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Jules Engel, circa 1954 at UPA studio
Being a bit of a bookworm and “lit-exhibitionist”, I admit I think that the books found on a person’s bookshelf say a lot about him or her (though I dare not submit to the crime of judging a book entirely by its cover).
That’s why I thought that we could examine some of our favourite literature. To what do the Global Mechanic staff look to get inspired, learn new techniques, or educate themselves about their growing and changing field?
It all started when I came across a neat article by Amid Amidi (Cartoon Brew) who found a 66-year old photo of Jules Engel, a background painter who worked at Disney, and who then later joined the modernist studio, United Productions of America (UPA).
Amidi writes: “Engel’s books span the spectrum of visual arts from photography to painting to dance and theater. … Far from working in [...]
This week, we bring you another installment of our retrospective blog series. This time, we’re talking vintage comics and pop art.
Ad for Smirnoff Ice by Global Mechanic. Animated in a combo of Flash, Cinema 4D and After Effects.
The Global Mechanic creative team is inspired by the old and new alike – we love mixing modern techniques and animation with retro styling.
A commercial we recently finished for Smirnoff (under the direction of our man, Chez,) is one such example.
Pop art, halftone patterns, flatness in 3D space… it’s all here.
The agency wanted a punchy ’60s comics look for Smirnoff Rocket. We worked on this in our Vancouver studio in collaboration with François-Marc Baillet in France, sending dots and bubbles back and forth across the ocean.
The graphics styles of Shepard Fairey (think: Obama’s HOPE poster) and even more notably, the vintage romance comics of Roy Lichtenstein, were a great creative inspiration [...]
As promised, we bring you Part 2 of our #GMrestrospective blog series (read Part 1 if you missed it), commemorating some of the hard work our team has completed over the last year.
This week, I thought I’d share with you a few of the commercial projects we’ve done. Whether it’s a 30-second spot or a huge multi-format ad campaign, commercial work gives us a chance to play in many styles and focus our creative chops. We love variety and our advertising work includes everything from stop-motion, live action mix, classic 2D animation, 3D CGI and everything in between.
Looking back at some of the ads we did, I found that some of them have a very particular – and now, popular – aesthetic, which demonstrates a trend that has been apparent in advertising over the last couple of years: infographics!
Have a look for yourself:
1. TomTom Live
This ad was produced for TomTom [...]
With January almost done, we’re already used to saying it’s 2012. But 2011 is still relatively fresh in our minds.
Sketches from Impromptu, a 3D animated short currently in production
Sir Bit, an ASCII quest game for the iOS platform. Full version coming soon.
The year has started off with a full bang: We’ve signed on new ad campaigns; we’re in production of Impromptu, our first 3D animated short and co-production with the NFB; we’re preparing to develop our first ebook; and our developer, Cliff, is putting the final touches on the full version of Sir Bit, an ASCII-style iOS game.
Yet, while we prepare for what’s in the works for 2012, we’ve also had a bit of time to really think about all the work we’ve done over the past year.
As part of a special blog series, I thought we’d highlight 10 intriguing Global Mechanic projects of 2011, a retrospective, if [...]
The making of The Art of Pho.
Bruce’s friend from London, Jeremy Southgate, just sent us a neat link about the making of a particularly cool motion comic, The Art of Pho, based on the graphic novel by Julian Hanshaw.
You see, we’ve been brainstorming ideas for the My Robot, an ebook for kids we’re developing with Jem. Jem’s going to be producing the “book” and we’ll be contributing the “e” to the project.
Motion comics, or graphic novels whose images have been somehow animated or moved onto a digital platform, have been a great point of reference during our creative process. Seeing how others have approached this medium will help us eventually make decisions about how to stylize our own technique for My Robot. We’ll keep you posted on the project’s status!
Tidbit: See some of our kid-friendly projects!
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