Artist Jon Rolph Creates a Stop-Motion LEGO Animation Based on Muybridge's Horse in Motion

UK-based artist, animator and LEGO enthusiast Jon Rolph aka CheesyBricks, recently created an amazing stop-motion animation based on Eadweard Muybridge's "Animal Locomotion : Plate 626" using LEGO bricks. It sounds deceptively simple, but looking at all the different brick combinations Rolph has used the attention to detail here is astunding. Apparently each frame took between 5-8 hours to create. For this project, Rolph has also created a series of prints from the film which can be purchased from his website.

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ME + HER: A Short Film Featuring a World Made Entirely Out of Cardboard

"Me + Her", a Sundance-nominated short film set in a world made entirely out of cardboard, tells the tragic love story of Jack and Jill, lovers who are drawn together again after being separated by death. Writer/director Joseph Oxford and cinematographer Bradley Stonesifer shot the live action short using puppets made of corrugated card board. “The very first “Jack” puppet was made in late 2007." Oxford explains, "He was quite a bit cruder, but the central design changed very little between that and the final version of him we shot in the summer of 2013.  "Watch "Me + Her" online!‪

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Animator PES Turns Familiar Objects into Deli Meats in His latest Stop-Motion Short

New York-based stop-motion animator PES(previously) is back with a new quirky short film titled "Submarine Sandwich", the third installment of his cooking series which also includes Western Spaghetti and Fresh Guacamole. The film is set in an old school New York Deli from the 1920s where an experienced sandwich maker slices up boxing gloves, time-worn footballs, hockey gloves, and chunky baseball mitts in order to build the tastiest sandwich ever.

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A Girl Named Elastika: An Animated Short Film Made from Office Supplies

Office supplies come vividly to life in this clever stop-motion short by French filmmaker Guillaume Blanchet. In "A Girl Named Elastika", we follow the adventures of a fearless girl made out of rubber bands as she travels in a land of cork, jumping from building roofs, crossing an ocean or traveling to space holding onto a firework rocket. The filmmaker describes her as “Young, dreamy and fearless, she drives cars way too fast, she’s also a yamakasi. She likes adventure, fireworks and unrelenting seas. From the day I conceived her, I’ve been a worried father. And a proud one too.“

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Lost & Found: A Look Inside the World of Inventor Blair Somerville.

For over ten years artist and self-confessed tinkerer, Blair Somerville has single-handedly owned, operated and ceaselessly expanded the Lost Gypsy Gallery, a wonderland of homegrown wizardry and a playground for kids and adults alike. Using only recycled materials, Blair takes DIY to artistic extremes. This short documentary directed by Joey Bania invites you to take a peek into Blair's bizarre and beautiful world.

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Massive Photographic Archive Salvaged from Beijing's Trash

For his latest project titled "Beijing Silvermine", French photography collector and editor Thomas Sauvin salvaged more than half a million anonymous color negatives destined for destruction in a Beijing recycling zone. The project is a unique photographic portrait of the capital and the life of its inhabitants following the Cultural Revolution. It covers a period of 20 years, from 1985, namely when silver film started being used massively in China, to 2005, when digital photography started taking over. These 20 years are those of China's economic opening, when people started prospering, travelling, consuming, having fun.

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Film: Mario the Magician - Building Magic

This is a short docu-promo film by KAL about Mario Marchese, aka Mario the Magician,  a full-time NYC performer who repurposes objects to create magic. The short film debuted at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center on December 1st, 2012 to a packed house after a live performance by Mario.

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Film: Landfill Harmonic

"Landfill Harmonic" is an upcoming feature-length documentary by Juliana Penaranda-Loftus & Alejandra Nash, about a remarkable orchestra from a remote village in Paraguay, where its young musicians play with instruments made from trash. The film shows how trash and recycled materials can be transformed into beautiful sounding musical instruments, but more importantly, it brings witness to the transformation of precious human beings.

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Film: The Junk King

Vince Hannemann (aka the Junk King), has spent much of his life constructing the Cathedral of Junk in Austin, TX. In 2010, the city of Austin requested a building permit and Vince was forced to tear down nearly half of his creation. Despite this traumatic event and with the help of many supporters, Vince was still able to keep the Cathedral alive and continue its legacy. This short documentary directed by film-maker Evan Burns gives us a little insight into his world.

