Let it be great

An animation range test by Brad Pickford for one of the characters in our up and coming animation series to explore the London Olympics for Foxtel. Also, Finally! A dial for animating characters.

This masterful remake of The Thing mashes together your love of violence with your love of cute Pingu.

For your viewing pleasure. A short documentary about Australia.

Forgot most of a quote you need in a pitch? Find it on QuoteCoil. http://quotecoil.com/

We’ve just found this collection of Sixty40 work that appeared in the IdN Extra Book a while back. Precious memories!
Check it out here.

We are proud to say OITS is a nominee for “Best On Screen” in the Sydney Music, Arts & Culture (SMAC) Awards.

Get over there, see the rest (but vote for the best.)

Sydney, 24 November –Sixty40 has been appointed to create a series of nine TVCs as part of a new brand campaign for FetchTV. FetchTV is an entertainment service that delivers the best of free-to-air and subscription television to viewers via a broadband connection..

Building from storyboarded concepts from the agency The Works, Sixty40 designed and animated the fetchtv dog with personality, confidence, a cool vibe and attitude (but no sunglasses) that reflected the brand values of FetchTV. Sixty40 created a visual style and used subtle animation to bring humour and understated sophistication to the short character based spots. The fetchtv dog showcases some of the features of the service including its easy set-up, pause/rewind live TV and YouTube™ on TV application – encapsulated by the tagline “A new breed of entertainment.”

“We aimed to create a character that embodies the FetchTV brand and creates something instantly entertaining for the viewer. The fetchtv dog is human-like, but primarily he is a dog. We used the animal’s typical characteristics and injected a humorous and edgy persona to create a fresh and relevant ambassador for FetchTV that stayed true to its brand,” said Sixty40 Director Matt Taylor.

Each spot reinforces the key unique selling points of fetchtv: its promise to “never have nothing on” is cheekily communicated with a scene showing the dog just out of the shower and inadvertently dropping his towel. Its YouTube capabilities are shown by the dog watching himself eyebrow dancing on YouTube on his TV.

View the TVC here

“We love that these commercials, designed to appear two per ad break or right after partner retail spots, will be quirky, clever and enigmatic. With their great scripts, execution and extremely subtle sound design (meaning that they are almost silent), they’re bound to stand out. We hope to see more of this character as FetchTV grows,” said Sixty40 Director Mark Simpson.

Credits
Director: Matt Taylor
Co-Director: Mark Simpson
3D Lead: Nick Paroz
Original Concept: The Works
Audio: NoiseLab
Producer: Nicky Marshall
Character Design: Sixty40

Ahhh, classic humour.

Our clip for Africa Hitech on Warp: “Out In The Street” has picked up a couple of awards. But the one we’re super proud of is Best Story in the inaugural Robot Film Festival in New York. We’re just received the custom engraved, laser cut trophy / sculpture in the mail. Thanks RFF.

Here’s the clip in case you missed it.

This is a most excellent film about a little boat. By Nelson Boles. A great example of a lovely concept, executed with the most simplicity and restraint as well as the requisite attention to detail to pull it off. The subtle animation of the characters, including the boat and the grade carries the script to it’s best possible result. Super Awesome.

Spike Jonze: Mourir Auprès de Toi on Nowness.com.

This short film has everything we like: beautiful craft, attention to detail, sadness, funniness and sexy times.

If you like titles, you’ll love seeing 60 good ones in a row. From Twin Peaks to True Blood. Thanks Pajiba.

Great layouts, epic moments. Space Glitch.

More info on her vimeo page.

Previously, we thought Hipster Ipsum was the way of the future. How wrong we were…  Bogan ipsum will keep us As busy as a freckle piece of piss gutful of bush bash.

How awesome is this? We’re currently working with people in the following locations: Tokyo, Paris, Cardiff, London, Auckland,  Wollongong,  Sydney.We don’t even look sleepy (yet).

This guy seems to have grasped a fundamental in awesomeness: take an error and make it a feature. But seriously, the internet is eating this shit up. 500k views in 2 days (spread between his youtube and vimeo streams). Silly walks, convincing comping, the future of attracting eyeballs?

Vote for our music video so we can win and high five strangers in tuxedos on stage!

It’d be best if you rated higher, rather than lower obviously.

You need to sign up but it only takes a second. Tell your friends too!

http://www.ifawards.com/rating/film/africa-hitech-%22out-in-the-streets%22

http://www.gif.tv/

[from boingboing]

Here’s a great video of Matt’s comic book launch last week at China Heights.

