By Takuya Hosogane of Bonsajo.

[Via Kitsune Noir.]

Gobelins keeping it real for Annecy 2009.

Awesome bloopy 2D animation, very heavily Ren-and-Stimpified — such a relief after so much 3D. I would trade a million high-tech 3D pieces for a few more like this.

I do miss Ren and Stimpy.

[Via Motionographer.]

Wow, a lot of this looks like 3D. Some of it is, including the ship and much of the sets, but even the characters often look 3D. And it’s not the precision of the lines or the smoothness of the shading — the volume and the massing on the rotations is, how you say, parfait.

From a team of talented Gobelins students.

[Via Drawn.]

From RISD student Tim Beckhardt in 2008.

A nice balance of focus between plot and moments. I hate it when there’s never any question about what’s happening, and the only thing to learn is what will happen. That’s a sitcom. This has a plot, per se, but the plot isn’t the point, and it’s chopped up and spread around.

Also, I know I recently mentioned him, but continue to cf. my man Brandon Graham, plot-wise and other-wise, who writes my favorite blog these days. His book King City is one of my favorites in the mold of Tekkon Kinkreet: well-balanced — between detail and suggestion, personal and epic, serious and silly — all through mastery of the evocative. It’s all about choosing the details to suggest a super-deep, rich world, which happens to be populated by casual bad-asses who have their priorities straight, which is a world in which I aspire to live.

Also it reminds me of the Pacific Northwest, which I miss. And he does graffiti properly. There’s nothing lamer than obviously-fake graffiti in comics.

Also it is funny and nice. I love you Brandon Graham.

[Via Cartoon Brew.]

Cute animation, nice bloopiness in the motion, but the main event is the style of the thing, which gets me thinking about the appeal of old low-rez low-color art in the EGA days, like Space Quest:

Putting limits on the work enforces a certain internal consistency. This works for doodles in black ball-point pen, and things drawn in the sand with a stick. Once you add color, or start putting rocks and seaweed in the design, you’ve added a dimension that increases the number of possible combinations of elements exponentially — proportionally greater than the number of successful combinations.

Point being: it’s easier to be Rothko than Blake.

[Via Motionographer.]

Gobelins alert — this is one of the intro shorts for Annecy 2009. Brilliant design, motion, and pacing. Lots of Japanese influence: shades of Miyazake and Zelda. Fenrir is of course the wolfy son of Loki the Professional Norse Shit-Starter, and this scene looks a lot like his death at the hands of Víðarr, son of Odin.

Inside information and analysis available from, ahem, Articles & Texticles.

Credits: Nuno Alves Rodrigues, Oussama Bouacheria, Alice Dieudonné, Aymeric Kevin, and Ulysse Malassagne.

[Via Motionographer.]

Lovely 2.5D cartoon texture work from Malcolm Sutherland, reminds me a bit of the tech and BG work from two of my favorite comic dudes: Brandon Graham and his buddy James Stokoe.

[Via Cartoon Brew.]

Rather straightforward Euroclash from French DJ crew Birdy Nam Nam, with bitchin’ vintage animation designed and directed by Will Sweeney and Steve Scott for Not To Scale.

The Flash-on-illustrations look comes off as a 70’s cartoon mashup, with Hanna-Barbera characters running around Fantastic Planet, but somehow less ridiculous and more self-aware. I think it has to do with the balance of hard-rockin-ness with obvious goofiness — something Heavy Metal got exactly wrong in 1981.

Oy, 1981.

[Via Motionographer.]

Lordy! Conceptually, it’s a stretch, but the animation by Wizz is nifty, based on illustrations by Edik Katykhin.

This is the best of the three they’ve done, starting last year, maybe because of the music. The others are a little too try-hardy.

Looks to me like it was done in After Effects or some other 2.5D setup, with a whole lot of hand-drawn inbetweens to keep the scaling and rotations from being so obvious.

[Via Drawn.]

Watch “La Mare aux Têtards” (The Tadpole Pond).

Charmingly twee piece from French five-tet Bonzom, made up of graduates of Les Gobelins, La Poudriere, and L’ESAAT, and repped by Passion Pictures Paris.

Goebelins encore, naturellement. Blending 2D and 3D, they’re getting better every year. So much has to do with restraint: which things you emphasize, and at which times. Matching 3D camera speed and pacing to the 2D character’s speed and pacing is a lot of it. The camera is a spoiler, and can hide a world of errors. Shading is only a tiny piece of the puzzle.

Gorgeous painting helps too. Very anime, especially in the wide shots, with the curving cirrus clouds. That fake wide-angle lens, though an anime cliche*, still works to stretch out the horizon and emphasize the timelessness of a moment.

Credits: Charles-André LEFEBVRE, Manuel TANON-TCHI, Louis TARDIVIER, Sébastien VOVAU, Emmanuelle WALKER. Apparently they are all from FRANCE.

[via Motionographer.]

*I’m looking at you, Voices of a Distant Star**.

**I couldn’t remember the name of this Non-Ironic Anime Tropes Clearinghouse but it was tracked down by googling “anime emo”.

Yay! Bloopy bumpy electro happiness! It’s a bit like J. Otto times Aardman’s Purple and Brown.

Visuals by ljudbilden & piloten, aka Kristofer Ström, artist and musician, of Sweden, with assistance from studio Varelsen.

High-rez at Vimeo.

[Via xplsv.]

Randy Peters is a 14-year old boy from Chicago. Here’s the link to his youtube channel with the first 4 mini-episodes of Octocat Adventure:
http://www.youtube.com/user/RANDYPETERS1

Aaand here’s the finale:

Actually no, Randy Peters is David OReilly, genius in denial, from Ireland, which makes the name “Randy Peters” much funnier.

I think it’s David OReilly week.

Antidote for the TMNT post. Alice is a few of my favorite things.

Ben Meinhardt has been busy: his new four-part series “Perfectland” is airing on MTV, and is full of more of the same cuddly goodness seen in his 2004 short “Dancing Animals in Love.”

PerfectLand Part 4, “Progress: As Promised”: