Radiolab's "Words" - graphic and conceptual connections between edits

Sound Design-Apocalypse Now - in images

Apocalypse Now - Ghost Helicopter Flyover from Unidentified Sound Object on Vimeo.

Sound and Music resources

Need some audio for your animation or video?  Check these out:

1) Great downloadable music of many different genres!
FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE

2) Studs Terkel Radio Archive 
Thousands of radio interviews with all kinds of people!

3) Third Coast International Audio Festival
Short Docs Competition has 2-3 min audio pieces that are great for possible animation accompaniment.  Check out previous years' winners...

Women in Motion Graphics & Animation-a great resource!

Check out STRONG WOMEN IN MOTION (SWIM)

We are a growing group of creatives working to encourage social diversity in the motion graphics community. SWIM is facilitating this change by reaching out to a artists within this community to find out their unique perspectives, interviewing them to hear their thoughts on surviving the industry, and sharing their work with our fans.

They produce a Podcast, BLOG and have links to some really great resources such as:

• Women in Animation 
• Women Who Draw
• Cartoonists of Color Database

Brilliant "Bullying" animation

"Balance": brilliant stop motion animation by Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short (1989).
One of my all time favorites. Says it all without any dialog whatsoever.
All about bullying and greed. Seem familiar to some of our current political leaders?

Female animator: Meghan Lands

Nice feature on Motionographer about being female in the very male dominated field of animation:
Meghan Lands is an animator in Montreal, Canada.

“In all honesty, I think being a woman in the world is inherently political, and being a woman in this industry is inherently subversive. And every day you get up and do that, you’re a champion.”

from the article:

A survival strategy

Firstly, although she admitted to being exposed to the “garden variety misogyny” and microaggressions in her daily life such as inappropriate sexist jokes and comments, she also pointed out that in real life, there is no black and white.

Often, the same people who are being misogynistic can also be kind and helpful to her. With that in mind, she’s chosen not to engage any of them in deeper conversation on equality and political correctness.

“Being a constant advocate for yourself, let alone for anything bigger than yourself is exhausting,” she said. Alluding to how difficult it is to convince someone that an issue they’re not familiar with or interested in is important, Meghan summed it like this: “If you’d wanted to know, you would have already asked.”

At the same time, Meghan admits that in her life and career, people often don’t take her seriously, something she attributes to her physical appearance.

“I’m short, I’m a woman,” she said. “I have the voice of a small child. So I am often underestimated, shall we say.”

Animating Anthropomorphism

In 1944, Smith College experimental psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel conducted an experiment in which they showed female undergraduate students to "write down what happened" in the movie above."

What do you see in this animation?

From Scientific American:

"Most of the thirty four subjects interpreted the shapes in the movie as animate characters. Thirty two described them as people, and two described the shapes as birds. The experimenters provide an example of a common interpretation:

A man has planned to meet a girl and the girl comes along with another man. The first man tells the second to go; the second tells the first, and he shakes his head. Then the two men have a fight, and the girl starts to go into the room to get out of the way and hesitates and finally goes in. She apparently does not want to be with the first man. The first man follows her into the room after having left the second in a rather weakened condition leaning on the wall outside the room. The girl gets worried and races from one corner to the other in the far part of the room. Man number one, after being rather silent for a while, makes several approaches at her; but she gets to the corner across from the door, just as man number two is trying to open it. He evidently got banged around and is still weak from his efforts to open the door. The girl gets out of the room in a sudden dash just as man number two gets the door open. The two chase around the outside of the room together, followed by man number one. But they finally elude him and get away. The first man goes back and tries to open his door, but he is so blinded by rage and frustration that he can not open it. So he butts it open and in a really mad dash around the room he breaks in first one wall and then another.

There were some common themes. For example, nearly every subject described the interaction between the big triangle and the small triangle as a fight. Most described the big triangle being locked in the "house." The interaction between the big triangle and the circle was usually described as a chase. And the "door" was almost always controlled by the shapes; the shapes were never moved by the door."

Ted-Ed Lessons rely on animations

TED-ED is seeking animators, illustrators, artists.  Use YOUR animation talents to produce Ted-Ed originals.