Shot by our friend, Shahriar Shadab, we raise our horn to thee.

Matt and longtime Sixty40 partner-in-crime, Scott Collins, took to the stage at the OZ Comics panel and did a riff heavy live performance of Matt’s new book “Lars the Last Viking Goes to the End of the World”. The panel itself was a legion of Australian comic book heavy hitters: Pat Grant (Blue), Mandy Ord (Sensitive Creatures), Leigh Rigozzi (Blood & Thunder), Oslo Davis (Drawn From Life), Matt Taylor and Matt Huynh (Chinatown Comics). Everyone on the panel took it to the next level and Graphic was once again an awesome celebration of everything that rocks about comics and animation.

Photos courtesy of Daniel Boud

The illusion that Cookie Monster is Tom Waits is created by the desire to reduce cognitive dissonance. Thanks Brains.

Sixty40 Press is proud to launch Matt’s new comic book Lars the Last Viking at China Heights Gallery on Thursday 18th August. Pat Grant (author of Blue) will be giving an opening speech and Matt will do a live reading of the book. There will also be all the original pages of the book on display, which  are pretty big and awesome in their own way.

Matt’s also on a panel of Australian Comic book authors at Graphic, at the Opera House that weekend. You can still book tickets to that panel here…

Out of 55 films accepted into the inaugural ”Robot Film Festival” in New York our clip for Africa Hitech wins this major accolade. They describe the award thus:

Best Story: Here we rewarded films with entertaining and intriguing storylines, particularly those which explored original memes for Robotics. Set in the streets of South Africa, Out in the Street raises questions about identity and rising intelligence as malfunctioning robots begin committing suicide to avoid the depersonalizing process of repair or replacement, achieving rapture. The realism of the shots cut between television news footage, street documentation and the eye-views of the robots themselves.

It’s lovely that they recognise some of the awesome that’s going on in that clip (although it’s not set in South Africa). For us though, what makes it particularly AMAZING is that it’s probably pretty unique for a Music Video to win anything for best narrative.

Here’s a list of the other winners: robotfilmfestival.com/films

Thanks RFF. See you next year.

Here’s a lovely insight into how to do magic. There’s definite links here to animation and storytelling generally. Plus the general wonderfulness of seeing something that you’re not quite sure how it was done… which is something we do all the time.

 

And while many critics have argued that they don’t even have a place in the industry anymore, music videos like this one for Africa Hi-Tech’s “Out In The …
franknbeats.com/2011/…/video-africa-hi-tech-out-in-the-street…Impose TV: Africa Hitech, “Out In The Street” | Impose Magazine

The track turns Ini Kamoze into a glitchy broken record, as though Mr. Kamoze is failing miserably. Somehow this repetitious failure triggered director Mark Simpson to invision robots malfunctioning to the beat. Naturally, us humans could give two shits about some emotionless robots and run them over in our SUVs. The future is gonna kick ass…
www.imposemagazine.com/tv/africa-hitech-out-in-the-street

“That’s right, these aren’t douchebag preach-y robots like Wall-E; with physiques like the I, Robot automatons in football gear, these guys are (self-) killing machines. While they may not have hearts or souls or the capacity to express or experience the overwhelming power of human love and kindness, at least Simpson’s robots have their priorities in order and hate those hippie communist/fascists like any responsible citizen does.”

http://www.cmj.com/the-feed/news/2011/06/africa-hitech-releases-video-brimming-with-robot-controversy/

Remember the call out for footage for a clip we were making? Well, the film is finished and released by Warp Records. The Clip was featured on Pitchfork just this morning as an exclusive. Next stop.. all other blogs on the planet. Thanks to all who sent in footage, and even those who thought about it but then forgot. We got a good range from Cuba, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Dubai and you can see it throughout the clip making appearances in news footage and as backgrounds for a variety of dancing and dying robots. Check out the page here.

hey aspiring proto ninjas,

well hope you’ve all been cracking away, and if you haven’t there’s still plenty of time if you get started soon. What am I talking about? The Sixty40 Proto Ninja award of course, see this video to get you up to date

This year’s the is… “The Secret”.

We’ve been given some great tracks for you to use as soundtracks from artists such as Harmonic 313, Kyu, Elephant Tracks’ Joelistics and star Nylon producer, John Green. Get all the info and resources here, and like our facebook page for stirring motivational ninja related updates.

