Thursday, December 23, 2010

Beast (re)animates dead animals

To end 2010 with a bang, Beast Animation is working on a new TV commercial, we’re shooting a new Bazas game and are preparing the production of the Bazas series! About al this there will be more news very soon.


In the second week of December, Beast Animation has been animating on Bertrand Mandico’s new short: “La resurrection des natures mortes”. The film is a mix of live action and stopmotion. 
Our job was to animate dead animals. We had already worked with Bertrand and were familiar with his strange but strong universe. So there we were, giving life to animal corpses. Quit an extraordinary experience ;-)


The first mission was to animate a horse. Please note that no animals where killed for the sake of the film. The horse for example was very old and became blind recently, so his owner decided to end its misery. And gave permission to Bertrand and his crew to use the body for the film.






On the first day we shot 20seconds in 10 hours. The horse was cooperating quit well. He even let us animate his mouth...


Second, was a running dog with flowers growing out of his belly. This dog had been working in several films before dying of age.


Problem was that the dog seemed to be dead way longer than the horse. So the air, although extremely cold, was not that fresh. After 11 hours of shoot the dog is running again. And he can continue infinitely.


After" the dog experience" there was a women waiting to animated. Luckily she was not dead, but she could play for dead quit well ;-)  Little bird heads are holding and pulling up her hair.


During an hour and a half the actress hardly moved, while the bird heads were animated around her. And I can assure you, it was almost freezing inside the “studio”.


And last but not least: the hare. This is the first animal to appear animated in the film. He is laying on a black surface, and every image there are white chalk, handwritten numbers counting the frames.


After a 4 hour shoot the hare is running again!
We are not allowed to show you the animation at this point, but will try to do so when the film comes out. Expected before the summer of 2011.

Director Bertrand Mandico and main actress Elina Lowensohn keeping the freezing animator company, giving some instructions, telling stories AND opening a fresh beer every now and then.
Cheers!



Saturday, July 31, 2010

New work coming up!

Sorry for being so silent lately. We’ve been very busy the last months We would love to show you some images but these projects are still “top secret”. So we’ll try you show you something without showing you anything... Capice?


We've been shooting a commercial for big pharma company. Around the beautiful set we’ve build a complete “white box”. Hot animation!



Andreas De Ridder animating our crazy character.

We will be able to show you the result soon!


Only two days ago we finished shooting the new leader for “Man Bijt Hond”. 
Just as last year David Toutevoix was our DOP.


Andreas and Ben animating until 1 in the morning AND dancing afrobeat J




Joeri Bollaert and Carole Pizzaferri preparing the last set for “Man Bijt Hond”.
The show will start on (Flemish) television at the end of august. We’ll show our international friends the result a little after.

And there is more to come!!! 


Friday, April 23, 2010

“Man Bijt Hond” – the spring version.


Spring, blossoms, green grass, flowers and the first warming sun... We’ve just shot a new, and final, version of the leader for the TV show  'Man bijt Hond’. Production company Woestijnvis asked us to make an adaptation of the leader with the change of each season. 
Spring is on TV! Here are some making of pictures.




Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Lotus Caramelized biscuits commercial

Here are some making of pics of the stop motion commercial we did for Lotus, using real caramelized biscuits and an adapted coffee cup in a set we constructed in our studio. Agency is Duval Guillaume, the commercial is produced, directed and animated by Beast Animation and can be watched here or here.

Friday, April 2, 2010

DVD “Panique au village” out now!

Get some madness into your living room and on your TV:  “Panique au village” is finally available on DVD! Since the 1st of april in France and from the 7th of april in Belgium for the French version. For the Flemish version “Paniek in het Dorp” you’ll have to wait until April 28th. CRAZY FUN!!!



Monday, March 22, 2010

VW-BlueMotion on air

The VW-commercial for which we build the sets and 'animatronics' is now on air. Since the idea of the commercial is that it is shot with the least CO2 emission possible, the sets were build using recycled material, and all the animation/movement was done using 'manpower' only. For this project, we were happy to work with director JP Frenay for production company Latcho Drom. Agency is DDB Belgium.
The commercial can be viewed here.



Friday, March 19, 2010

Last week's meeting with a legend

Last week Beast Animation had the privilege to welcome Bruce Bickford. The legendary director/animator paid a little visit to our studios.



We had a nice talk about his work…



…and about our work.



Always a pleasure to meet a legend! 

Pixilated movies for University of Antwerp on TV


The two pixilated films we made for the University of Antwerp, are finally on television. You can also see them on the Beast YouTube channel.





Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Pixilated movies for University of Antwerp

For Mosquito, an Antwerp based communication agency, we adapted their print campaign for the University of Antwerp into two pixilated movies. Because of the small budget, we proposed to shoot the clips as straight forward as possible, without loosing the look and feel of the print campaign. That's why there is this funny guy with a helmet on his head on which we attached different printed positions of a Shakespeare and Darwin picture. Both Mosquito and the University are pleased with the result, which will be on air from early March.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

We have been busy...

that's why it took us a while to post some news here :-).

For Woestijnvis, we shot the Winter-version of the 'Man bijt Hond'-leader in Ypres. This version will be screened until the Spring-version we will shoot in March.





























For our Beast Wishes we created a youtube game with a new character called 'Bazas'. Every single aspect of this project was done in-house: puppet-building, animation, postproduction image and music. We are planning more funny stuff with him in 2010.





















For Strass Interactive, we build a prototype of a puppet they wanted to use in an online campaign.

















For director Douglas Boswell we are building an animation puppet called 'Slensje'. It's a test for one of his upcoming projects.

















For our 'Master Bator' project, we made a (slightly animated) Season's Greetings card, which can be seen here.

And in the meantime we are pitching for commercials, installing a (director's) pool with young stopmotion-talent, continuing the preproduction of 'Beiaard' and the European Living Tales and we are developing a brand-new children's series...

As we said... we are busy :-)

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