From their website:

"TED-Ed’s mission is to spark and celebrate the ideas of teachers and students around the world. Everything we do supports learning — from producing a growing library of original animated videos, to providing an international platform for teachers..."

What are TED-Ed Lessons?

"TED-Ed Originals are our signature content: short, award-winning animated videos about ideas that spark the curiosity of learners everywhere. Every TED-Ed Original represents a creative collaboration between experts. Such experts may include TED Speakers and TED Fellows, as well as educators, designers, animators, screenwriters, directors, science writers, historians, journalists and editors. These original animated videos, paired with questions and resources, make up what we refer to as TED-Ed Lessons."

Check it out. A sample:

Persistence of Vision explained

Ted Ed shows historical pre-cinema devices and nice examples of animated movement from still images. Like magic.

"Explainer Videos": automated

Explainer Videos are, well, what they sound like they are.  A recent trend in web content, these animated, live action, motion graphic shorts (under 2 minutes) pack a quick punch for corporations and organizations, or even individuals trying to fund their projects (you can't do a Kickstarter without one)  It seems that everyone needs one these days (potentially good motion graphic work if you can get it) and this company promises to automate the creation of one with drag and drop animated elements. Why hire real artists when you can use clipart animations? :)



Examples of Explainer videos are here:

"The Story of Stuff" was probably one of the earlier "explainer" videos with real integrity. Here's their most recent one: "The Story of Change"--applicable to today's political climate.




And here's one that has NO voiceover.  Just images.  Refreshing.

Every Frame a Painting - great critiques of film techniques

Here's one about director, David Fincher (House of Cards), and his various rules for directing.

 

Terry Gilliam's Do it Yourself Animation Show

Cut outs GALORE! How to...from the Monty Python animator.

12 Principles of Animation

The 12 principles of animation were introduced by Disney's animators, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, in their book 'The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation'. Published in 1981, it is widely considered to be the best animation book of all time.
Here are some great online videos that summarize and teach these principles:

1. Squash & stretch
2. Anticipation
3. Staging
4. Straight Ahead Action & Pose to Post
5. Follow Through & Overlapping Action
6. Slow In & Slow Out
7. Arcs
8. Secondary Action
9. Timing
10. Exaggeration
11. Solid Drawing
12. Appeal

 This guy has an entire series of videos, one for each principle.



 And from TED:

Audio LISTS!

Studio 4D's first assignment: The Audio List
Examples can be found here:

• Transom: A Showcase and Workshop for New Public Radio: Shortlists page 
• Third Coast International Audio Festival: The List Show

For more experimental audio and audio storytelling check out:
UBU Web;Transom.org; ThirdCoastFestival.org; Re:Sound are great places to start.
Cowbird - "a public library of human experience," they offer "storytelling tools, designed to encourage contemplation and depth — for free, and without ads"

RE-editing, remixing footage

Oh the joys of re-editing footage to make it say something completely different...

There's the re-mix of George Bush's State of the Union speech to Congress:

There's the old favorite: "Honey Badger." A remixed nature documentary.


And then there's the popular film clip of Hitler (from the film, "Downfall")  finding out something tragic.  There are many...

Audio LISTS!

Richard Serra's list of verbs, 1967

Some links to Audio LISTS!  (For Studio 4D)

Chris Burden's "Atomic Alphabet"

Third Coast Audio: "The List Show" - To do lists, compulsive lists, data lists, lists in literature and a list of firsts.

Jim Metzner's "Sound Memories"

Alice B. Toklas' "Recipe for Hashish Fudge", 1963

Prelinger Archives - repository for downloadable ephemera films

All royalty free, no copyright needed to use these.
An amazing collection of historical educational movies, ads, news, etc. from the 20th century.

Archive.org is here.

From "Duck and Cover," a film about what to do about an atomic attack.

Free AUDIO books

Download...for audio for a piece? For your own entertainment?

Open Culture has an amazing online archive of movies, ebooks, lectures, online course materials, language courses and more...

Free Audio Books here!

Download Free Music - sites

Royalty FREE music sources:

• Free Music Archive
• Bensound
• Incompetech

Animating a print

Guilherme Marcondes animates a printed drawing for the Anima Mundi festival.