Last year’s winner Guy Verge Wallace has been tearing it up, his last film clip for Papa vs Pretty making it onto Bare Bones Vol 3 and getting shown in festivals all over the world. Go Guy!

That could be you…

Calypso Bin Laden – Cave of Love

Here’s a piece we did for a series we developed called Ringtone Deathmatch. This performance is now even more haunting. You can also see a rare interview with Calypso here

Well the results are in and Sixty40 came out as a finalist alongside Iloura and Mighty Nice in the Animation Category for Australian Creative’s 2010 Hotshop Awards. Check out the full results in the April issue. XYZ took out top honours for Animation, and we are proud to rank amongst such top competition. Congrats to all the other winners and runners up in all the other categories. Great to see so much good work coming out of Australia.

Launching this year’s Proto Ninja award tonight. The site needs to be updated which will happen asap, but in the meantime we will be having a screening of the latest clip from last year’s winner, The talented Guy Verge Wallace, up at the World Bar. Please stay tuned here for this year’s Proto Ninja Comp details which is shaping up to be a cracker.

BTW this year’s theme is “The Secret”, tell everyone…

If you’re in LA, get in contact with us because we’re putting on the inaugural Rocketcar Day LA. It’s on on the 10 th of April.
Email us at hello@rocketcarday.com too suggest a location or book yourself in to race a car.

Rocketcar Day has become an institution in Sydney after 12 different events spread over 10  years. While in Los Angeles I’ll be putting on the first ever Rocketcar Day LA. We’re looking for participants and a venue right now. For more info, go to http://rcdla.rocketcarday.com/

All the greatest hits from recent months rolled into one hype montage; tell your friends and check it out here

We’re proud to release a special edition piece of concept art for your body. It’s a Red-Blue Anaglyph image of a squirrel bursting out of your chest and it comes with free Red-Blue glasses so you can blow minds!

The image is of a squirrel, bursting out of the chest of the wearer. The squirrel is clutching a wad of cash and smoking a cigar. He’s wearing a t-shirt that says “Let It Be Great” and holding his hand up in triumph.  He also is wearing a pair of red-blue 3d glasses.

It is a celebration of the role of character illustration in advertising and a nod to the current obsession we all have with 3d technology. For the most part, people on the street won’t have a pair of glasses obviously, so thankfully it looks sweet without them too.

Go buy one here:

Last year’s winner Guy Verge Wallace just finished this great film clip for Papa vs Pretty, which he worked on the post here in Sixty40 Studio. And he got a great wrap up on Motionographer. Congrats Guy and read about it here…
http://motionographer.com/2011/02/03/joining-the-new-wave-guy-verge-

Youtube  houses some great 3D technology that allows us to upload this lovely slow-mo video of a ninja getting attacked by paper. Directed by Phil Young, shot as an experiment by Sixty40. You may wish to go to youtube and put on your red-cyan glasses to fully become part of the future.

This site explores what happens when you get the eyes wrong.

muppetswithpeopleeyes.tumblr.com

Well as part of his “40″, Matt has just gotten back from a 3 week graphic novel residency in Florida at the Atlantic Centre for the Arts, where he and 24 other artists drew alongside Paul Pope, Craig Thompson and Svetlana Chmakova. Needless to say it was awesome. You can read all about it and get progress reports on his zombie and viking comics here at his blog.

You really should check this great wrap up of the 33 animated shorts nominated for the oscars this year. This is massive and there is a really amazing range. Great to see peeps like Don Hertzfeldt, Joanna Lurie and Beomsik Shimbe Shim getting in there. And especially great to see two Australian directors in there, Shaun Tan and Chris Kezelos. Onya boys, represent. And besides,you should also be reading Cartoon Brew regularly. They know where it’s at.

Introducing the answer to and evolution of Movember: Reduce your grooming needs by over 75%. Grow a beard with NO Moustache. It’s for NO cause whatsoever.

Post Your Pics and join the FB Group

It’s great to see people taking full advantage of the technology at their disposal. Empowering themselves and articulating to a mass audience. Bravo internet.

Sixty40 directed the winning pitch for the show The Gruen Transfer. With our friends at M&C Saatchi distracted with radiating glory, we hooked up with the trophy the next afternoon and took it on a wild rollercoaster of love. Congratulations to everyone involved in the spot which planned to bring Australia and New Zealand together at last:  ”Australandzealandland“

It was Guy Verge Wallace with his mind-blowing stop-motion epic: Underdog: Dangerforce 6.

