Daniel Danger (I'm not sure if that's his real name, seems a little too cool) is a young artist working in New England, creating beautiful paintings. He had already a few exhibitions and his website show only a small amount of works, but all of them are nicely crafted graphics with carefully selected colors, check him out:
Feng Zhu Designs is concept art studio working for the biggest film studios and game developers, creating beautiful artwork. Their website is a real treat, and not only because of the endless amazing images but because it really shows that they love what they do and they want to spread the word. They have 65 and counting tutorial videos showing how they created certain images, commenting the process, telling the viewer things you wouldn't be able to know otherwise. Respect for that.
Here is their reel:
And here is the website you can find all those great artworks:
Here is an animation showing in accurate scale the size of the known universe. It was a great idea because we are visual creatures and with this we can really see how small we are. See that is, not understand. Wow.
Rayman Origins was a great and fun game when it came out, it was like an interactive beautiful cartoon that you can play with, be a part of. Now here is the sequel, Rayman Legends, and it looks even better than the previous one. Check it out if you're into cartoon style and platform games.
The Blackwater Gospel is an animated short from 2011 directed by Bo Mathorne and produced by the Animation Workshop (www.animwork.dk). It's in 3D but the characters, backgrounds are very artistic, almost watercolor looking, really cool animated short with a bizarre story. Check it out:
Anasomnia.com is very nice little project introducing new ways of interaction in a very stylish fashion. You should check it out in the evening and you will need to have a webcam to fully experience the fun.
Kaleb Lechowski is 22 year old German arts student who by himself created an amazing looking animated scifi short. There are some shots which look like they belong in a 100 million + dollar movie from Hollywood - where his name is becoming more and more well known. I can only wish luck to this young kid, keep up the good work, rule Hollywood! Check it out!
Here is a really weird music video from Kanye West. I believe it's 100 percent animation, the movements are done with motion capture but they are exaggerated to the point where the whole thing becomes surreal. Very nice light and shadow play and plus point for not giving a shit about making it look perfect, there are a lot of "bugs" and visual mishaps in it, but hey, if everything would be perfect, nothing would be really... but that's already philosophy. Enjoy.
Mamoru Oshii was always my favorite anime director next to Hayao Miyazaki. He directed such classics as the Patlabor series or Ghost in the Shell. Now he is working on live action features and one of them is a Patlabor movie coming out next year, I'm really looking forward to seeing it since I believe that he won't compromise and simplify anything in order to get a bigger audience. He ventured already once into live action movies with Avalon, which even if didn't become a major hit, it's considered a cult classic.
Here is a scene from the second installment of the G.I.T.S. movies, Innocence. This scene alone took over a year for the production crew to create, it's really a treat to look at, especially with Kenji Kawai's mesmerizing score. Check it out.
Back in the day when the first Thief game was out it was a totally different experience from the other fps games. Instead of being a one man army you had to hide, sneak in the dark, club people from behind, most importantly, stay in the shadows. The game was slow but very rewarding and the with the steampunk setting it was a very atmospheric ride too. It became an instant classic and it had two sequels: The Metal Age and The Dark Project (which was more like a DLC), and in 2000 the series ended... until now.
There is a new Thief game in development coming out in 2014, Feburary. Here are some videos from the upcoming game, they all look very stylish and dark, I really hope that the lovers of the old games will be able to grasp some of the originals atmosphere through this one. Looking forward to it.
Here is a strange and very unique commercial for used! Mini cars. It reminds of Matthew Barney'sCremaster movies. Nice symbolism, a lot of irony and a bold approach. Check it out:
Come to Daddy from Aphex Twin was the first music video that really shocked and impressed me at the same time. The concept of the whole video was just something completely new, and though there were strange and crazy clips, this just took the cake for me at that time. The visual style, colors, locations and post production was top notch and brutally dirty at the same time, and it worked like a charm. To this day I think this is Chris Cunningham director's best video, it became an instant classic:
Come to Daddy by Aphex Twin
Chris Cunningham got into the film industry very young, he became a concept artist and was even lucky enough to work with Stanley Kubrick on his movie AI, which sadly was finished (and fucked up) by Steven Spielberg. Anyway, C.C. did some robot concepts for him, but they stayed in the shelf for many years. Luckily, he could realize them in a video for Björk.
All is Full of Love by Björk
He made many really good music videos between 1996 and 2006. He also tried to do short films, but I think they were way too experimental to make a real stir. Here is one of his shorts:
Rubber Johnny, music by Aphex Twin
For many years he had a feature in pre-production, Neuromancer from Gibson, but sadly it never got realized. Lately there is not much information about C.C. He did a Gucci commercial a few years ago, and last year he did a video-remix of a Gil Scott-Heron track. I hope one day he will be back to his old productive self, whether it's music videos, shorts or feature films, his visual style should live on.
Here is his filmography, I can honestly say that all of these videos are worth checking out, there's something good and interesting in all of them:
Intense little trailer for an upcoming TV show called Mob City, produced by TNT. Since Boardwalk Empire became such a hit new (and let's not forget the Sopranos) oldschool mobster shows are coming out every year like Vegas or Magic City. The trailer looks pretty cool with a nice visual style and lots of brutality, I'll check it out for sure when it comes out.
Here are some more of the best openings for TV shows.
The first one is from a new show, The Newsroom. The first season had a simple, not too interesting opening sequence, but I guess they realized their mistake and renew the opening for the second season. Great, intimate images, colors, nothing flashy, perfectly composed, this is how you do it:
The next one is opening sequence of the HBO series called The Pacific. It's a WW2 miniseries with great production value, but the opening in itself is a little masterpiece. The live footage mixed with charcoal drawings fits perfectly the mood of the series, you can see that they really put a lot of effort in it. Check it out:
Lastly here is a series which I'm not really fond of, but it has a really cool comic book style opening, so if not the series at least intro is worth checking out, Strike Back, here it is:
Back in 2006 when the first trailers came out for 300 I was really amazed by the looks of the movie. It was more like a bunch of Boris Vallejo paintings edited together, everything seemed fake but looked really cool at the same time, it was something new, at least for me. Then I went to the cinema and was utterly disappointed by the dull characters and dialogues - still, the movie was a box office success, a sequel was happening for sure, and here it is. I don't have any illusions about the screenplay or characters, they are going to be one dimensional for sure, but we watch these kind of movies for a different reason anyway, so...
First here is the full length trailer released back in June:
and here is a new one minute long trailer with some nice images:
Here is a beautiful little animated short from French artists. The backgrounds and the scenery is hand painted I guess and the characters and some of the objects are in 3D, but with a cool cartoonish cell shading, so they don't stick out as much. The basic idea is really good but I think the screenplay could have been a lot better and the characters look a bit general to me, but the world and the images are really cool to look at, the atmosphere is there and it was a graduation film, so actually I really shouldn't complain. Check it out:
There are many debates about whether games are a form of art or not. I'm not going to try to convince anyone or write a long essay about it, I'm just going to show a few games (three at a time) to prove that there is potential.
The first one is Limbo, a very well known and successful indie game. The graphics and the atmosphere are dark but really amazing. A little boy is trying find his way out of a dangerous world of strange creatures, dangerous obstacles. Check it out, it just might suck you in.
Teaser trailer:
Gameplay:
The next game for today is Guacamelee, another 2D/3D sidescroller but this one is more of a mixture of classical beat'em up games with a Metroid style map system.
The game's visual style is really a treat, colorful backgrounds, crazy characters and a lot of fun it's what this game is. If you like fast action and non-stop entertainment check this one out:
Debut trailer:
Gameplay:
The last one for today is a quite old game for the Dreamcast system: REZ. The game has a very uniqe style and gameplay, it's basically more like an interactive music video where you have minimal control over your character, but you don't really mind because the Tron-like visuals and cool music sucks you in right away, check it out.
First we have the new trailer for the upcoming Thor sequel. The first one was really good in my opinion and it shaped the Avengers movie to become one of the greatest superhero movies of all time. This one looks also promising, though Kenneth Branagh is not the director anymore, check it out:
The next one is the trailer for the new Ridley Scott movie and it looks really interesting with a lot of good actors. Prometheus was a real miss I think and I really hope that he can redeem himself with a good movie soon enough, maybe this is the one? The Counselor.
Lastly here is an independent horror comedy with a really strange plot titled Bad Milo. It's story about a guy who realizes that a parasite monster is living in his intestines. I can't help it but I find the creature somehow friendly and kind looking, it's a must see for horror fans, check it out.
Here is another sci-fi movie for this year: Ender's Game, starring Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley and a bunch of high school kids. The movie is based on the bestseller by Orson Scott Card, I have never read it but it suppose to be very good, unfortunately this trailer looks quite bad - I mean the visuals are topnotch, but it looks like just another Hollywood crap-fest like Oblivion was. Coming November the 1st.
It's been a long time since the last Far Cry related post, so here is one. Though this video came out before the game I haven't seen it until I've finished the game, so the first time I've seen Vaas walking around, I thought he was animated because he moved and looked exactly how he did in the game. After watching the this short film for several minutes and the first closeups are shown I realized that it's a real actor, not CG and I was amazed. Micheal Mando is the actor playing one of the antagonists, Vaas, who gained instant cult status as one of the best villains from games.
It's really interesting how the character was created thanks to Micheal Mando, here is an interview with him, check it out:
And here is the short film shot to promote Far Cry 3, it was released as a web series, but here you can watch all the episodes together, enjoy:
Several months ago I've posted the Super Mario FPS video, now Sonic got the same treatment. Not as amusing as the Mario one, but still fun to see if you were a Sonic fan back in the days.
Child's Play was one of the first horror movies I've seen as a kid and it terrified me to hell and back. As I grew up I've realized that it wasn't exactly as serious as I thought it was and I learned to laugh on Chucky's crazy adventures. Since then a lot of Chucky movies came out and they were all a treat to watch, though the quality wasn't steady, the laughs were there, and most importantly, Chucky was there.
It was back in 2004 when the last Chucky movie was made, it wasn't as good as first one but still delivered some cool laughs and some over the top crazy scenes. Now here we have the trailers for the latest installment in the franchise and the writer/director is Don Mancini, who directed the first one as well, so we might as well get another good Chucky movie - but that's not the point until it doesn't take itself too seriously and has the Chucky we all "love".
The Red Band trailer - make sure to login into youtube:
Here is the second trailer for the upcoming Machete sequel, and it looks even crazier than the first did. Must have been real good fun shooting the movie, especially with Rodriguez directing. He is one of those characters in Hollywood, who came from making real low-budget movies (El Mariachi) and built up his own studio (Troublemaker Studios), his own franchises (Spy Kids, Machete, El Mariachi movies) and is well received by the audience and sometimes the critics as well. If you are an independent filmmaker struggling to make your film read his book, it will give you good ideas, solutions and a lot of energy to do so:
This teaser trailer is more than a year old, still there is not much more info about this project on the internet. According to IMDB the movie is pre-production, but no release or shooting date is public yet. The teaser trailer has almost 20 million hits on youtube, which is a very high number for an independent production, it all seems very promising, I hope one day they will be able to produce it. Here is the trailer:
I have just realized that I haven't posted anything about Neill Blomkamp's new movie Elysium. The trailers are out for a few month now and the premier is only a few days away, watch out for it, might be the best scifi movie of the year. Starring Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley and Wagner Moura who was the amazing Captain Nascimento in Jose Padilha's Tropa De Elite movies. Jose Padilha by the way is just working on a Robocop reboot movie.
Neill Blomkamp's previous movie, District 9 proved that he's not only a good filmmaker and storyteller, but has a soft spot for scifi, so I'm really looking forward to seeing this, there's a general lack in good scifi movies. The extended trailer was released yesterday, check it out:
