If you stopped by Lines and Colors yesterday, January 18, you may have noticed that Lines and Colors had gone dark, along with a significant number of other sites, in protest, and to raise awareness of the “anti-piracy” internet censorship bills looming in the U.S. Congress.

If you didn’t happen to stop by yesterday, but would like to know more about why it matters, what I had to say about the issue, and why the continued existence of Lines and Colors and websites like it hinges on the defeat of these bills, here is the page that was up in place of the site yesterday.

The effort to raise awareness of this issue across the web has apparently begun to have an effect, as a number of legislators have withdrawn their support for the bills, at least in their current form. But the fight is far from over; the hugely powerful and influential lobbies that represent the entertainment industry will not slink quietly away and call it a day; they will continue to pressure congress to give them the kind of extraordinary and frightening control over internet content that these bills provide.

Those in other countries may feel this doesn’t affect them (it will if hundreds or thousands of websites go dark at the whim of the big corporations), or you may feel frustrated that you can’t affect it directly. Right now, the spread of information and awareness is important, and those of you in Europe and elsewhere will soon enough have your own fight on your hands over similar legislation that these companies are trying to force into law around the world.

Those in the U.S. can directly affect the immediate danger of these bills passing by calling or writing your U.S. senators and representatives and urging them to reject the bills. Here is a site called Stop American Censorship that has more information on how easy it is to do that.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that if these bills pass, Lines and Colors, and significant other portions of the web, will cease to exist.

-Charley

A Year of Sun with Mr. Persol is a beautifully realized animated ad for Persol sunglasses, directed by illustrator Kevin Dart and Stéphane Codëdel, and designed by Dart and illustrator Chris Turnham.

At first I thought it might be intended as a web only ad as the richness and variety of the illustrations gives the impression that it’s longer than it is, but at just one minute in length, it could be intended for broadcast.

There are additional credits on Dart’s site.

As an ad, it’s very understated, but that’s evidently the intention; as an animated short, it’s very nicely done.

[Via Cartoon Brew]

Colour (Vimeo link) is a beautifully realized short animation (2:30) in which a moving brush brings color to a black and white jungle landscape and its inhabitants — save one.

The commercial short was done for TIJI, which I believe is a French children’s channel. It was created by Akama Studio, working with the production company Wanda Productions.

[Via DesignSwan by way of MetaFilter]

Pythagasaurus is a wonderfully realized CGI animated short about “…the Mighty Pythagasaurus, the fabled tyrannosaurus practiced in the skills of trigonometry and long division”.

The short is directed by Peter Peake and animated by Pascale Bories, with wonderful voice characterization by Bill Bailey, Martin Trenaman and Simon Greenall.

Not exactly what you would expect from the preview images (grin).

[Via MetaFilter]

I’ve written previously about 3-D animation video projection on the sides of buildings, specifically about those created by NuFormer.

I’m uncertain who created this example in Berlin (the only credit line I can find says “Facade Mapping Image Show”, but I can’t find a site for that name), but it’s probably the most striking one I’ve seen.

This is basically a kind of 3-D animation projected against the side of a building, and initially, at least, “mapped” to the buildings surface, allowing the animators to have their way with the building, both as a subject and as a surface for projecting other images.

You can watch it on YouTube or Vimeo or on the BoingBoing site, which is where I learned about it initially.

View it full screen for best effect. It must be even more striking to see this projected against a building in person. The small still images above don’t do justice to the visual charm of the animation.

In this case the entire thing is a commercial – an ad for LG, though the actual advertising component is nicely incorporated. If more ads were this dazzling and visually imaginative, I’d seek them out as entertainment.

[Via BoingBoing]

1923 aka Heaven (images above, top five) and 1925 aka Hell (above, bottom 5) are two animated film by Max Hattler that were inspired by two paintings by French outsider artist Augustin Lesage.

The two paintings are both named A symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World, one painted in 1923 (above, middle left) and one in 1925 (middle right).

Hattler’s animation loops are just that, motion and sound, no story, and they repeat phrases and sequences with variations in color and other characteristics. They are exercises in rythym, pattern repetition and recursion. They were created over a five day period with students at the Animation Workshop in Viborg , Denmark.

You can see more of Hattler’s animations on his website; I’ll try to post more about Augustin Lesage in an upcoming post.

[Via DATAISNATURE and MetaFilter]

Illustrator and animator Michael B. Myers has given us his vision of what the characters from the LOST television series would look like if they were designed for an animated series.

As unlikely as that possibility may be (except perhaps in alternate reality timeline limbo) it’s fun to have his nicely stylized treatment of some of the major characters from the series — even the smoke monster. (What, no Juliet?).

You can also find more of Myers’ digital painting, studies, sketches, posters and T-shirt designs on his website and on Behance Network.

I’ve written several times in the past about the wonderful student animation coming out of Gobelins, l’école de l’image (Goeblins School of Communications) in Paris.

It seems that each example I see is another small triumph for hand drawn animation in a world dominated by increasingly formulaic computer CGI.

Writing for On Animation, Daniel Caylor has a terrific article pointing us to both a selection of Gobelins animations that he has previously posted and a post on CATSUKA of Making-of films by various contributors to several Gobelins animations.

There are often several different Making-of films for the same animation, as they are usually the work of groups rather than individuals, and we get different perspectives on the creation of the works. There are also links to the animators’ demo reels.

Absolutely wonderful.

(Images above, top two: Fur, bottom two: Who’s Afraid of Mr. Greedy?; please see films for team credits)