Pigeon: Impossible was made by Lucas Martell. It took nearly 5 years to complete and was made using CG. It has been shown at over 200 festivals in 43 countries and won more than 20 awards. I really like this animation. I like the story and how it's a simple idea but it's actually also really funny. He's given a lot of character to the pigeon and it's got a definite personality which I think is great. I also like the style- it's quite similar to the kind of style that Pixar has, however it's less child-like. Martell animation is a 3D animation and VFX studio based in Texas, founded by Lucas Martell. They work on original projects, as well as with clients working on everything from commercials and game cinematics, to TV series and feature films.
The other day Rosy and I went to London International Animation Festival, which was pretty cool. We couldn't afford many tickets so we picked one show on saturday and two on sunday to attend. On Satuday we saw 'Sacrebleu Productions: Studio Focus and on Sunday we went to Animated Documentaries with Screen Talk, and Marvellous Animations. We saw some pretty interesting things.. The Sacrebleu Productions: Studio Focus highlights included some really dark twisted animations, and a hilariously weird animation called 'Tram', by Michaela Pavlatova (which is apparently going to be at BAF so that will be interesting to see everyone else's reactions to it!)
Unfortunately we missed the beginning of Marvellous Animations because of a missed train, but the rest that we saw was very nice, they were animations for young people (aged 12-17) and some of them were really entertaining. Animated Documentaries was my favourite screening that we attended. I particularly liked 'Devil in the Room' by Carla Mackinnon, because it was really scary and I understood the fear behind it. It was a really well made documentary about sleep paralysis. I also thought 'Britain', by Bexie Bush, was an adorable and funny animation about politics in britain, which I wasn't expecting. I found all the documentaries really interesting and the talk afterwards with some of the animators were very insightful and I learnt a lot about the process behind the animations.
In our second PPP lesson, Mike explained to us all how Twitter is really good for networking and meeting people from the industry, as well as the social side of Twitter. (He's a massive fan of Twitter apparently) It also give us access to so much more new material and new animations that are just being released that, if it wasn't for Twitter, I'd have no idea they existed. He had us all set up a Twitter account, just to try it out, because Twitter isn't for everyone. I, however, absolutely love Twitter. It's really useful to see what everyone's doing, and I went slightly overboard when I made my Twitter account and followed over 200 people straight off! As well as the guys from my class and a few from the other years on my course, I've followed a lot of professionals and successful animators who I hope will tweet some useful tips and I can ask them questions about the industry and hopefully show them my animations (whenever I make some..). The only thing about Twitter that maybe isn't so great is that I've followed so many people now that I can't keep track of everything that's going on... but I guess I'll get used to that.
Rain- Playstation game advert So I was listening to some music on Youtube, and normally I hate it when those adverts pop up before the video starts and I skip over them, but this time the advert was for a playstation game called Rain and I couldn't bring myself to skip it.. It was a shorter version of the advert, but I just had to go and find another version to watch. I love the idea behind the characters and the way they can only be seen in the rain, and I like the way the music sets the mood for the whole piece and also builds suspense. I think this animation is beautifully put together and it really makes me interested in the characters they've created and their backstories.. whilst also making me really want to play the game, which is obviously what the advert is for..
