Simon+Kirchoff

=J.C. Staff - Cat Soup (Japanese Anime Short Film, Hand Drawn) = media type="youtube" key="6m9CcnL9FEk" width="420" height="315"

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Cat Soup is a very strange anime short film from the early 2000s that I accidentally came across one day. The story consists of no actual dialog besides the very rare speech bubble, so it is told completely through visuals. The story is kind of hard to follow, but apparently it has to do with a little boy cats sister having her soul taken from her and them going on an adventure to try and fix her. The entire movie is extremely surreal. You can just skim through it and each scene will be completely different than the last. The animation itself is pretty unique and there's lots of strange imagery. There's lots of use of lines in the animation as I'm assumed it was hand drawn. Since this is a story told completely through visuals, the sound effects were very important and they really added to the film since there wasn't any real dialog. ===== = = =Jacques Drouin - Mindscape (Pinboard Animation) = media type="youtube" key="6H52dTGNTzk" width="420" height="315"

This one seems to be pretty popular among the students from what I've seen around my work station, and I can understand why. Mindscape is amazingly surreal, especially since it's all made with pinboard animation where each pin in placed carefully to create an image. The entire video is in black and white and seems to use a lot of light/shadow aspects. The symphony music definitely helped with the experience and made it even more surreal.

=For the Birds - Pixar (CGI 3D Animation) = media type="youtube" key="Upo668bS1nc" width="560" height="315"

Pixar is especially popular for their Disney films, but they also make shorts as well. This one in particular I feel like I remember seeing when I was younger during Monsters Inc or something. Like all Pixar animation, the animation is very fluid and lively. There's tons of color and texture to everything. The sound was a pretty important aspect of the film as well since it was one of the factors that set the birds apart from each other.

**Patema Inverted (Japanese Anime Film, Digital Hand Drawn)** media type="youtube" key="RQZAXLAV63s" width="560" height="315" = = This one is an actual movie so I can only show the trailer. Patema Inverted was an amazing experience for me. I went into this movie completely blind without an idea what it was about, and it was amazing. I'd rather leave it at that to not spoil that experience for anyone that would want to watch it, but I feel like I should still go into some detail on what its actually about. Basically, in this futuristic world, there's an extremely strict government that watches every citizen with security cameras. Everyone is expected to follow the rules. However, in the sky there is actually an inverted place where gravity is completely opposite to the other land. The people in this land are cave dwellers. The gravity of the different races stays consistant no matter where they are, so if one crosses path on the other land, they will have to walk on the ceiling while the others are on the ground. The animation was very good in my opinion and it featured some amazing visuals that played with the idea of gravity and the art element of space. The soundtrack was also very epic and made experience even more amazing. I actually had dreams when I was little wondering what the world would be like if gravity was inverted and what it would be like to walk on ceilings, so this was a very special experience for me. You can even watch this movie completely flipped upside down and it would still work just the same, and I find that really cool.

= There's a Man in the Woods - Jacob Streilein (Digital, Hand Drawn Animation) = =media type="youtube" key="IUmkf_l38fA" width="560" height="315" = = = = = This one I found from my older friend who posted it on facebook. This animation is very unique, it relies heavily on poetry to tell the whole narrative. The sentences flow very strangely that I feel like the rhymes weren't extremely obvious. It felt strangely natural. The art style uses lots of bright colors and a unique style with roughly drawn fuzzy type lines. As it goes on, the music and rhymes get more and more intense. Every time I watch it my heart still starts to beat faster as the end of the video comes closer. The sound is specially important in this one. =Lego Black Ops - Keshen8 (Lego Stop Motion) = media type="youtube" key="smETLCCPTVo" width="560" height="315"

When I was around 9 I was really into Legos and Lego stop motion on youtube. I used to watch a bunch of lego animations all the time. One channel I remember in particular was a guy named Keshen8. This guys animation was extremely fluid and impressive for lego. Never had I seen action done so well with Legos, and this is probably one of his best ones. The movement is so fluid and quick and it works perfectly. The realistic sound effects definitely made this one as well.

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