During September in select cinemas around Australia, Madman presents REEL ANIME 2010, showcasing five of the freshest anime feature films this side of Tokyo.

Following the sold-out success of the 2008 Showcase, which featured ‘The Girl Who Leapt Through Time’ and ‘Appleseed: Ex Machina’, this latest crop of films has something for everyone: from the rebuild of the Evangelion universe, ‘Evangelion: 2.0 You Can [Not] Advance’ and ‘Evangelion: 1.0 You Are [Not] Alone’; the masterful storytelling of ‘Summer Wars’ (from the director of ‘The Girl Who Leapt Through Time’); the adrenaline fueled ‘Redline’; and the thrilling ‘King Of Thorn’.

Summer Wars, Reel Anime 2010

Redline, Reel Anime 2010

King Thorn, Reel Anime 2010

Evangelion: You Can [Not] Advance, Reel Anime 2010

See more at Madman

AWARD, Australia’s pre-eminent creative industries body, has announced changes to its 2011 awards programme. AWARD, the Australasian Writers and Art Directors Association, counts some of the finest creative minds from Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia amongst its members. It is a non-political, non-profit organisation that aims to set standards of creative excellence, to promote creativity in the business arena, and to educate and inspire the next creative generation.

“As champions of commercial creativity, AWARD aims to raise standards of creative excellence across a range of disciplines – emerging as well as established,” said Craig Davis, AWARD Chairman.
“In the annual AWARD show, we can create more space and opportunity to recognise and celebrate great creative work, reflecting how the marketing and communications industries have evolved and are evolving.”

Accordingly, several new categories have been created for 2011, including music video, applications, social media, environmental design, and branded content. As well, a new award for Creative Innovation will challenge entrants to contribute a solution that defies convention. It is anticipated that the award will draw unexpected ideas from industries both connected to, and beyond, advertising.

“Creativity is a prerequisite of commercial success and of prosperity,” said Craig Davis. “We believe it is the single most valuable asset for business today, and that through inclusiveness and collaboration, that value can only increase.”

The AWARD 2011 Call for Entries will be launched in coming days. The AWARD show will take place on March 11, 2011, as part of the Creative Festival taking place from 9-11 March.

See the AWARD site for more information.

Directed by Special Problems, Produced by Special Problems, Live Action: Produced by Jett Steiger and Peter Brant for Team G, DP: Kevin Phillips, Costume Designer: Erica Frank, Post-production/animation/edit by Special Problems, Additional animation: Curtis Baigent, Commissioned by Warp Films

A second single from Flying Lotus’ self-proclaimed “space opera” Cosmogramma, MmmHmm features renowned bassist Thundercat (Sa-Ra Collective, Erykah Badu, Suicidal Tendencies), who contributes vocals and bass to the track and stars in the video. With MmmHmm, directors Special Problems deliver an exhilarating blend of live action and animated space-scapes. Thundercat and a plantwoman are the gravitational centre of the video’s universe. Astral fragments orbit around them as they engage in a romantic and spiritual embrace. Through the plantwoman’s mediations, we travel into different worlds and different animated styles – from the beautifully shot lunar vision to a cosmic vintage videogame sequence and a neon polygonal voyage. The video climaxes as the two characters entwine, forming their own planet, left floating in space for eternity.

Formed in 2007 by Campbell Hooper and Joel Kefali, Special Problems is a multidisciplinary creative studio with a focus on video, film, print and web projects. As a directing team, Campbell and Joel draw on their combined backgrounds in graphic design, fine art, film and music. Special Problems are adept in both live action and animation, and are immediately involved in all aspects of the production process.

See the video here
See more work by Serious Problems here

Mary and Max : The Exhibition, ACMI

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image presents
Mary and Max : The Exhibition
Tuesday 2 March – Sunday 6 June, 2010
Gallery 2, ACMI, Free!

Mary and Max, the first animated feature film from Academy Award Winner® Adam Elliot, will be the subject of a free exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image from 2 March 2010.

The exhibition will explore the creative and technical processes behind the acclaimed Australian animation by showing a selection from the thousands of items created for the film alongside imagery from the finished product.

Items on display include character models and their various components including plasticine replacement parts used to change facial expressions, as well as moulds, sets, props, conceptual sketches, storyboards, production notes and scrapbooks. The exhibition will also feature stills and clips from the finished film, and behind-the-scenes footage shot for a making-of style ‘mockumentary’.

Mary and Max : The Exhibition, ACMI

The director, writer and designer, Elliot has personally selected the clay figures, props and sets to include in this exhibition and hopes that visitors will enjoy this behind-the-scenes insight into his craft. Mary & Max, directed, written and designed by Elliot took five years to make, including one year of filming.

Spanning 20 years and 2 continents, Mary & Max tells of a pen-pal relationship between two very different people: Mary Dinkle (voiced by Toni Collette with Bethany Whitmore as young Mary), a chubby, lonely 8-year-old living in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia; and Max Horovitz (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a severely obese, 44-year-old Jewish man with Asperger’s Syndrome living in the chaos of New York City.

As with Elliot’s previous works, which he describes as ‘clayographies’ (clay animated biographies) Mary & Max chronicles two simultaneous life stories; Mary’s trip from adolescence to adulthood, and Max’s passage from middle to old age, as it explores a bond that survives much more than the ups-and-downs of an average friendship. Mary & Max is both hilarious and poignant as it takes us on a journey that explores friendship, autism, taxidermy, psychiatry, alcoholism, where babies come from, obesity, kleptomania, sexual differences, trust, copulating dogs, religious differences, agoraphobia and many more of life’s surprises.

