Animation

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Animation Art Design

Thousands of Structures Populate a Growing Whimsical Metropolis in Charles Young’s Miniature Cities

After picking up a copy of Japanese artist Sanzo Wada’s A Dictionary of Color Combinations a few years ago, Charles Young decided to divert the course of his otherwise monochromatic body of work. The Scottish artist, who is currently based in Edinburgh, has accumulated an extensive archive of tiny buildings, transportation, and public architecture all created in white paper. The stark structures number well into the thousands and together, sprawl into massive miniature metropolises. They’re now joined by similarly sized creations in full color.

Published around 1930, Wada’s reference manual groups pigments into complementary combinations of two, three, or four, and Young uses these pairings as the foundation for his latest models of office buildings, churches, factories, and stations. He finished all of the four-color studies back in 2021 and has since moved on to those with three, a set he plans to wrap up in the new year. “The whole project is like a journal or sketchbook, and not much planning goes into each piece before I start work,” he says. “The project is really about the process and the massing of individual parts rather than each individual building.”

After formulating a general idea of the intended piece, Young prints each hue onto a single sheet of watercolor paper. “I’ll choose one of the colours to be the main feature, used in the walls, and others as accents or for the roofs. It’s a kind of intuitive process where there just seems to be a right way to do it,” he shares. Once cut and assembled into their final three-dimensional shapes, the works are either left as standalone structures or animated in whimsical, stop-motion movements, like a train spinning on its platform or an excavator dipping its bucket.

As mentioned, Young’s three-color studies are ongoing, and you can follow his progress on those on Instagram.

 

Animation Music

1,300 Oil Paintings Flow Through a Dreamlike Animated Music Video for The Beatles

London-based animator Em Cooper captures the hazy daze of slipping from wakefulness to slumber in a new music video for The Beatles’ “I’m Only Sleeping.” The short animation stitches together 1,300 oil paintings on celluloid that swirl and twist from one scene of euphoric stupor to the next. “We used to listen to this song on a tape in the car when I was a child,” Cooper told Creative Boom, “and the song itself evokes such a mesmerising, languid, dreamy state. In a way, my job was only to follow its lead with a paintbrush in my hand.”

Originally released in 1966 and now part of the new Revolver: Special Edition album, the harmonic track remains relevant and subversive for its soporific, unhurried approach to modern life, which Cooper echoes in her laborious process of hand-painting every frame. You can find more from the Emmy-nominated animator and director on her site.

 

Animation Photography

In ‘A Sense of Scale,’ Roman De Giuli’s Elaborate Topographies Made of Pigments Nod to Hollywood Special Effects

The sweeping topography of German photographer Roman De Giuli’s “A Sense of Scale” suggests rivers coursing around islands, lava flows, or clouds moving over land masses as if seen from Earth’s atmosphere. Look a little closer, however, and you will find these effervescent terrains are composed of paint, powders, and water that the artist applies with droppers to the surface of paper and sets into motion with small doses of air. Known for elaborate timelapses imitative of satellite imagery, De Giuli’s work harnesses the power of high-definition photography to document the voluptuous movement of fluid pigments.

Using a custom lens setup to zoom in and out, the piece took about a year to complete and was filmed in 8K resolution with the aid of several macro lenses. The title is a nod to the 2011 documentary “Sense of Scale” by Berton Pierce, which chronicled the world of Hollywood special effects as CGI had begun to render scale miniatures obsolete in the film industry. Struck by the detail and beauty of camera effects and the ability to transform objects on screen, De Giuli explains, “I want to emphasize the meaning of handmade visuals and the effort it takes to stage sceneries on a small scale.” You can discover more on Instagram and his website.

 

Animation Music

A Whirlwind Timelapse Comprised Entirely of Google Street View Images Circles the Globe

From the halls of the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro to the Hamburg Canals and the craggy landscape of Mont Blanc, a short film by Adam Chitayat adventures around the world in a dizzying sequence. The timelapse, which is the official music video for “Out Sailing” by Alex Boman, was initially intended as an antidote to wanderlust during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Using frames captured in sequence through Google Street View, Chitayat explores a multitude of rural and urban settings both indoor and outdoor, producing a whirlwind travelogue that traverses the globe in a matter of minutes. For more from the American-Israeli director, head to Vimeo.

 

Animation

A Kayak Trip Sends a Father on Anxiety-Provoking Adventures in an Adorable Animated Short

Multiple scenarios that would give any parent nightmares actualize in the adventurous animation “Kayak.” What begins as a peaceful trip down the river for a father and baby becomes an endless slew of anxiety-inducing incidents as the child trips, ends up upside down in the water, launches into the air several times, and is even preyed upon by a hungry eagle. The short film, which teeters on the terrifying, is a graduation project by students at the French animation school École des Nouvelles Images.

 

Animation Colossal Design

Interview: Production Designer Liz Toonkel Describes Creating the Adorable Universe of ‘Marcel the Shell with Shoes On’

A tiny mollusk with a big personality, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is famous for quirky antics and endlessly entertaining use of human-sized objects. In a new interview supported by Colossal Members, production designer Liz Toonkel discusses building the universe the adorable character occupies in the feature-length mockumentary released this summer from A24.

All of those little details that you wouldn’t think about, when you watch it they give it an inherent truth because everything feels like it does in our real world. Same thing with the garden. Those are real plants. That’s so rare in stop motion that you have real organic materials. It’s pretty much impossible to stop-motion animate with them because they decompose. There was a lot of thought put into how to bring organic, real life to the things around Marcel.

Colossal editor-in-chief Christopher Jobson recently sat down with Toonkel to discuss building a realistic micro world within a macro setting, the challenges of blending live-action with stop-motion animation, and why the tennis ball scenes are as impressive as the internet thinks. Read the full interview here.