Back in the Day

The plot concept is super simple: This slice-of-life shows us the day of an 80's era regular, middle class family. Nothing too crazy: Dad wakes the kids up, Mom makes breakfast, then school, dinner and so on and so forth. I think that's what drew me to this 3D animated short: the simplicity of everyday life and routine (not that I'd want that every day, but you know what I mean). The art direction is pretty whimsical, employing a style for the characters reminiscent of a bizarre cross between Mr. Potato Head and Fisher Price's Little People. Back In The Day was created by animator Rok Predin, in collaboration with the UK-based Trunk Animation.

Legend Of Korra - Book 2 Trailer

As part of the upcoming barrage of new reveals that this year's San Diego Comic Con is unleashing on us, the Legend Of Korra panel revealed some juicy new details about the second season, including this moody new trailer, offering us a taste of some of the challenges Korra and friends will face starting this September.

The most noteworthy plot point for the second season will come in the form of the recently announced origin story of the very first Avatar, Wan, who will be voiced by the Steven Yeun of The Walking Dead fame. Is it just me or does this franchise keep looking better with each passing season? The first season of Korra had some amazing animation and all, but it already looks like the bar is being set even higher for this upcoming season.

Bill Plympton's "Cheatin" Feature Gets It's First Trailer

Kickstarted back in late 2012, Cheatin' was successfully backed earlier this year, surpassing it's modest $75,000 goal. Fast forward to July and we get our first trailer, narrating a seemingly perfect relationship gone horribly wrong, and one woman's quest to tempt destiny. Employing an impressionistic, sketchy style with water color washes, Bill Plympton drew every single frame of the feature, 40,000 in total along with a crew of 10 artists employed to help with clean up and compositing. Following the Kickstarter, Plympton and his team kept a very robust production blog on Vimeo, featuring a few hours of behind the scenes footage. Check it out here.

In a fateful bumper car collision, Jake and Ella meet and become the most loving couple in the long history of Romance. But when a scheming 'other' woman drives a wedge of jealousy into their perfect courtship, insecurity and hatred spell out an untimely fate. With only the help of a disgraced magician and his forbidden 'soul machine,' Ella takes the form of Jake's numerous lovers, desperately fighting through malfunction and deceit as they try to reclaim their destiny.

Cuushe - "Airy Me"

Animated by Yoko Kuno for Japanese artist Cuushe's debut album, dubbed as 'Red Rocket Telepathy,' Airy Me is an ethereral, dreamy electro-pop track driven by Cuushe's delicate vocals. The visuals pay a definite stylistic homage to the works of Osamu Tezuka and Katsuhiro Otomo, with the doe eyed nurse protagonist of this short dealing with an unexpected horror either born from her own mind or some supernatural process.

With it's never ending animated movement, Airy Me turns into a mesmerizing trip open for your own personal interpretation. If you're interested in learning more about this debut artist, check out the English friendly label publishing the work of Cuushe, 'Flau' right here.

Behind The Scenes Of Pacific Rim With Legacy Effects

Love it or hate it, you can't deny that Pacific Rim delivered a visual spectacle unlike anything we've seen before, offering us a take on a genre untapped here in the west (Excluding b-movies). The fine folks at Legacy Effects, a special effects studio specializing in animatronics, specialty suits, prosthetic make up and creature design put together a series of behind the scenes mini-featurettes focusing on the work they put into Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim. Focusing on the pilot suits, different iterations of helmets and a few key components of the pretty awe inspiring animatronic command set (Which we featured right before the release of the film), the attention to detail and passion is definitely palpable.

This new wave of prop building is a pretty amazing look into some of the new techniques being used, especially high end 3D printing to create entire suits from templates modeled in software packages like Maya. If the company name doesn't ring a bell, Legacy Effects is comprised of multi-decade Stan Winston Studio veterans that went on to found their own house following the passing of the special effects visionary back in 2008. They've contributed to high profile projects including The Avengers, Iron Man 3, The Life Of Pi as well as the upcoming Robocop and Xmen: Days Of Future Past. Check out the mini-featurettes for the helmets and the custom built command module after the break.

