The Great Geek Manual

This short animation is inspired by the silent movies of Buster Keaton made in the 1920s. A young woman leaves on a train, looking back epectantly. Her paramour dashes after her, but only after the train has departed. Cue some toon gymnastics as he tries to catch up to his lost love.

But watch til the end, as not everything goes as expected. This film was created by Jenna Bors of the Ringling College of Art and Design, Department of Computer Animation. All modeling, and lighting was created using Autodesk Maya. The textures, effects, and composting were done in After Effects, Photoshop, Corel Painter, and Premiere.

Website: poeticomecano.com

Poetico Mecano – the movie from GW | MithrandiL on Vimeo.

An itinerant inventor strolls in to town and spies a young and beautiful washerwoman laboring over her daily duties. He sets about impressing her with a series of his inventions. Unfortunately, none of them work terribly well, which might be the reason then for his roving nature.

The above film is based on a short story written by Polish sci-fi author Jacek Dukaj, “Katedra,” and animated by Tomasz Bagiński using 3ds Max. In 2002, it was nominated for an Academy Award in the Animated Short Film category, but it lost to Sony’s The Chubbchubbs.

The film is visually breathtaking, and although not a single word is spoken in seven minutes, it’s riveting. Its conclusion, which is left open-ended, leaves audiences with more questions than answers, imparting a great deal of re-watchability to the piece.

On this day in 1909, E.M. Forster published the science fiction short story “The Machine Stops” in The Oxford and Cambridge Review. The story explored the consequences of a complete technological break down on a society dependent on information technology.

The story will turn out to be remarkably prophetic, predicting a number of social and technological developments, including television and videoconferencing, which Foster dubbs “cinematophote,” and the social phenomena of excessive participation in virtual communities in a manner that foreshadows the later advent of the internet and social networking.

You can now watch the 1966 adaptation of the story for the UK science fiction series “Out of the Unknown” at Google Video.

Listen to an audio recording of the story.
Read “The Machine Stops” online.
Watch the adaptation on Google Video.

Continuing with the theme of teddy-inflicted violence, we present Teddy Saw by Ben Schwartz. In it, a toy abuser learns that toys have a looong memory.

Tis the season for Zombies! “Dawn of the Ted,” is an excellent short film about a teddy bear named “Misery Bear,” who fights against the evil forces of plush zombies.

What’s Halloween without a few zombies, right?

8BITS is a short, awesomely violent film about nostalgia for 8-bit video games. Good stuff.