“Ode to Summer,” Ron Hui’s demo for his Chinese ink watercolor shader for Maya, from SIGGRAPH 2003.

(Via Drawn.)

French studio H5 directed this infographics-style video in 2002 for “Remind Me,” from Norwegian wistful-disco electro-pop duo Röyksopp’s first album.

“Tsukino no Ban” (”In the Evening of a Moonlit Night”) directed by Kazuyoshi Yaginuma, erstwhile animator for Studio 4°C on films including Akira. This short is part 4 of Studio 4°C’s 2001 OVA “Digital Juice.”

High quality at Stage 6.

It’s a curious artifact — the short is steeped in a typical anime combination of childlike innocence and an oddly naïve eroticism, complete with creepy Lolita angle.

The fact that it’s played so straight — with sensitive attention paid to movement and a nostalgic design worthy of Miyazaki — just makes it more unnerving, as it appears that we’re intended to take it all at face value. Far be it from me to moralize, but I get nervous around depictions of the fetishisation of the disenfranchised.

There’s some subtle 3D in there too, which probably explains this short’s inclusion in a collection called “Digital Juice.”

The music is the Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning.”

“Potapych, the Bear who Loved Vodka,” by Darren Price. Such lovely design. And a true story!

The official site has Hi-res Quicktimes.

From the AnimWatch mini-interview with Price:

Putting cel shading together with hand painted backgrounds was the general idea. Each frame had to look like an illustration.

Great success! The look of gouache on rough paper works like it worked for studios in the 50’s: it’s economical and evocative without being distracting, an excellent foil for the simple, cel-shaded characters. However, unlike many of those studios (I’m looking at you, Hanna-Barbera), rather than throwing backdrops up slapdash, Price uses the simplicity and versatility of the style to take the design further: he can afford to give nearly every shot in “Potapych” its own background, with colors and design carefully tuned to match the mood of the story at that moment.

The hereby-mononymous Amid elaborated on the vicissitudes of this style in one of his notorious cage-fight death-match posts on Cartoon Modern: “Hanna Barbera vs. Walt Peregoy/Eyvind Earle.”

Go bears!

One more from Gobelins for Annecy 2005, with “Gnap Gnap,” featuring classic Mobius stylee, excellent sound design, and decent 2D+3D, which should be called 5D.

And here’s Quicktime with stereo.

The song on the record is the song sung by the man in the shower in “Le Building,” thanks no doubt to the sound designer for both pieces, Olivier Crouet.

I believe “Gnap Gnap” translates roughly to “Nom Nom Nom.”

Today on Gobelins Appreciation Week: “Le Building” for Annecy 2005.

“Le Building” in high-res on Stage6.

Excellent in every respect. They pulled off an extra-nifty trick here you don’t see done well very often.

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“Bunnies” by Studio Soi.

Directed by Jakob Schuh & Saschka Unseld, produced by Filmakademie BW and Studio Soi, for Internationales Trickfilmfestival Stuttgart, 2002.

(via unstoppablerobotninja.)

Breakdown!

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Brilliant — fantastic style, cleverly done, and the best use of cel shading I’ve ever seen.

“Musicotherapie,” by Supinfocom students Amaël Isnard, Manuel Javelle, and Clément Picon, with music by Nicolas Baloche and Benjamin Fournier as Tambour Battant (”Rumbling Drum”, also the name of a French wartime broadcast).

A cleaner Quicktime version and info in French are available at http://musicotherapie-lefilm.com.

Theory follows.

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