Even the most anti-fast foodies will admit that Mexi-chain Chipotle’s been making strides in supporting responsible food production, using local purveyors, and championing a new sustainable store design. A campaign to reintroduce itself to its eaters features a gorgeous new stop-motion ad by London-based Johnny Kelly that shows how Chipotle eschews the icky practices of factory farming. Michael Pollan would surely approve.

Featuring a Willie Nelson cover of the Coldplay song “The Scientist,” the ad opens on an idyllic pastoral scene, where a farmer cares for his family alongside pigs and cows. As business grows, his practices industrialize, and as the camera pans right, it follows an assembly line where pigs pass by vats of chemicals, are unnaturally fattened and finally processed into tiny pink cubes (not so much of a metaphor). As the trucks of pork squares roar over a desolate landscape, the farmer realizes the error of his ways and regains control of his farm, going — sing it Willie — “back to the start.”

The ad itself is a cinematic marvel — I admit, I teared up! — but now there’s an even more impressive component. Kelly has released a behind-the-scenes video shot by Max Halstead showing how he and the team at Clapham Road Studios did it.

Read full article here

Do not forget the Montreal Stop Motion Film Festival is back! This is a great oportunity to showcase your work! This type of event do not happen often specially focused towards stop motion, so if you are an animator out there and you have a film or are working on one, take a serious look at this film festival its trully awesome.

The Montreal Stop Motion Film Festival

Call for entries!

Montreal – April 14, 2011 – The Montreal Stop Motion Film Festival is proud to announce the official opening of its call for entries for the Festival’s third edition that will take place on October 21, 22 and 23, 2011, at Concordia University’s J.A. de Sève Theater (1453 Mackay Street, Montreal).

The second edition of the festival showcased more than 66 films from around the world, all created using Stop Motion Animation.

Now, the festival is inviting all filmmakers of this unique art form to submit their latest masterpieces in any of the three competitive categories: Independent, Academic, and Professional.

Please refer to the entries section on our website for answers to your questions concerning eligibility, dates, accepted formats, and new rules.

Deadline for film entries is September 26, 2011.

http://www.stopmotionmontreal.com/

The latest release from The Aposematics and Blue Civilian Productions is the 2:40 stop motion video set to the tune of “Hands On”. Weighing in at about 1,200 still shots after editing, I ended up cutting out about 300 photos. The majority of the video was shot sequentially, making most of the editing easier.

After experimenting with a little bit of stop motion I decided to shoot a full music video. We shot the stills exclusively on Lori’s Nikon D40 with an attached SB-400 Speedlight. Unfortunately, continuous shooting ate up the flash’s batteries quickly and caused darker frames to litter the video. External static umbrella lighting was used when necessary. A laminated sticker and dry erase marker were used for the doll’s face and Hershey’s dark chocolate syrup was used to simulate what little blood is present in the film. The stop motion action shots of Ken and Dan playing bass and drums were shot in the Morton building we use as a practice space (partially). The higher angles were achieved by attaching the Nikon to a tripod and triggering the shutter with a remote. Lori cleverly thought up the paper hearts and confetti for her kill scene finale. Some thought went into picking colors that would show up appropriately in black and white. Ken, being the “man behind the curtain” was potentially the hardest message to get across, but we easily conveyed the idea by transposing the last bit of paper hearts over the blank monitor, and then again by cutting back to the doll with a similar facial expression.

All of the images were resized, cropped, auto-adjusted, and converted to grayscale with Adobe Photoshop batching. The images were then imported into Adobe Premiere Pro at 2 frames per still at 24fps. My ramshackle attempt at stop motion ran too quickly and was a little confusing at 2 frames per still. I eventually extended the stills to 3 frames per second; this effectively slowed down the action but made the video a bit choppy. The graphics were then added at the final stage and everything was nested and exported out at 720p.

Overall, this shoot was an incredible learning experience and required more precise edits than the other Aposematics videos. I really loved putting this video together, but it will take much more than just a whim for me to attempt another stop motion film anytime soon. I only have the utmost respect for the real kings and queens of stop motion. I have no doubt their patience is greater than mine.

Websites to follow:
http://www.theaposematics.com/
http://www.bluecivilian.com/

As part of an advertising campaign for Melissa, a new shoe store in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the shoe brand partnered up with 3M to get 350,000 Post-its to create an animated stop motion video — the largest one to ever use so many sticky notes.

With a theme of “the power of love,” the public was invited to leave their own love messages on the Post-its while the animators worked vigorously to move the notes around to create an animation.

What the 25 animators end up with is a colorful animation that features elephants, balloons, flowers, and all sorts of hypnotic patterns that have a pixelated aesthetic. I might not be a shoe freak, but I love Post-its and this video is mesmerizing.

YouTubers Rymdreglage in their new video “Insert Coin” recreate classic scenes from retro video games using stop motion, a computer and hundreds of silver coins.

Iconic characters like Nintendo’s Mario and Namco’s Pac-man parade across the screen made of pixels made from coins.

The video seems to be a music vid