New Samurai Jack Comic Series Is Pretty Much The Greatest Thing Ever

Samurai Jack has always been Cartoon Network's magnum opus for me. Genndy Tartakovsky's ability to blend a serious journey of a lone wanderer with a strong and well thought out post-apocalyptic future, as well as some of the best comedic timing to ever grace an animated world has remained untouched since the series cancellation in 2004. It was a cartoon tragedy when the series finally came to an end, especially without any solid resolution to appease fans.

Luckily Tartakovsky and IDW aren't leaving fans out to dry any longer. The comic book publisher has announced a return the series after a nine year hiatus. What does this mean? Samurai Jack might finally get back, back to the past. This news hits me pretty close to home, as I remember being devastated growing up to know that Samurai Jack's story might never be finished. The first issue is set to be released in October with a variant cover by Tartakovsky himself and Chew's Rob Guillory. Prepare yourself. Two more alternate covers for the comic after the break!

Bravest Warriors Returns in Sugarbellies (Episode 12)

Oh hey, look who's back it's Bravest Warriors. After a brief hiatus the series is back and better than ever, although this time the team is experiencing a bit of a speech issue. Is it just me or does the animation look better than ever? It amazes me how quickly these episodes are pushed out, especially with the amount of quality each one holds. I recommend for the newest episode to turn on YouTube's fantastic auto-captioning service, it adds a whole new layer to this episode. An awful, poorly translated layer.

 

 

While nothing was referenced to the last episode in terms of a larger story arc, the overall action of the series seems to have kicked it up a notch. Here's hoping the continue hinting at something bigger in future episodes.

2 Mello Returns With Nastlevania Mashup - The Triumphant Sequel To Chrono Jigga

Most gamers fall into one of two camps, Castlevania or Metroid. As much as I like scifi though, there's one thing that ultimately turned me into a Castlevania fanboy in the long run, and it was the music: The biggest culprit? Symphony Of The Night, the Playstation One era magnum opus to the Castlevania franchise; Often imitated, never surpassed.

If 2 Mello rings a bell, he's the producer responsible for bringing us the absolutely amazing Chrono Trigger/Jay-Z mashup album that was so good that it spread like wildfire through both gaming and non-gaming crowds alike. And he's made my year by releasing a followup featuring the vocal stylings of self proclaimed lyrical warrior Nas mashed with the most memorable, catchy tracks of the franchise, which you can sample below in it's entirety. As if that wasn't enough, 2 Mello is also offering the entire album download for free on his website.

Franchise - Animated Typography

Created by Animography, Franchise Animated is an amazing endeavor that enlisted the talents of 1 type designer (Font creator) and a total of 110 animators from around the world assigned to each and every character. Each participant was assigned a total of 4 colors, 24 frames and a template canvas to work their magic in After Effects, and the results speaks for themselves- A pretty damn amazing mashup of two different mediums into something altogether new.

The folks at Animography are offering all the After Effects files for Franchise on their website, at the very reasonable price of free. 

CocoRosie - "Child Bride"

American 'freak-folk' sister duo CocoRosie recently debuted the music video for their rather unsettling single, Child Bride. Most appropriately, the video shows us a young girl being prepped to become, you guessed it, a child bride. The haunting, ethereal track accompanies a sad yet somehow fantasical looking narrative (the costumes look like they could be something out of a Tarsem film), bringing together a strangely dark music video.

The Pulpy Art Of Ramon Villalobos

(Via)

Aside from having an absolutely amazing name, Ramon Villalobos also possesses a fantastic talent in the form of his comic book styled art, drawing influence from some of the best artists residing in the comic book world fringes, especially the meticulously detailed comic work of Geoff Darrow, who's work on comics like Hard Boiled (Still begging to be adapted into a movie), Shaolin Cowboy and Big Guy and Rusty The Boy Robot left quite an impression on a few generations of artists.

