explorers"

Cut Copy's newest music video follows two miniature explorers on a quest to gather up spare junk to build a vessel back home, Small Soldiers-style. What's even more impressive than the kicking tunes and the hypnotic strobe effects is that "We Are Explorers" manages to combine stop-motion animation and 3D printing to achieve its final version; Each individual frame features a different set of printed figure. Now that's dedication and foresight!