In my first of several posts on various highlights from the Ottawa International Animation Festival, is the Music Video Catagory. One of the entries won the Grand Prize for Commissioned Animation, Die Toten Hosen ‘Walkampf’, directed by Andreas Hykade. What starts out as a simple black & white video erupts into a symphony of color with bizarre creatures and intriguing animated cycles. It won me over. I couldn’t find the entire video available to view online, but there is a special page in the making of the video on Film Bilder’s site here, complete with a movie clip and a ‘stages of production’ feature. Andreas has done several other interesting short films, as well as some illustration work. In fact, he designed the entire OIAF program last year, which you can see the cover here.
(UPDATE: You can see the entire video for ‘Walkampf’ at Die Toten Hosen’s German site. Go HERE and then choose from three speeds:
Für langsamere Verbindungen (slow)
Für durchschnittliche Verbindungen (medium)
Für schnelle Verbindungen (fast)
–Thanks greenpix.de!)
The video that won the actual catagory for Music Video (I know, it’s a little confusing) was Phoenix Foundation ‘Hitchcock’ directed by Reuben Sutherland. You can view the entire video on Joyrider’s site here. Once on the site, click ‘Directors’ and then click on Reuben’s name. CG-animated cars in a live-action environment + haunting soundtrack makes for a great video.
Another video in competition that is worth mentioning was Tom Neely‘s video for The Muffs ‘Don’t Pick On Me’. Tom, as you may know, was mentioned before on Drawn! I got to meet the guy and we hit it off pretty well. He’s updated his site since our post, with an added comics section. He also has a blog. To view the Muff’s video, you can see the entire thing here. Tom has a knack for getting that rubberhose, Fleischer-style down pretty well.