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Jenova Chen: Journeyman
“There’s this quotation from St Augustine…” Jenova Chen puts down his hamburger and fixes me with a warm but firm stare. Trust the designer of Flower and Journey to invoke a 3rd century theologian as an entry point to the subject of online tea-bagging. “Augustine wrote: ‘People will venture out to the height of the ...
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Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game
Scott Pilgrim is one of us. While Hollywood’s zeitgeist-chasing writers and directors clutch at game references in an effort to appeal to those born into videogames, Scott Pilgrim out-nerds even the medium’s firstborn by knowing the bass line to Final Fantasy II off by heart. Aged 16, he joined a three-piece indie band called Sonic ...
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Best Thing I Saw Today #53: Chabon on Telling Stories
“A mind is not blown, in spite of whatever Hollywood seems to teach, merely by action sequences, things exploding, thrilling planetscapes, wild bursts of speed. “Those are good things. But a mind is blown when something you always feared but knew to be impossible turns out to be true; when the world turns out to ...
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Best Thing I Saw Today #49: Three Frames
Created by linking together and looping a series of low resolution still images, the animated .gif is something of an anachronism in today’s internet. Streaming HD video is available to anyone with a broadband connection, so what need for these digital flickbooks-cum-zoetropes, whose raison d’être (to provide animation in a time when internet speeds meant ...
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Decepticon Casting Reel #2: Walter the Washing Machine
Here’s the second in the trilogy of Transformers 2 CG shorts that I had a hand/ word in creating. Catch the first one here.
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Decepticon Casting Reel #1: Chad
While I was away on holiday last week the first of three short animations I wrote the script for went live. Created to promote the forthcoming Paramount Pictures film Transformers 2, it features Chad the Videogame Controller auditioning for the role of a Decepticon. Animated by the super-talented Jim Howells from Littleloud (who was also ...
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Tales of Vesperia – Xbox 360 Review
In a genre obsessed with world-threatening crises, Tales of Vesperia’s initial focus on a local emergency is refreshing. It’s the fantasy equivalent of a burst water main: a magical fountain whose powering gem-stone has been stolen, causing water to flood the lower district of Zaphias, the medium-sized city in which your character resides. Yuri is ...
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You and Whose Army, Mario?
I set Kei Houraku’s YouTube video, ‘goomba’s lifetime’, to Radiohead’s ‘You and Whose Army’. That is all. (Actually, I did think about adding a scratch record sound effect and killing the track at the moment Mario appears on screen but the resolute chorus, even in the face of comprehensive defeat on the Goomba’s part (er, ...
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The Lost Tribes of New York City
Like Creature Comforts, but with less plasticine. As someone who sees faces everywhere (even when my eyes are shut!) this video is probably unhelpful. Awesome animation, however. By London Squared.
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Best Thing I Saw Today #44: The Seed
Johnny Kelly’s short animation, The Seed, mixes motion graphics and papercraft to chart the life cycle of an apple seed. From being torn from the womb of a piece of fruit down through a maze-like intestinal tract and out through the winding plumbing of a Western town its a simple story told with style and ...
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In the Pursuit of Perfection
The anecdote about dropping an egg onto an in-sole is a highlight, as is the stark, efficient warning: “It’s the beginning of the end when you start to appreciate your own achievements.” However, it’s the execution of the motion graphics that makes the video so effective. Economical yet impactful, it makes me wonder why we ...
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Best Thing I Saw Today #42: R2D2 Subbed
This is how you make the Star Wars prequels watchable. Also: Subtitles possibly not safe for work. Soundtrack too, come to think of it. See Episode 1′s treatment here.