Elliot is a celebrated independent animator. His short films, Uncle (1996), Cousin (1998), Brother (1999) and Harvie Krumpet (2003), have participated in over five hundred film festivals and won over one hundred awards, including in 2004, the Oscar ® for Best Animated Short Film for Harvie Krumpet.

Mary & Max (2009), Elliot’s debut feature with longtime collaborator producer Melanie Coombs, enjoyed its world premiere as the opening night film of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and has since screened at film festivals and in cinemas across Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Europe, Middle-East, South America, the UK and USA. This year it has won several coveted awards including Best Animation at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, the Inside Film Award for Best Production Design and numerous others, including those directly recognising the producer and cinematographer, and is in the running for an Oscar nomination in a competitive field of 20 world-class animations eligible for nomination in 2010.

Elliot is no stranger to ACMI having displayed his Oscar and Harvie Krumpet figure at the centre since 2003. Now it lives in ACMI’s free permanent exhibition, Screen Worlds. Elliot will visit ACMI in 2010 when he presents Desert Island Flicks in Studio 1. In addition, ACMI’s popular free claymation workshops will return in the school holidays to coincide with the exhibition.

Mary & Max: The Exhibition is in ACMI’s Gallery 2 and opens 2 March for a strictly limited season until 6 June 2010. Entry is free.

Visit ACMI here
More of Mary and Max here
More about Adam Elliot here

Ponyo (c)  2008 Nibariki – GNDHDDT, 2009 Nibariki – GNDHDDT

Madman proudly present the highly anticipated DVD release of PONYO – the latest animated masterpiece from Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, and the world-renowned, Studio Ghibli. In a small town by the sea, high on a cliff, lives 5-year-old Sosuke. One morning, while playing on the rocky beach below his house, he discovers a goldfish named Ponyo, her head stuck in a jam jar. Sosuke rescues Ponyo and keeps her in a green plastic bucket. Both Ponyo and Sosuke are fascinated by each other and promise to stay firm friends until Ponyo’s father, a sorcerer who lives deep under the sea, forces her to return with him to the ocean depths.
What follows is an amazing underwater adventure for all ages. The DVD release of PONYO includes both original Japanese language with English subtitles and the Disney Pixar produced English audio dub, featuring the voices of Cate Blanchette, Liam Neeson, Tina Fey, Matt Damon, Franki Jones and Noah Cyrus as Ponyo. PONYO is out on DVD, December 29th, 2009

See more/pre-order here

Academy Award®-nominated director Shane Acker teams up with two of the world’s most visionary filmmakers, Tim Burton (Alice In Wonderland, The Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Night Watch, Day Watch), to bring a totally unique and visually stunning animated fantasy epic to screen.

When the small rag doll 9 (voiced by The Lord of the Rings’ Elijah Wood) first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world. All humans are gone, and it is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the landscape intent on doing them harm. Despite being the neophyte of the group, 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good. They must take the offensive if they are ever to survive, and they must discover why the machines want to destroy them in the first place. What follows is a sublime, heartwarming adventure where this most unlikely of heroes leads his troops into battle and, along the way, discovers that a band of miniature warriors may be the last hope for humanity.

See the trailer and more over at Madman

In Australian Cinemas: 09/12/2009

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005), Directed by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson, Shown: Co-director Tim Burton on the set, Photo credit: Derek Frey

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) joins Melbourne Winter Masterpieces 2010 with an Australian exclusive exhibition direct from The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. The largest exhibition to ever be presented in ACMI’s Gallery 1 has been curated in direct collaboration with Burton and features artworks and objects drawn from his personal archive, as well as studio archives and the private collections.

The exhibition follows the course of Burton’s career, with childhood ephemera, juvenilia, and amateur short films from his youth in Burbank, California; cartoons and drawings from his time at California Institute of the Arts; and examples of his first professional work at The Walt Disney Studios. Burton’s artistic output includes shorts Vincent (1982) and Frankenweenie (1984); and 15 feature films including Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985), Beetlejuice (1988), Batman (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Batman Returns (1992), Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Ed Wood (1994), Mars Attacks! (1996), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Planet of the Apes (2001), Big Fish (2003), Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Sweeney Todd (2007) and Alice in Wonderland (2010); as well as writing and web projects such as Stainboy (2000).

Tim Burton. (American, b. 1958), Untitled (The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories ), 1982–1984, Pen and ink, marker, and colored pencil on paper, 10 x 9″ (25.4 x 22.9cm), Private Collection, © 2009 Tim Burton

Tim Burton will open at ACMI on 24 June and run until 10 October 2010. Mr Burton will be at ACMI in Melbourne for the opening of the exhibition.
To accompany the exhibition ACMI will curate a film season and specialist public and education programs for all ages, which will be announced at a later date.
Tim Burton is the second Melbourne Winter Masterpiece exhibition at ACMI after Pixar: 20 years of Animation, which broke international attendance records in 2007. Tim Burton will directly follow Dennis Hopper and the New Hollywood, another Australian exclusive exhibition at ACMI which premieres on 12 November 2009.

See more at ACMI here

Still from ‘Battlestar‘ – Harmonic 313, sixtyforty, 2009

New video shot for hip-hop artist, Harmonic 313 (Warp) by Australian studio sixty40.
“The clip was shot with 2 x P2 cameras. Shot stereoscopically (i.e. on 2 identical cameras separated in space to mimic 2 eyes) the clip uses a flicking technique that was inspired by 2 frame animations.” – Portable Film Festival

See the video here.

8-Bit Trip, rymdreglage

1500 hours compressed to 3 minutes and 49 seconds of stop-motion animation using lego bricks.

Ohbijou – New Years from explodingmotorcar on Vimeo.

Music video created by Toronto based art collective Exploding Motor Car. It utilizes stop-motion animation, combined with hand-made elements.
Check out their other fabulous creations here.