The recent winner of a Student Academy Award in the animation category, Nashville native Bevin Carnes' charming CG short "A Leg Up" combines the narrative poignancy of Pixar with the adorable qualities of an old Disney classic. The film follows a cute robot, whose leg takes on a mind of its own, but the movie takes on greater themes of conformity and individuality.

Recently graduated from the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, Carnes chose to make "A Leg Up" after her Ringling thesis project, because she felt she could tell a more compelling story.

Using such software as Maya, RenderMan, Photoshop, Shake and Premiere, Carnes has said that the biggest challenge of the film wasn't the top-notch-looking computer animation, but telling the story in two minutes. "It's hard to even get a story to make sense in a film that is two minutes or less, much less try to say something meaningful with that story," she told Animation Magazine. "Also having a lot of characters was a big challenge technically. To all you students out there, I'm sure you've heard it before, but don't have six characters in your thesis!"

Carnes is currently working as an apprentice at Rhythm and Hues Studios in Los Angeles (responsible for visual effects on The Chronicles of Narnia and The Golden Compass) and hopes to make her own feature films some day. She is also interested in gaming, and "how games might merge with film someday," she said. "I think there is tremendous potential in interactivity as far as conveying emotion, and I think that someday gaming could become a high art form that could explore a broad range of meaningful topics, just as film does today."

For more Carnes, check out her website: http://www.bevincarnes.com

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Meet the dark side of Pixar: Two years in the making, Guy Bar'ely's Pratt Institute CG thesis film was inspired by living in the mean, sometimes unforgiving streets of Brooklyn. "I've always been fascinated by the homeless," he says. "These outcasts of society, seen on the subway and in the streets of New York, seemed like they had very sad stories to tell. But no one was interested in hearing them."

Tired of the lack of disturbing subject matter in popular computer generated animation, Bar'ely says "the time was right to finally break out from these conventions." He calls "Cycle" -- the exquisitely rendered story of a homeless man, his daughter, and the subway -- "a cartoon tragedy."

Bar'ely cites influences such as Dark Days, a documentary about the lives of people living under the city in abandoned subway tunnels, and stylistically, he cites computer game designer Tim Schaffer ("Day of the Tentacle"), Tim Burton, and Pixar (specifically Brad Bird). And for helping him through the difficult times of artistic creation ("had to take Prozac at some point to fight off the anxiety attacks," he admits), he says he couldn't have made the film without the support of his friends and family.

You can see more of Bar'ely's work at www.guybarely.com.

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One day, Barcelona-based Swedish filmmaker Erik Eliason received a 38 pistol, designed to fire SOS-rockets from boats, and a box of 9mm blanks. The weapon made him curious about the mixing of real gunfire and smoke with rotoscoped actions. "Would the effect be as cool as I thought?" We thought so.

This slick, hallucinogenic short featuring angry figure-drawings, bloody gunshots, and a hip soundtrack came together after Eliason played around with After Effects and Photoshop. "I had ideas I was burning to realize before I got my first computer," says the self-taught filmmaker. "Most of my tech-knowledge is earned by self-studying softwares and finding solutions to mirror my ideas."

But what does it all mean? "Enjoy the visual trip," he says. read more >>

Created for the Drug Policy Alliance by Brooklyn-based artist Haik Hoisington, this brilliant and satirical faux ad-spot highlights the wonders of a fictitious drug called Incarcarex. Aimed at politicians who favor imprisoning drug-users instead of a more comprehensive and constructive drug policy, the mock-commercial suggests, "Talk to your spin-doctor about Incarerex," says the voice-over, sounding like an ad for Viagara. "It's simplistic and fast-acting."

Drug Policy Alliance's Jeanette Irwin admits, "We definitely chose to do something a little risky." The organization sought out Hoisington after seeing a stick-figure animation he did skewering New York's harsh Rockefeller Drug Laws, and then worked with him on the concept and the script. While the Alliance welcomed Hoisington's elegant graphics and skillful design sense, Irwin admits there was some resistance to the project, she says, "but we knew this viral video wouldn't work unless we had something edgy."

After shout-outs from Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish blog at The Atlantic Monthly and Reason Magazine, the video has received more than 50,000 views on YouTube, and favorited more than 250 times. For more of Hoisington's sharp, socially-conscious animations, you can check out his website: http://www.blackmustache.com/.

And if you're a politician and decide to take Incarcarex, remember "common side effects include the loss of civil liberties, police corruption, racial injustice, increased terrorism, spread of HIV, AIDs and crime. Do not mix Incarcarex with the Constitution or common sense."

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In this CG animated gem, war comes to a fictional land. As opposing armies ready for battle, two reluctant soldiers on either side -- little Mortimer and nerdy Bracket -- eventually find themselves on the front-lines facing the blasting guns and flying dinosaurs of their enemies. Since hitting the web last weekend, Andrew Chesworth's senior thesis project at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design has exploded, receiving links and admirers from animation and art sites across the world.