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Sue Austin: Creating the Spectacle!

As part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, performance and installation artist Sue Austin created this mesmerizing short film in which she—in her self-propelled underwater wheelchair—explores the magnificence of the underwater world. The piece called “Creating the Spectacle!,” aims to generate a widespread public debate about the nature and value of contemporary arts practice shaped by the experience of disability.

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The Week-End

Our most popular posts this week featured a short documentary by film-maker Richard Hunter about automata-maker Ron Fuller, ingenious sculptures made by Christopher Locke using scissors confiscated by the TSA, the bewildering array of choices facing consumers documented by photographer Richard Stultz and a series of elaborate pictures of rotting food by Klaus Pichler.

Film: (Notes on) Biology

One student's daydream comes vividly to life in this clever short film by Danny Madden, Will Madden, and Jonathan Silva of Ornana Films. In (Notes on) Biology, winner of Best Animation at this year’s SXSW festival, we follow a student, Mr. Ellis, who zones out during a dull Biology class and creates an action adventure cartoon featuring a robot elephant bent on revenge against humans.

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Film: The Toy Maker

Ron Fuller has been hand making toys, models and automata for over 50 years. His toys lie somewhere between turn of the century German mechanical tin-toys and quirky novelties like the breast clocks and the talking parrots. This short documentary by film-maker Richard Hunter gives us a little insight into his world.

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Film: This Is My Home

While walking down the street one night, filmmaker Mark Cerosimo accidentally walked into a man's home thinking it was an antique shop. Turns out, the space wasn’t a shop at all, but a home belonging to a man named Anthony Pisano, who for the last 30 years has collected odds and ends and opened his collection to the public. Mark went back a few weeks later and created a short film about him. This is a story of a man and his home.

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Video: The Skulls of Derik Van Beers

The Perez Brothers (www.perezbros.com) proudly present the modern ceramic art of Derik Van Beers in their artist profile film entitled, The Skulls of Derik Van Beers. Working exclusively with the primal image of the skull, the art of Van Beers is meant to provoke themes of lost innocence and to playfully remind viewers of their own mortality. In an effort to celebrate the emerging art scene in their hometown of Oakland California, the Perez Brothers have created a short film that simultaneously attempts to exhibit the finest techniques in both film and ceramics. 

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Micro-Macro

Micro-Macro by filmmaking collective Encyclopedia Pictura is a short movie that goes from subatomic structures to the universe, without microscopes or telescopes and with a whole lot of vegetables and imagination. Think of it as "Powers of Ten" redone in stop motion.

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Film: Wonder Object

Artist Gary Schott utilizes his skills as a metalsmith to create playful and beautiful mechanized objects. This short documentary was created by Mark and Angela Walley and produced in association with Southwest School of Art.

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Film: Of Dolls & Murder

John Waters narrates this tiny world of big time murder in the documentary film 'Of Dolls & Murder'. Directed by Susan Marks, the film features miniature dollhouse dioramas known as the 'Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death', and the life of the first pioneer of forensic science, Frances Glessner Lee. The documentary will make it's regional premiere here in Lowell on Tuesday, October 25, with a guest appearance by director Susan Marks. Don't miss it!

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Film: Mourir Auprès de Toi by Spike Jonze

Mourir Auprès de Toi is a short film by Spike Jonze, hand made in collaboration with Olympia Le-Tan. In the short Olympia's embroidered clutch-bags spring to life during the after hours of a parisian bookstore. Enlisting French filmmaker Simon Cahn to co-direct, the team wrote the script between Los Angeles and Paris over a six month period, before working night and day animating the 3,000 pieces of felt Le-Tan had cut by hand.

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Welcome to Planet Earth

Welcome to Planet Earth is the story of the extremely unique Jody Pendarvis and his 30 foot UFO he built in his front yard in the small town of Bowman, SC. After a sighting of alien life forms, Jody built the giant UFO as a place to welcome aliens when they return. All though visitors are welcomed to check out this unique and slightly odd landmark, Jody hopes that he will one day see the return of his friends from the sky. This is his story.

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