The talented folks at College Humor have really outdone themselves this time. They’ve transformed the HBO series Game of Thrones into a role-playing game! The video basically goes through all the major events that happened in the first season, so beware of spoilers. From the pixelated animation to the 8-bit score, Game of Thrones the RPG is simply spectacular and I want to play it right now.
[Via CollegeHumor; thanks Allie K.]
You may not have heard of London-based pop group Is Tropical, but I guarantee you will get a kick out of their music video for their latest single “The Greeks.” Directed by Megaforce (the man behind the trippy Cudder clip “Pursuit of Happiness“), the video follows a bunch of bloodthirsty kids who indulge themselves in murdering each other in the most spectacularly disturbing of ways. The cartoonish animation is provided by Seven and it helps spin the rather graphic nature of the music video into an enjoyable visual feast.
The band describes the video like this: “Part Rumblefish, part Die Hard, part Akira, we wanted to work together to create something both visually appealing and aesthetically relevant to the band. We like kids, we like gangs, we really like daydreaming and imagination; the video straddles the line between nostalgia and the visual death-porn of our generation – the action film. Don’t get carried away by politics – this is a straight-up kid brawl the way it played out in your head when you were stealing your mums mascara to be like Arnie in Predator. It isn’t a shocking rebuke to our drama queen, populist news culture either – just naive, blissful shoot-yr-mate until he’s definitely dead war-games – the way you wish it still could be.”
Sure the video is great and all, but do you also like what you hear? The single “The Greeks” is available to download for free right here, and Is Tropical’s debut album Is Native is out now in the UK.
Now that he’s no longer the Governator in real life, Arnold Schwarzenegger is ready to become Stan Lee-backed superhero The Governator in an upcoming animated TV series. Apparently Ah-nuld is prepared to bring this character to which he lends his voice not only to television but also to comic books and and film (and in 3D, mind you). Figure out whether or not you’ll be following Schwarzenegger’s career post-Terminator/political figure.
Enjoy this stop motion-enhanced Plasticine model in action!
[Via Gizmodo]
Good morning USA! I got a feelin’ that it’s gonna be a wonderful day. That it is for animator/creator Seth MacFarlane. The man known for dominating FOX’s “Animation Domination” lineup with his imaginative and relevant comedies must be feeling an enormous sense of relief after hearing today’s news that American Dad will be joining long-time staple Family Guy and newcomer The Cleveland Show for the 2011-13 TV seasons. No, that’s not a typo and I’ll explain why. The Smiths have been guaranteed a seventh season with a full 22-episode order. However, because FOX has ordered two new animated shows Allen Gregory and Napoleon Dynamite (yes, based on the movie) for next season, scheduling only an undisclosed portion of American Dad episodes will air in 2011-12, and the remaining eps will overflow into the 2012-13 season. And believe it or not, this is the way the show has aired since the 2005 Super Bowl. So no harm done here. Packaged with this news of renewal is a hint of what’s to come later this season; upcoming guest voices include Anjelica Huston, Elisabeth Shue, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Burt Reynolds, and Cee-Lo Green.
“This is fantastic news,” said Roger the Alien in a statement. “But you do realize I’m not real, right?”
[Via Deadline]
Hint: It’s not an Inception/Toy Story mashup, although it might seem like it. Find the answer after the break.
[Via Gizmodo] Continue reading You’ll never guess what this epic commercial is advertising
Freddie Wong is back with one of his best action-packed videos to date! It’s a video game first person shooter recreated in real life with some animations added for effect. Wong used a GoPro mounted to a helmet to get the job done. Look after the break to catch a behind the scenes look into how it all came together.
This video is disturbing, unsettling, and hilarious all at the same time. The upcoming Yogi Bear animated movie doesn’t hit theatres until this Friday, but that didn’t stop 25-year-old animator Edmund Earle from making a parody video that went instantly viral. He’s billing it as a “parody” in hopes that Warner Bros. (the studio behind the real Yogi Bear movie) do not take it down from the ‘Net. He makes it clear that the video is independently made and that he has no association with the movie. Anyway, the title of the viral hit is “Yogi Bear Alternate Ending: Booboo Kills Yogi” and it’s nearly a shot-by-shot recreation of the final scene from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a 2007 Western starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck. Taking a comically dark route in this parody was “an organic creation”, Earle told the WSJ (that’s right–the WSJ has already interviewed him and the video was uploaded to YouTube earlier today). I’m not surely exactly what it is–the music, the way this short story is told through the eyes of the characters?–but again there’s something very unsettling about watching a famed cartoon go down like this. Ah well, in the end it’s an extremely well made parody and you should watch it, unless of course you’re under the age of 12.
Using highly effective visuals in augmented reality animation, BBC’s Hans Rosling tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers, in just four minutes. More specifically, he plots life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, and the visually splendid data reveals interesting rises and drops in correspondence to major historical events such as world wars. Go on mash play and educate yourself.
[Via Gawker]
Here’s an unsolved mystery as old as time: blindfolded humans cannot walk straight. If you blindfold a person and tell them to walk straight, that person will quickly begin to walk in circles and not even know it! Says Robert Krulwich in an NPR report, “Humans, apparently, slip into circles when we can’t see an external focal point, like a mountain top, a sun, a moon. Without a corrective, our insides take over and there’s something inside us that won’t stay straight.” Though many scientists have attempted to figure out what exactly that something is, no one has cracked it just yet. Watch the fun animation describing the strange phenomenon in the video above.
[Via NPR]
If you liked iPad light painting you will love this light stencil animation. “Subcarpati”, produced by Ionut Negrila and Mihai Calota, features an animated version of the walk sign man. But you want to know how it was made. The producers share that it took 5,313 pictures of 57 stencils, 3 different light sources, many calculations, measurements, and camera settings adjustments to make it happen. They hope their video inspires the creatives of our world to push limits and produce some captivating work. Look after the break to watch a brief behind-the-scenes look at the sheer amount of work that was required to make a stop motion video of this magnitude.
[Via Vimeo; Gizmodo] Continue reading Tiny walk sign dude comes to life in this light stencil animation
By now you should know that when it comes to making music videos, rock band OK Go never holds back. From datamashing to Rube Goldberg-ing to training 12 dogs and a goat, OK Go knows how to wildly impress its fans by representing their music with imaginative and awe-inspiring visuals. For their next experiment video, the band used–drum roll, please–toast. But it’s not that simple! Using a Samsung NX100 micro four-thirds camera they took pictures of 2,430 pieces of toast (or 215 loaves of bread) and effectively used the process of laser-etching and stop motion to tell a story. They took 15 still shots for every second of video. The animation stages must’ve been painstakingly difficult to produce, and yet there’s something quite beautiful about all of it and this helps direct your mind to the final aesthetic instead of towards the blood and sweat put into it. As always, a nod of gratitude is due here. These guys can do it all.
[Via OK Go website, Twitter, YouTube]