The Happiness Factory

When you combine advertising and animation the results are normally amazing. If you love animation you’ll love Happiness Factory. The campaign was made by Psyop for Wieden+Kennedy and Coca-Cola and lots of information is available online.

It all started as a coca-cola ad:

Then a documentary (6 min) was made to make you intimate with the characters. The voices are done by actual Coca-Cola employees and the result reminds me of aardman type of magic.

And now a movie is coming. Here’s the trailer (3 min 30 sec):

If you are interested in this campaign take a look at this great related article, this interview with ad directors Todd Mueller and Kylie Matulich or browse through lots of great pictures.

The Happiness Factory

December 28, 2007 | Tags: , | Leave a Comment 

Ratatouille


Can’t wait to go see it.
Lovely reviews at Rotten Tomatoes.

In Ratatouille, the level of moment-by-moment craftsmanship is a wonder.

Ratatouille will make you wonder why animation needs to hide behind the mantle of ‘it’s for children, but grownups will like it, too.

It’s not just the computer animation that is vibrantly three-dimensional. It’s also the well-rounded characters… I defy you to name another animated film so overflowing with superfluous beauty.

August 10, 2007 | Tags: , , | Leave a Comment 

Birthday gifts

In April, it was also my birthday. I love birthday gifts with a personal touch so this year I was delighted when she decided to make a set of moo cards with pictures from our last 6 years. 100 pictures with 100 memories. Thank you!

moo cards birthday gift

Two good friends know that I’m an animation fan and offered me Aardman latest creation Flushed away DVD (trailer here). It lacks the authenticity of Wallace & Gromit but it made me laugh for the whole movie and it came with its own plasticine kit so I can now make my own slugs…

May 8, 2007 | Tags: , | Leave a Comment 

The Human Pole Position

This a cool art project. The Human Pole Position is one of the video performances of Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond for the GAME OVER Project.

It consists of a series of collaborative animation movies which revive some of the very first video games. The pixels are replaced by a group of real human-beings that are moving from seat to seat in a theatre during about 4 to 6 hours.

Each “pixel” has its own rules and decides what s/he wants to do for each picture. Once all these pictures are turned into a short animation movie, a giant human-scale video game unfolds “live”.


(if you read this via rss, click here to see the video)

Impressive numbers. Logistically it must be a nightmare to manage 49 people during 6 hours of shooting generating 400 pictures.

There are two other art videos on the same project, Space Invaders and Pong.

March 13, 2007 | Tags: , , | Leave a Comment 

Wallace and Gromit history destroyed

I’ve been a fan of Wallace&Grommit for many years now an the news that the ‘entire history’ of the company behind it was destroyed in a fire comes as a bit of a shock. CNN is reporting that The roof and three interior walls of the Aardman Animations building in Bristol, west England collapsed after the blaze tore through the Victorian building. The sets […] are all thought to have been destroyed.

I was hoping one day I could visit a WandG museum. Now that’s going to be a bit more difficult.

Wallace and Grommit

Produced by Nick Park W&G is a marvelous stop-motion animation series. Following the sucess of the first three short-films (which are amazing attention to detail) A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave Aardman produced the famous (but not so good in my opinion) Chicken Run.

A new film, Curse of the Were-Rabbit has been launched in the US last weekend and is coming to Europe in a few days. Can’t wait to see it.

A nice reaction from the men behing W&G. Nick Park commented that In light of other tragedies, today isn’t a big deal.

Update: First real news story than I’m directed too by the The most-discussed news story feature in technorati.

October 11, 2005 | Tags: , | 1 Comment 

The Incredibles

The Incredibles is an amazing movie. I went to the cinema waiting for another improved animation movie which is by itself a big thing. But it suprised me. The Incredibles is much more than a movie. It is a cult thought abd designed by Pixar. The movie has everything around it to make it work. The basic framework formed by the movie characters is incredible. Every one of them is just so very well developed. On top of that the promotion efforts are huge and include books, games, toys and all types of deals / partnerships.

My favourite character is Edna Mode. Edna is a superhero fashion designer who’s attributes include excellent taste and super attitude. Edna’s voice is beautifully played by Incredibles Director, Brad Bird and it’s image is apparently modeled after Edith Head.

Edna Mode

One of the great things of The Incredibles is that it made me remember all those great cult series like The Jetsons or movies like James Bond On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Even the soundtrack has a vintage feeling. Being a animated cartoon you would think that The Incredibles was a very good movie for kids. In fact Pixar made it so attractive to older people that it will bring many of them for the first time to an animated movie. Hopefully, in the near future, this will lead many of these people to comeback to a Pixar movie.

December 9, 2004 | Tags: , | 2 Comments 

Playing at Work

What is it like to work at Pixar. Pixar is the company behind “Toy Story” series and other major animation sucesses. Improving productivity by fun.

May 31, 2003 | Tags: , | Leave a Comment 

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