Man the christmas shopping comes back every year doesn’t it. It’s hard to budget for everything around this time of year but … hold on … you’re a creative kind of guy right? Why don’t you just design up a lovely christmas card and get it sent round to a thousand people this christmas, and whats more pocket a nice little christmas wad while you’re at it. Just think how happy Granny will be when she gets her Xbox with Modern Warfare 3 and an extra controller! *yoink*.
Runners up also receive Stack annual subscriptions – which we raved about here. Well worth picking up a pencil for.
As the first of a series of regular events, ShellsuitZombie brings you a film screening from the largest short film network in the world, Future Shorts.
The creators of Secret Cinema, Future Shorts are world renowned for supporting short film and the lineup for this festival is no exception. A haul including Oscars, Baftas, Sundance and Annecy Festival awards just goes to show that the films you will see are amongst the best in the world.
Filmed on an old decommissioned military submarine with 35mm cameras, Deeper Than Yesterday tells the story of a Russian crew who suffer a rather savage form of cabin fever. Directed by Ariel Kleiman, a graduate of the VCA at the University of Melbourne, recently said “The more uncomfortable I feel making a film the better it will be.” Jurors have compared the film to “The Lower Depths,” Maxim Gorky’s best-known play – very Russian with long period of isolation and madness.
Winner of International Short Filmmaking Award at Sundance.
A boy learns to play the piano in this rather dark but occasionally humorous mediation on the anxieties and fears of a modern civilized society. Created as a lo-fi animation, The External World is a surreal seventeen-minute collection of vignettes which borrows themes from pop culture, cinema and videogames – classic and contemporary. Some have heralded this short as “a unique reconstruction of the universe” while O’Reilly recently noted in an interview, “I like creating experimental films that have an emotional function.”
A detailed and humorous account of a failed bank robbery: A single take where roughly 100 people meticulously recreate an actual event that took place in Stockholm in June 2006. Directed by Ruben Östlund, these events were witnessed first hand along with his producer Erik Hemmendorff while on the way to the Swedish Film Insititute. The film questions the reality of how, really, robberies happen, and what they might or, should, look like. “Making ‘Incident by a Bank’ is a way to correct the false images of robberies we see almost daily in action movies made in Hollywood,” says Östlund.
The Eagleman Stag is a unique 9-minute stop-motion animated film that depicts a man’s haunting obsession with the passage of time and his unorthodox relationship with a beetle. Directed by Michael Please, the production was a highly ambition final year film produced while studying at the RCA – it is based on a story he previously wrote entitled “The Life and Time of Peter Eagleman.” Orchestral music was integral to this film and composed in tandem with the animation process.
Winner of Best Short Animation at BAFTA, and Special Jury Prize at SXSW.
Matheny, who wrote, directed and starred in this 19-minute inventive comedy about love-inducing darts won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short in 2011. A recent film student graduate at New York University, God of Love was produced as his thesis film project while enrolled at NYU’s MFA program. At the Oscars, he was hailed as delivering one of the best acceptance speeches of the evening and thanked his mother for her contribution to the movie.
Oscar Winner in 2011 for Best Live Action Short Film.
Inspired by the Argentinian instrumental tango piece entitled “Lluvia de Estrellas” (Star Rain), Luminaris tells the story of a man living in a world controlled by time by light. Each day inhabitants of this fictional world awake and are pulled, as if by some otherworldly force, to their jobs by sunlight. Combining pixilation and stop motion techniques; the surrealist short pairs styles reminiscent of art deco with black cinema. Zaramella explains, “Originally, I approached the project as a puppet animation story, but doing some pixilation tests in the gardens of Fontevraud, just for fun, the seed of the present short was born: the idea of sunlight as a magnetic force.”
Winner of the Audience and Fipresci Award at Annecy 2011 International Animation Festival
The best thing is, the whole thing will be introduced by one of the Future Shorts team. Plus you can go to the bar and still see the screen! Yeah boi.
The Agents of Change are a loose group of street artists based all over the UK and beyond. This video from last year has been criminally underwatched for such a fascinating little insight into not only their working paractices but also a strange little corner of Britain, a deserted Scottish 1970′s village built to house workers for an oil rig that was never built.
Check out a profile on them as one of several Honda Cultural Engineers here.
People describe themselves in one comment – they can either use the #SecretPortrait hashtag, or they can submit their description via the Facebook page – A bunch of illustrators then bring these descriptions to life.
The latest video from ShellsuitZombie’s favourite band Keston Cobblers Club is now up and it’s an absolute tearjerker. The story of a couple realising a lifelong dream is KCC’s most ambitious work to date and reportedly caused a few headaches (and bruises) but the end result is totally worth it.
