Marc Craste is genius and I envy his creativity.
This is the final play out of his creepy and thoroughly envelope pushing Pica Towers vignettes circa 2001. (watch them here, here and here). You gotta remember back then nobody was doing anything like this. Everybody was too busy aping Pixar (myself included). When I first saw the Pica Towers shorts it was an epiphany for me. I just love how immediate the animation is in this. There's not a bunch of built up polish to arrive at the final. A lot of these scenes could be animated start to finish in a day- maybe in an afternoon even. This style allows a rough "in the moment" vibe to shine through. Some may pan it as crude and limited, but to me it feels alive as opposed to constructed. Craste's other commercial work at Studio AKA is neat, too- though not as individually bold as the Pica stuff.
7 comments:
The lighting and character animation here can hardly be called crude. It's great to see people who are not afraid to experiment with the medium of CGI.
WOW!
WOW!
WOW!
I've never been more gripped in a short film before,,this is really a masterpiece.
Thanx a lot Keith for pointing us to it!
I am a huge fan of Marc Craste and Studio Aka. I'm always showing their stuff to my students.
what do you think of pocoyo?
Strange you should ask about Pocoyo. My kids and I really enjoy it!
Not sure how it reminds you of Studio AKA's work, though. :-)
I do like the style, although I don't care for the gritty stories in Pica Towers, for instance.
Some of their commercials are pretty neat. The lottery "smile" commercial was excellent.
Masterful. This certainly doesn't taste like chicken! Hmmm mmm good! After seeing Craste's work, I feel like most of the recent animated films are just pretty-looking mush in comparison. This film looks simple but communicates powerfully.
Many animated feature films now days seem to be a bunch of gags strung together with a thin string of narrative. Craste's shorts seem to have something that's lacking in the animation industry today, I'm sure of it, but I can't quite put my finger on it. What do you think it is, Keith?
Now I know where the idea for Rayman: Raving Rabbids came from!
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