Ramon's work follows in a similar suit, and all that meticulous detailing simply leaves room for imbuing each character with just that much more personality, with not even a pant crease left to the imagination. Mix that style with a lovely dose of 90's comic nostalgia and Ramon has found himself a winning combination, paying a cheeky tribute to that neon-tinged golden age of comics when terms like 'comic book artist' and 'rockstar' were commonly used in the same sentence. Check out some more of his awesome comic book styled work after the break, and don't forget to also visit his New Cool Meat Tumblr.

Jack the Ripper

Graphic design studio Naissance, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, created this super-short short based on London's infamous Jack the Ripper. Set during modern times, this classically stylish killer provides a narrative during a late-night stroll. While the accent comes off as ever so over-the-top (or is that just me?), I absolutely loved the stylized, noir-esque black and white graphics. The creators themselves fashioned the look after both Frank Miller's Sin City and the dark intro to Mad Men, which is the first thing I thought of while watching this.

Breakbot - "You Should Know"

Created in collaboration with Ed Banger records and the fine vocals of Ruckazoid, Parisian electro artist Breakbot just released a fresh music video for You Should Know, a rich love song outfitted with plenty of Tron and Moebius inspired retro-futuristic visuals narrate the story of two minds becoming intertwined. It's a laid back, summery track with vibrant, colorful visuals that do a perfect job emulating a late 70's, new age scifi film. You Should Know was released earlier this month in an EP format earlier this month with remixes by  by Busy P & Boston Bun, Homework Le Bain, Le Family Club, and The Swiss.

Shinjuku - The Film

Animated, directed and illustrated by acclaimed artist and director Robert Valley (Massive Swerve, The Gorillaz, Aeon Flux) and narrated by actor Danielle Vasinova (To Hell with a Bullet, White Trash Noir), Shinjuku: The Film is an animated adaptation of the Yoshitaka Amano illustrated Shinjuku graphic novel, written by Mink. This highly moody, noir-like animated adaptation incorporates Valley's highly stylized visual take on the series, as well as some of the motion comic techniques he's been experimenting with on past personal projects like Massive Swerve and Pear Cider And Cigarettes. So far I think this adaptation is absolutely incredible, and hope to see Valley extend this treatment into an ongoing series.

In the year 2020, bounty hunter Daniel Legend finds himself tracking a quarry of a different kind: his long-lost sister. Armed only with his wits, his gun, and a mysterious postcard, Daniel makes his way to the heart of the seedy Shinjuku district of Tokyo, where a clash between two underworlds - the criminal and the infernal - threatens the very fabric of reality.

The Scifi Art Of James Zapata

(Via)

James Zapata is a New Jersey based concept artist and illustrator with a knack for scifi illustration, currently following the freelance route with the aid of companies including Wizards of the Coast and Applibot, a Japanese company that has recruited a huge number of artists for their Legends Of The Cryptids and Galaxy Saga trading card franchises in the last year or so.

Following the recent trend of contemporary digital illustrations, James uses a mixture of painting, 3D and photo compositing to accomplish his awesome scifi pieces, which draw influence from a more organic form of scifi (Digital Extreme's Warframe comes to mind) over the more common, mechanized art we're accustomed to. With less than 4 years of experience under his belt, I've watched James make some tremendous progress since he first landed on the art scene a few years ago. Check out more of his scifi goodness after the break!

Hollywood's History Of Faking It - The Evolution Of Greenscreen Compositing

Created as an instructional film for Filmmaker IQ, a creative community dedicated to filmmakers, The Evolution Of Greenscreen Compositing presents a fascinating look at over 100 years of compositing, starting off with the revolutionary work of Georges Méliès, who pioneered techniques including multiple exposures, time lapse photography, hand painted colorization and screen dissolves in his time. This fascinating video goes in depth into the evolution, and iteration of the techniques used up to modern day digital green matting techniques which are prevalent in the film industry today.