Gorgeous trailer for The Eagleman Stag, an as-yet-publicly-unavailable short from animator Michael Please of London. The subsurface scattering and global illumination is amazing. Also, that’s a deceptively simple build — it takes a lot of polygons to make a model look that clean.

What? Stop-motion? Oh.

Well, that explains how he’s getting such smooth samples in his AO pass.

[Via Ward Jenkins on Drawn.]

In a stunningly brave knight’s move, So-Cal native Allison Schulnik has delivered unto us one of the more transparent depictions of the modern hipster artist id.

Dissection follows.

Jemapur: Aanaatt from Max Hattler on Vimeo.

[Via Motionographer.]

One assumes it’s done the same way Michel Gondry solved a 3x with his feet.

[Via Existing Visual.]

Directed by Raf Wathion at Famous for Belgian energy corporation Electrabel. 300,000 candles, so they say.

[Via Motionographer.]

“Das Rad” (“The Wheel”), English title “Rocks”, made in 2001 by Chris Stenner, Arvid Uibel, and Heidi Wittlinger at
Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. It was a 2003 Academy Award nominee for best animated short film.

The characters and foreground sets were stop motion, and the backgrounds were made in Maya. Fancy foreground lighting effects, including fast-moving cloud shadows, were accomplished by lighting a white low-poly 3D replica set and comping it over the physical set. Making-of shots can be seen at the short’s website, dasrad.com.

Chris Stenner went on to animate at Trixter, Heidi Wittlinger is freelancing in Berlin, and Arvid Uibel died in 2000, possibly during production… the film is dedicated to him.

A whole lot of awesome human stop-motion in here (otherwise known as pixilation) — looks like mad skillz may finally be coming back into fashion.

An outstanding first volley from BrewTV.

[Via Cartoon Brew.]

By Norwegian Piotr Sapegin, 1998.

A simple formula, but the ingredients are difficult. Wit is the key. Timing and understatement are the keys to wit. Add some beauty and the result is sublime.

Directed by Schweitzer Claude Barras.

More details in French and a brief making-of at the poorly-coded official Flash site.

The genie’s song:

Armand, mon bienheureux
(Armand, my lucky friend)
Armand, dés aujourd’hui
(Armand, from today)
Tout semblera plus beau, plus grand
(Everything will seem bigger and better)
Car voilà devant toi
(Because in front of you is)
Le merveilleux, le superbe génie
(The marvellous, the superb genie)
De la boîte de raviolis
(of the can of ravioli)

Final song:

On est si bien les pieds dans l’eau.
(We are so comfy our feet in the water.)
L’un contre l’autre, au bord d’un ruisseau.
(One leaning on the other, on the banks of a stream.)
Il y a rien à faire à part chanter.
(There’s nothing to do except to sing.)
On laisse s’entremper nos doigts de pied.
(We let our toes get wet.)

If I have time I may go through and do a translation, but for now the songs alone will sustain us.