Monty Python member, film director, screenwriter and animator Terry Gilliam shows the how to of his cut out animation style on British TV’s Bob Godfrey’s Do-It-Yourself Animation Show in 1974.

Godfrey’s show, which made animation accessible to the masses by taking the mystery out of the production process, was vastly influential and inspired an entire generation of kids in England, including Nick Park, who created Wallace & Gromit, Jan Pinkava, who directed the Pixar short Geri’s Game, and Richard Bazley, an animator on Pocahontas, Hercules, and The Iron Giant.

Below is a short BBC 2 documentary on Bob Godfrey.

Aardman, the British animation studio best known for their work on Wallace and Gromit, follows up their “world’s smallest stop-motion animation” with another record-setting stop-motion promotion for the Nokia N8.

‘Gulp‘ is a short film created by Sumo Science at Aardman, depicting a fisherman going about his daily catch. Shot on location at Pendine Beach in South Wales, every frame of this stop-motion animation was shot using a Nokia N8, with its 12 megapixel camera and Carl Zeiss optics. The film has broken a world record for the ‘largest stop-motion animation set’, with the largest scene stretching over 11,000 square feet.

“The Wanna Be Oddie” is a short animated film made by Ben Lam Jun Bin as his MFA project at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. The film is a wonderful mixture of character design from Max Fleischer’s black and white cartoons, the slapstick comedy of Chaplin and Keaton, the wackiness of Animaniacs, Transfromer-style technology and well-executed 3D graphics. Call it retro-futurism…or even better, just plain awesome.

Check out Lam’s production diary here

Credits:
design, story, modeling, rigging, animation, texture & lighting, rendering & compositing by Ben Lam
extra rigging help from abAuto Rig
visual effects by Wayne Lai & Ho-Jung Hong
background painted by Ting Chian Tey
vending machine robot designed by Hoi Mun Tham

Back in May Canadian musician and visual artist Chad VanGaalen released his hand-drawn animated video for “Peace on the Rise”, the first single from his fourth album Diaper Island, out now on Sub Pop. The only question is what do like better VanGaalen’s music or his art?

Download “Peace on the Rise” here (right click + save link as)

Download audio file (05-Sara.mp3)

Download “Sara”, another track from Diaper Island here (right click + save link as)

On June 6, BLONDES will release the Business / Pleasure 12″, the second in a three-part series on NYC’s RVNG Intl label exploring the concept of duality. Perhaps like the duality of a blogger who generally doesn’t vibe European House music but posted this trippy video anyway.

The video, which was directed by Farley Gwazda, was assembled entirely from animated gifs – scientific diagrams, mathematical figures, representations of data and renderings of simulated systems. The video appropriates images meant to serve as rational demonstrations of logical concepts and transmogrifies them into a cosmic trip.

This is the video for Bill Callahan‘s “Riding for the Feeling” the latest single from his Apocalypse LP, which is out now on Drag City.  The video’s ballsy approach to minimalism fits the music perfectly and is as enticing as it is relaxing.

Illustrator, animator, and and now video director Steve Smith recently put together a short animation for the Stones Throw video contest. Choosing  ”Geekdown” from J Dilla’s (RIP) now classic album Donuts, which never had a video before, already made Smith a winner to me.  The fact Smith’s lively animation work is reminiscent of Mike Judge, Bill Plympton and The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine means he has good chance of winning more than just my heart.

BTW for those interested the contest ends July 1. Semi-finalists will get a $200 credit to be used on stonesthrow.com and the winner will get a $1000 check and a chance to direct an upcoming video for the label. Deets

Via RSA:

For over 250 years the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress.  Our approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action.

We encourage public discourse and critical debate by providing platforms for leading experts to share new ideas on contemporary issues, through our public events programme, RSA Journal and RSA Comment.

RSA Animate is like an British version of Ted Talks with helpful animations. To get you started we’ve posted two of our favorite videos from the series. One tackles the importance of building an empathic civilization and the second deals with changing education paradigms. They’re also up for a Webby Award in the Animation Category so vote for them if you like what you see and hear.

These bloody par­odies of Dis­ney ani­ma­tions were cre­ated by Denis, a Russ­ian artist who lives in Moscow. That’s all the information we have for now.

found at Design You Trust

Via The Daily What:

It’s a little-known fact outside Russia that Cold War-era cartoons are something of a sight to behold. Unlike their Western counterparts, animators working for the influential Moscow-based Soyuzmultfilm animation studio were not constrained by commercial concerns (the success or failure of a film had no bearing on an animator’s paycheck), and were therefore free to experiment with styles and techniques that would otherwise be considered commercially precarious.

A perfect example of the end-result can be found in Yuriy Norshteyn’s Hedgehog in the Fog. Considered by many to be one of the greatest animated films by one of the greatest animators of all time — iconic Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki has called Norshteyn “a great artist”  — the 1975 Soyuzmultfilm classic tells the tale of a curious hedgehog who stumbles upon a thick fog and decides to explore its mysteries.

If you’re interested in learning more about Norshteyn watch this clip from a documentary about Russian animation entitled Magia Russica.

We also highly suggest watching Norshteyn’s equally brilliant short film Tale of Tales. (Part 1 2 3)