Bunny & Bob and a bit of WIP

A short animated bit for Tali Shalom Ezer's film "Princess".

The movie itself is a live action feature, this is just something the main characters watch on TV.

A few months ago the movie's supervising sound editor,  Aviv Aldema, who also did the  sound editing for "the Congress" and "Waltz with Bashir", hooked me up with Tali, the film's director. 

She showed me an incredible scene from her movie where two teenagers lie in bed and watch a cartoon on TV (it was a placeholder of a very famous cartoon) while blowing bubbles from their mouth. Without giving too much away- what starts as a very innocent "first love" situation becomes, by the end of it, rather dark and freightning  

In the scene itself the animation only stays for a  few seconds, but the background sound of the entire scene is built up from these characters. 

Tali, being the wonderful person she is, gave me freedom on the subject of the cartoon. I decided to match the scene's narrative by creating a very "funny" oldschool cartoon scenario that also has a bit of a dark twist into it. (and the bubble bath also connects to the scene's bubbles.

I started out very very quickly with these two sketches, just to show the concept

The director's main comment that it was too "slick"- she asked me to make it a bit more dark and sleazy

it came out too sleazy- the demon/zombie/dracula character (later named "Bob") was too evil and the rabbit, which I gave more "mad" attributes lost all of her "cute" elements

The third version was the final design-both characters, even Bob, have a bit of a funny and loveable element to them, but also a bit of a dark and sleazy.

This is the linetest for the scene- (all done in Toonboom Harmony)

As I mentioned before- one of the main goals of this project is to set the musical tone for the TV background noises in the scene.

After the animation was done, Tali wrote an 8 minute script based on the 4 seconds, and it was completely dubbed and sound mixed by Aviv's team.
Here's a sample of how it came out:

The end result was so great I just quickly had to do this one final frame- based on this bit of soundtrack

Dailymation 2.0- part 11- Favorite toy

It's been a bit of a busy month.
After the premiere of "The Congress" in Cannes, I had to get back to my projects full steam, and then last week I gave a presentation in the Annecy Film festival in france.
A day after I went and visited the Toonboom booth, and they graciously let me take over their station for 2 hours- so this is what came out of it, a sort of a "on the road" dailymation :-)
 (this film continues the "dailymation 2.0" timeline- I think I'll start posting the full length wip soon).

So again- Thanks to the Toonboom crew for their support, and enjoy

Dailymation- The Reverse jesus Effect

I just got back from the Cannes film festival this morning, where we presented "The congress" as the opening film of the Director's Fortnight. we had a fantastic screening and a lot of good responses.

Overall this was a very fun week, I got to hang out with my crew who I didn't see for quite some time, and it was great to see the film finally on the big screen!

Yesterday we were invited to a cocktail on the beach (Lots of good food and alcohol), where David Polonsky (The Film's art director) and myself started playing with stuff on the table and animating it, naturally alcohol played a big part in it (in the animation of course!)

so as I couldn't do my regular hand drawn dailymation on the festival, I am proud to present the very first stopmotion dailymation! 

These clips were created in collaboration with David Polonsky, who was also the hand actor and supervised finishing off the Champagne, and with a very cool software called Imotion HD on my iPhone.

THE CONGRESS- TRAILER!

Here it is at last! the official trailer for "THE CONGRESS"

This turned out really really great! samples a fraction of the madness :)
I'm leaving for cannes in a day-premire on the 16th.
Enjoy!

Dailymation 2.0- part 10- For the Birds

The continuing daily animation

New Released Images From "The Congress"

Robin in the future (art By David Polonsky and Lena Guberman)

Now that "The Congress" (Ari Folman's new movie, in which I was Director of animation) is a week away from its grand premiere as the opening film of Cannes' Director's fortnight, Ari has agreed to release a few images.

The movie, Which stars Robin Wright, Harvey Keitel, Danny Huston, Kodi Smit-Mcphee, John Hamm and Paul Giamatti, is a Half Live action- Half animation (No mix between techniques) very very loose adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's novel "The Futurological Congress".  

Apart from working with Ari, which is always a fun, educational and life altering experience, this was again a collaboration with the multi talented and amazing art director David Polonsky, who this time also did design for the live action shooting in LA and Berlin (I stayed in Israel during the shoot :-( ).

Robin Wright plays an aging actress, who gets an offer to be scanned into the computer and be made forever young. the catch- she must give up her acting career and never perform again. Twenty years into the future, she goes to Abrahama, a drug hallucination based animated city, and there the plot takes a wild turn...

All images are a property of Bridgit Folman Films Gang

 Robin (in her animated form), arrives a the congress (art by Lena Guberman and Michael Faust)

 Dylan (voiced by John Hamm) in one of robin's Hallucinations (art By David Polonsky)

 Robin and Jeff (Voiced by Danny Huston)(art By David Polonsky)

A few Images from the live action:

 Robin, Her son Aaron (played by Kody smit-Mcphee) and DR Barker (played by Paul Giamatti)

 Robin And Al (Played by Harvey Keitel) waiting for the scan

Robin in the scanning machine. the amazing thing about this machine- is that this is THE machine used to scan people digitally- we were shocked when we found this out because this is possibly the most futuristic sci- fi thing we could hope to build as a set, and it's real!

Robin as Her computer generated character "Agent Robin"

Dailymation 2.0- part 9- Misfire

The continuing Daily animation

Dailymation 2.0- part 8- Pride in a Job Well Done

The continuing daily animation

Dailymation 2.0- part 7- Don't Look Back

The continuing Daily animation! (part 7- we are getting somewhere)

Dailymation 2.0- part 6- Catching up

The continuing daily animation

This one was a bit long to do (around 4 hours), but I'm starting to feel the structure of the whole thing coming together (although i'm still building this story day to day as I go along- we'll see how it goes)

Dailymation 2.0- part 5- On the Job

The continuing daily animation

Dailymation 2.0- part 4- The Heist

The continuing Daily animation

Dailymation 2.0- part 3- Give 'em an inch...

The continuing daily animation

A word to the faint hearted- it's not blood, it's black pixels (not even ink)- 

Dailymation 2.0- part 2- Please don't feed the flowers

Continuing from Yesterday's Dailymation

Dailymation 2.0- part 1-Return of the Dailymation!

After a very (very) long break (almost a year and a half, I think)- Dailymations are back! (this time I mean it)

I took some time off because of my intense work as director of animation on Ari Folman's upcoming film- "the Congress"

The last time I was writing a post I was at the end of  the pre production phase (storyboard- animatik) on the feature, and I was thinking- "sure- I'll continue dailymations at night", but very very soon my workload became more and more hectic and I found myself fixing shots in the nights- all the way till the very end of the production.
A few words on "the Congress"- It's a half live action, half animation feature, starring Robin Wright, Harvey Keitel, Danny Huston, Paul Giamatti and John Hamm.
Unlike "Waltz with Bashir", which had a very small crew due to cutout technique, Here we went all the way with 2d frame by frame animation, so I was in fact managing 7 studios worldwide, so I was really testing the sentence "Sleep is for the mortals".
 I'll probably do a post about the production when the materials can be released, One I can say- it was a fantastic ride and I am very proud of the way it came out. I have learned a lot  and improved a lot from working on the movie and with the fantastic talents that collaborated with us- so I'm really hoping for the best.

But now I am returning to do my (almost) daily animation sketches.
The goal, this time, would be to have a continuing link between the dailymation, so I can eventually connect them into a larger context- we'll see how that goes.

This is the first one- As always- feel free to comment!