Begun in September 2005, Chesworth just finished the project in May of this year. Inspired by Pixar directors Brad Bird, Andrew Stanton, and John Lasseter, Chesworth also cites such Hollywood live-action inspirations as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Sam Raimi, and Robert Zemeckis. "The film Roger Rabbit' was a huge inspiration to me as a five-year-old kid," he says. "'Toy Story' was a big event for me," he adds, "and I knew that somehow or another I wanted to align myself with the people who did that. It was so mind-blowing!" Chesworth hopes that some of his filmmaking heroes might catch his film on the Internet. And with its detailed character work and imaginative universe, they won't be disappointed.

After graduating in May, Chesworth is continuing to work on his own animation projects and has a full-time job at Make LLC, a Minneapolis-based visual effects and animation studio. This film was created using Maya 7.0, After Effects 7.0, Photoshop CS, and Illustrator CS.

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"Twins are weird." That's the name of the MySpace home of 24-year-old animators Joy and Noelle Vaccese, Long Island-born sisters whose first collaboration is an inspired, weirdo spin on coming-of-age high-school shorts. A cross between Tim Burton and Bill Plympton, "Scritch Scratch" took about a year to make with 500 individual drawings, each one inked and scanned into a computer and then colored in Photoshop. For the first eight months, they actually worked in a completely different style, but then started anew taking inspiration from their favorite animators, including Plympton, Don Hertzfeldt, Patrick Smith, Jamie Hewlett, and Ralph Steadman. "What all these filmmakers and illustrators have in common is that their work can be very dark, raw and funny," the pair told TDR. "They are sometimes distorted and strange, but beautiful at the same time."

Since June 2, the film has been seen over 81,000 times on the duo's MySpace page, according to Vidmeter, helped by hundreds of links from fans. The pair recently graduated from the Pratt Institute's animation department and are currently in pre-production on a new short, "though we're just sketching out ideas for right now," they admit. "We're getting a lot of requests to bring these characters back, but we're still not sure where we're gonna go yet."

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One of The Daily Reel's favorite avant-garde filmmakers, Alex Itin, is at it again with this dizzying mashed-up tribute to famed director Orson Welles ("Citizen Kane") and Herman Melville's classic novel "Moby Dick." As Itin's animated illustrations tell a twisted version of the famous whale tale, literally upon the pages of the book -- along with layers upon layers of Led Zeppelin and other running-themes -- Welles narrates the Melville story, along with his love for champagne.

Itin calls the video "by far the best thing I've done for free" and "a key to all my themes and schemes," he adds. In true Web 2.0 fashion, Itin built the soundtrack from searching "moby dick" on YouTube. He was looking for clips from John Huston's 1956 film version of "Moby Dick," which features Welles in the role of a preacher. "I couldn't find the preacher," writes Itin, "but did find tons of Led Zep and drummers doing Bonzo and a little Orson reading from the novel for a failed Italian T.V. film... makes for a nice Melville in the end."

For more Itin, see our profile.

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Produced by New York-based Curious Pictures, Ferrets For Freedom attacks Rudy Giuliani's policies and principles, pointing out that before 9/11 Giuliani was seen as a semi-fascist sometimes cross-dressing tyrant with a serious beef against exotic domesticated mammals. But whereas God takes a passive-aggressive approach, these ferrets speak directly to the camera.

After asking over 30 New Yorkers what they really thought about the former mayor -- in regards to both ferret and non-ferret-related issues -- director Joao Amorim worked with an editor to create a few cohesive clips that were then animated by an extensive team of professionals. "Conceptually, the idea was to create a short that was political, funny and effective as a protest piece," says Amorim. "Animation is a great tool to get young people into politics." Hopefully, Ferrets will also inspire more creatives to start using their talents in the political realm.

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Made by Stevo Payne and John Godwin, digital animation students at Hertfordshire University outside of London, this slick, "Tenacious D"-inspired computer-generated thesis film recently won the Best Character Animation and Audience Awards at the school's Digital Animation Film Day. Using 3D Studio Max, the crew began working on their rock battle last year and chronicling their progress on the web since November 2006. Added to YouTube only Monday, the video has yet to blast off, but we at The Daily Reel are happy to have discovered them early.

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Twenty-three-year-old twin brothers Brian and Nick Whitmire both work as animators for high-end visual effects and animation houses in Los Angeles, TigarHare and Blur Studios. Their day jobs proved invaluable to the making of "Evasion," a slick and thrilling, CG sci-fi 1-minute short, which follows a group of fleeing figures trying to escape from some nasty, little dog-shaped robots. "There was no budget, just our spare time and the kindness of TigarHare to let us use their render farm," says Nick, who says the project took about six months to complete from storyboards to final version, using apps 3ds Max and Vray for lighting. Check out more at www.brian-whitmire.com and www.nickwhitmire.com.

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