A minimalist short by London-based animator David Zamorano featuring a sniper holding out with his captured prisoner during the downfall of a nuclear conflict – a take on the absurdity of war and the maddening stress of isolation and loneliness.
Category Archives: Animation
A new, unhinged episode of DOMO Dreams for Adult Swim Smalls by Jack Wedge.
Just let it wash over you.
A short by Michelle Brand exploring our perception of time, bodies, objects and our inability to comprehend the ‘full motion of things’.
Wake up sheeple.
The ‘highways, arteries and veins of our cities’ replicated and extrapolated by Yiannis Bilaris of Hong Kong-based production house Visual Suspect.
Behold: SS 433 – one of the most exotic eclipsing x-ray binary star systems we know of. And that’s saying something. To wit:
Its unremarkable name stems from its inclusion in a catalog of Milky Way stars which emit radiation characteristic of atomic hydrogen. Its remarkable behaviour stems from a compact object, a black hole or neutron star, which has produced an accretion disk with jets. Because the disk and jets from SS 433 resemble those surrounding supermassive black holes in the centres of distant galaxies, SS 433 is considered a micro-quasar. As illustrated in the animated featured video based on observational data, a massive, hot, normal star is locked in orbit with the compact object. As the video starts, material is shown being gravitationally ripped from the normal star and falling onto an accretion disk. The central star also blasts out jets of ionised gas in opposite directions – each at about 1/4 the speed of light. The video then pans out to show a top view of the precessing jets producing an expanding spiral. From even greater distances, the dissipating jets are then visualised near the heart of supernova remnant W50. Two years ago, SS 433 was unexpectedly found by the HAWC detector array in Mexico to emit unusually high energy (TeV-range) gamma-rays. Surprises continue, as a recent analysis of archival data taken by NASA‘s Fermi satellite find a gamma-ray source — separated from the central stars as shown — that pulses in gamma-rays with a period of 162 days – the same as SS 433’s jet precession period – for reasons yet unknown.
(Animation: DESY, Science Communication Lab)
The world of the doughty Oecophylla – a new animated feature from German educational design studio Kurzgesagt To wit:
Deep in tropical jungles lie floating kingdoms ruled by beautiful and deadly masters: They are sort of the high elves of the ant kingdoms: Talented architects that create castles and city states. But they are also fierce and expansionist warriors and their kingdoms are ensnared in a never ending war for survival. Oecophylla weaver ants.
Previously: Asteroid Mining
A 2017 short by UK based animator Prawta Annez in which a beachside battle for towel space becomes a cipher for global political tensions.
Another diverting animated video essay from The School of Life – well worth a watch if you have time on your hands, especially too much time. To wit:
We long to get all our work done in order to have free time. But we should be very careful with leisure. Having nothing left to do work-wise can be a very dangerous challenge for our psyches: it can bring on despair and self-loathing. It may be that always having projects on the go can insulate us from mental unwellness.
Previously: Come Out Of The Cupboard You Boys And Girls
A stop motion short by Elly Stern in which a homeless woman in a trash strewn city finds a dead fish and swallows it whole.
Metaphysical weirdness ensues.
A very impressive Royal College of Art graduation short by Richard Noble telling the tale of fictional animated tycoon John Wanda and his ill fated theme park.