In other news, Keston Cobblers Club are now (finally) on Spotify - add them to your chillout playlists motherfuckers.
The Vice tone of voice, so raw and refreshing when reporting on conflicts in Libya or Congo, seems to feel much more at home ribbing wierdos for wearing crocs or having a sperm tattoo, most noticeably in its infamous ‘DO’s and DON’Ts’ column. Sadly it’s less prominent position in the recent site redesign means I can’t be pretending to read a worthy music column while secretly looking at naked fatties, so it was with guilt-ridden satisfaction that I accepted their offer to send me a review copy of the new print accompaniment to everyone’s guilty secret corner of the internet.
First of all, the book is small and RRPs at £9.99 (which means six quid on Amazonznz) – having worked briefly in an art publishing house I know this aims it at the impulse point-of-sale ‘that’ll go in the loo’ market. And actually, that is what it’s perfect for. When that second log just won’t budge and you’re bored of angry birds, this book will provide a good chuckle. From the aforementioned naked fatties to drag queens through sweat, hair and terrible tattoos, this book has the lot, all captioned with the sort of snide hostility the online column is famous for.
It lacks the depth of its recent big brother ‘The World according to Vice’, reviewed here, but is a good taste of one of the sections of Vice with (I would imagine) the biggest repeat custom. Plus your seedy uncle who thinks he’s in with the kids will love all the boobs, should you present it as his christmas gift.
Tessa is a designer and illustrator from Aalst, a tiny town in Belgium famous for Carnivals and Onions. Now based in Berlin, she creates a mixture of collage and design with a very free exploratory style. I got lost in her flickr in particular which is chock a block with small visual observations and experiments as well as deliciously pretentious names (the below piece is entitled ‘You don’t know what you desire if what you desire does not yet exist’. Go check her out.
Here’s another fine young illustrator to have a look at – lovely line work and a strange sense of humour in the work of Amee Christian – who is seemingly incredibly prolific for someone so young, having illustrated for quite a few magazines and clients despite still being a student.
This is the way to do it, work your shit off, even if it’s for free while you can afford it. You end up with an impressive body of work, which I’m sure will see Amee in good stead for the future.
A couple of weeks ago we held a zine workshop with Alex Zamora from FEVERZINE - have a watch of this video to see what we got up to. We’ll be putting up photos of some of the zines shortly (the video barely scratches the surface of the body of work produced), but until then be content with pausing the HD footage and salivating/giggling over it.
We absolutely loved this workshop, there’s nothing better than getting people to stretch their creative muscles in new ways and producing a magazine in 3 hours is definitely a good way to do it.
Go to John Thurbin for all your stop-motiony black-and-whitey illustrationy needs. This video is sort of mesmerising and his designs are lovely too. A 2011 Middlesex grad, hopefully we’ll be seeing more of John in the near future. JT will triumph indeed.
Some insanely detailed stitching from Peter Crawley has gone into this Wallpaper logo, accumulating a staggering 70 hours of needle-time for the metre-squared piece which involved 12,000 hand-pierced holes and 250m of cotton. It was exhibited as part of the Wallpaper exhibition at Brioni House in Milan.
ShellsuitZombie’s favourite magazine subscription service, Stack, has been going from strength to strength since we first reported it (I’m sure in no small part down to both issues of SSZ being delivered in their lovely brown envelopes…ahem) and have now started holding magazine related events.
After 2 successful ‘Printout!’ events they are now hosting a 48 hour magazine making session at the Southbank Centre on the 12th to the 14th of August and anyone can get involved. ShellsuitZombie will be there (stapling and photocopying and making tea I would imagine) and so will many others if past events are anything to go by, so make sure you sign up.
Zac Gorman is an american illustrator with an interest in games – upon the recent discovery of a love for animated illustration he has begun to experiment, largely using the subject of The Legend of Zelda, producing these visually arresting but also very funny cartoons.
Zac seems to have about 12 websites but check out his work here, his gamer type blog here and his new tumblr ‘I draw Nintento’ here. All three are well worth a look.
Andrew describes himself as an English illustrator from France (?) and lists his influences as Hergé, Ben Nicholson and Giotto. Regardless he brings a certain rustic charm to the oft-overused papercraft style of illustration utilising good use of shape, colour and composition. Lovely stuff. Visit his site here.
Watch this doc about 12 East London ‘shirt-done-up-all-the-way-to-the-top’s who have formed a kick-ass collective called This is it. There will be dozens of these things happening around the east end, what with all the squats and hipsters, but these guys are different in that they’re really creative. A video they made to celebrate their new working space went a likkle bit viral and led to a show in Jaguar shoes and the above edgy Vice mini doc about their work.
Now where can I get my hands on that hammer costume?
