Computer Animation Arts

Alma has featured on the group blog a few times now, but hey, 'Happy Halloween'!

ZHU + NERO - "DREAMS" from Elliott Sellers on Vimeo .

This is a must watch for our students - a short documentary on the future of CGI as a 'post-realism' medium.  Properly fascinating! Goodbye Uncanny Valley from Alan Warburton on Vimeo .

I don't know what all of these are, but here the mundane and the uncanny combine to unnerving effect...   Daily Animations from April2017 from Ondrej Zunka on Vimeo .

A small treat for the start of the New Year. Enjoy this uncanny but very cleverly done short animation. Shelter from Carl Burton on Vimeo .

For me, one of the joys of YouTube is using it to track down all the b-grade horror movies of yesteryear... well, of the 1970s anyway. As a child, I owned a number of glossy coffee-table style books on horror cinema - much to my poor mum's concern - filled with stills from ripe-sounding shockers. On listless, rainy Sundays I'd stare at these images and allow my imagination to build elaborate contexts for these film-stills, inventing the stories that might give rise to such lurid vignettes. One such image that held me in its thrall was this bizarre tableau from David Schmoeller's 1979 film Tourist Trap - a doll-like figure holding another decapitated doll-like head. Thirty years or so later, I finally got around to watching Tourist Trap , and while many similar experiences of watching films have ended in disappointment and/or boredom, I can honestly say Tourist Trap was a good deal more disturbing than even the promise of that single image. Don...

The cinematic icon - who passed away in 1993 - has been unveiled as the new face of Galaxy and CGI technology has been used to allow her to star in a new UK TV commercial for the chocolate company.  Uncanny much?

The uncanny valley strikes once again. Enjoy! Le Taxidermiste from Le Taxidermiste Team on Vimeo .

  "During the turbulent 1940s, artist George Ault (1891-1948) created precise yet eerie picture works of art that have come to be seen, following his death, as some of the most original paintings made in America in those years. The beautiful geometries of Ault’s paintings make personal worlds of clarity and composure to offset a real world he felt was in crisis." http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2011/ault/

Think a room is not enough to give you goosebumps? Have a look at this. 

Unit 3's preoccupation with all things 'unheimlich' may have been and gone, but I saw these installations by Nicola Yeoman and was so reminded of Urvashi's 'birdcage place' and Chrissie's dressing table-in-the-forest , that I wanted to share. "Yorkshire born Nicola Yeoman moved to London in 2001 and worked at the Guardian as a picture editor whilst studying furniture at Guildhall University. Her combined love of photography and her practical skills as a designer led to an accidental career as a set designer. Now, at first glance at least, it is her eye for the theatrical, honed and developed in this latter role, that most informs her current artworks. Yeoman’s childhood spent growing up on a farm in North Yorkshire is also a big influence on her work: the dens she made in barns are still evident in her work today. Her sets range from elaborate interiors, to junk yard sculptures and ethereal and dreamlike worlds. She uses a wide array of diffe...

Danny Heller is a contemporary American artist whose work I thought the First Year would find interesting. Perhaps not because of any uncanny effect his paintings have -though certainly they have a strange, empty aura about them, life is suggested yet rarely present - but his work perfectly evokes a mournful nostalgia and romanticism of a by-gone era -in this case 1950-60's Los Angeles. We begin to wonder what stories these empty scenes hold. You should recognise the clear influence of Edward Hopper or other great American Scene and Social Realist painters in his work: Norman Rockwell, Andrew Wyeth, Grant Wood and J.C Leyendecker to name but a few.

Okay - so this advertising strawberry milk and isn't unnerving in the slightest... and yet...

Summary: One part horror, another part musical -The Wicker Man is as eclectic a British Horror film could be. Police Sergeant, Neil Howie, travels to Summerisle, a remote island situated off the west coast of Scotland to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. A devout Christian, he is horrified at the islanders outwardly Pagan beliefs encouraged by the enigmatic Lord Summerisle. Bewildered at their consistently strange behaviour, he suspects the girl may have been killed by the islanders for sacrificial purposes after a poor harvest. Analysis: “Howie arrives at the Scottish island to a find a secretive, tightly knit neo-pagan society, a world where couples copulate on gravestones, women breast feed in a desecrated church and young children are taught about the importance of the phallus. He is shocked by the islanders open sexuality and devotion to pre-Christian gods.” (Davies, 22:2003) Davies, S. Paul (2003) A-Z of cult films and film-makers USA: Batsford Release: 1973 Direc...

Summary: Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock tells the story about the disappearance of several young school girls and teacher who vanish without explanation, while exploring the mysterious Hanging Rock in the Australian outback. Though primarily a mystery film with horror elements it also deals greatly with the subsequent mental anxiety of the people who witnessed the girls final moments. Analysis: “Picnic earned praise for its period recreation, and it helped establish some of the elements of Weir’s style and vision: the amalgamation of the normal and abnormal; collisions between society and individuals, and between societies and external forces, visual hallmarks of bleached, pale lighting, soft-focused nostalgic haze, and meticulous art direction; and powerful usage of soundtrack and music, reinforcing and undermining the image with conspicuous or incongruous sound.” (Rayner 59:2003) Rayner J. (2003) The films of Peter Weir USA: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. Rel...