Fifty Percent Grey - Ruairi Robinson

This week we've got an award winning short from 2002, "Fifty Percent Grey". The guy who created it, Ruairi Robinson, did all the work for this piece (with the exception of sound) over the course of 6 months for a grand total of 10,000 Euros (that's about $15,000 folks).

According to Robinson's website, the film was shown at 70 international film festivals, including Sundance, and garnered awards for Best Short at London Effects and Animation Festival, The Empire State Film Festival, and the Dresden FilmFest, just to name a few. "Fifty Percent Grey" also nabbed an Oscar nomination that year, but was beat out by Pixar's "For the Birds". (Shocking that Pixar won an award, I know. Did I mention they won several awards for those commercials I shared with you last week?)

Look for more of Robinson's work in 2009 when the live action remake of "Akira" is released. But for now, enjoy "Fifty Percent Grey."

Pyrats - Gobelins l'école de l'image Students

It's Thursday, and time for an animation from the wide world of ... well, animation.

Today's is another student film,"Pyrats", by a group of five from the Gobelins l'école de l'image school in Paris, France. "Pyrats" was made as an opening short for the Annecy 2006 International Animation Festival. According to the students' website, it was completed in 7 months, including the screenplay, storyboard and designs.

This is a 2D animation for the most part, although apparently some Flash as well as Maya was used to help out with certain elements. And we all know how much I love Flash.

The fluidity of the animation just astounds me, and the camera cuts which follow the action from person to person are just, well... cool. From the technical side of animation everything is really well done, and not only that, it's entertaining to boot. Enjoy!

"Pyrats" - By: Yves Bigerel , Bruno Dequier, Ben Fiquet, Nicolas Gueroux, and Julien Le Rolland

Facebook users and feed readers - click here to see today's video.

Cat Man Do by Simon Tofield

I tend to focus on 3D animation on this blog as it is my main area of study, but of course 2D is where it all started. In fact, Disney is finding a renewed interest in 2D animation of late, as can be seen with their recent animated / live action release, Enchanted. Other 2D feature films coming out in the next couple of years include The Princess and the Frog as well as the Pixar / Disney's Up.
From what I've heard and read around the internet, a lot of the 2D push is a direct result of Pixar's John Lasseter, who, after Disney bought Pixar in 2006, has become the chief creative officer over at the house the mouse built. Interesting, considering Lasseter is the guy who basically drove the entire 3D animation industry to where it is today.

Anyway, today's video is a 2D Animation by Simon Tofield, an animator at London based Tandem Films. I don't think this is anything that was made officially for Tandem, but rather just a side project by Tofield, who I would guess owns a cat.