The winner was announced at the opening night of the Sydney International Animation Festival (SIAF) at the University of Technology Sydney, on Friday 25th of September. More than 21 entries of consistently high quality, far exceeding expectations, were received from across Australia including SA, QLD, NSW and TAS.

Further information at sixty40.com/​protoninja.

In the 2010 Create:Awards. Losing out only to the esteemed film version of “The Lost Thing”  by Sean Tan. Our stop motion wonders for TV1 continue to rake in glory.

To celebrate our 10th birthday, we bought an ad spot during classic daytime viewing show “Dr. Phil”. The spot aired to the 27000 viewers of Dr. Phil on Friday the 3rd of September on Channel 10. The 15 second commercial was basically a series of  nested pull outs from a television of various characters and real people sitting in a lounge room, watching each other on TV and saying “Yaaay”:

We held a small party so people would be able to  see the spot sitting in the same lounge room that all the characters were sitting in watching each other.

After waiting on tender hooks, eating party pies and drinking champagne we were rewarded with the oddest TV viewing experience ever. We filmed the event and continued the nested pull out in-camera, creating the ultimate Droste Effect.

We’d like to thank everyone who chipped in to create this commercial (Scott Collins from Plush/Noiselab, Evan Newby, Dean, everyone at Sixty40) and also to Channel 10 and Free TV who didn’t blink an eye when we insinuated what we wanted to do (though they mightn’t have really grasped the full wonder of it).

Here’s the spot on its own:

As some of you may know, Sixty40 has now been around for 10 amazing years of work. Amidst the many things we’re doing to celebrate is buying some ad time to put some art on TV during Dr. Phil. It’ll be screening between 12:15 and 12:20 this Friday the 3rd of September. Be sure to tune in to Channel 10 for a very brief bit of wonder.

We are very proud to announce that amongst Sydney’s Design Heavyweights, Sixty40 has reigned supreme in the sold out Iron Designer contest held as part of Sydney Design Week. Against massive competition from Frost Design, Digital Eskimo our supreme ability to create magic out of nothing shone through.

From the beginning, we knew what would win in this performance focused situation would be any of the 8 steps of any creative development: evaluate the environment, listen to the brief, add humour, add heart, add sex, add robots, add puppies and let it be great,” said Sixty40′s Mark Simpson.

Image and quote from Campaign Brief.

For more coverage, check out IndesignLive

We’ve got two projects competing against each other in the Australian Effects and Animation Festival awards for Title Idents and Stings… whoops. Good luck TV1 and Foxtel. Find out more here.

By now you’ve all scoped the new site and watched the new reel and you’re scratching your heads wondering who did that tight Rick Ross remix. It comes courtesy of Seattle’s own Prince of Ballard and you can find more of his fresh blends and edits here…

Tickets to the event can be booked online here. Tickets are $30 each or $26 each for bookings of 8+

Sixty40 brings in an Gold International Promax for our TV1 Summer campaign. Check out all the spots here.

If that wasn’t enough, we then bring in 3 Silver International Promax’s for our Foxtel Winter Games spots. Check out those spots here.

We’re very thankful to our clients for bringing us in on such awesome briefs. Both of those jobs were treated very much like a series of short films from script to concept to execution so we’re very glad to see them do so well out in the harsh light of broadcast.

Sixty40 were asked to be one of 10 curators who choose 10 creative movers and shakers to be saluted at the 10X10 project for Creative Sydney. We were amidst a big spread of creative superdudes including Margaret Pomeranz, Rob Hirst from Midnight Oil and the founders of Sass & Bide.

Here’s who we selected and why:

• Ash Boland from Umeric. Ash is a 3d design super ninja, whose beautiful, abstract and organic animations are receiving attention both here and at home. Starting to bust out big moves on the world stage, Ash, as a director, has a strong unique vision and is one-to-watch.
• Benja Harney. Self taught and dedicated to the art of high-end pop-up books and paper engineering, through his company, Paperform, Harney has been bringing his creations to the world of advertising, fashion, illustration, invitations and fine art.
• Mini Graff. Mini Graff is continually refining her position as both a street and traditional artist, doing residencies at such old-timey places as Megalo while continually making the streets of Sydney more interesting.
• Joseph Allen Shea. Joseph Allen Shea is the backbone of several creative communities. Shea is a curator at Monster Children Gallery in Darlinghurst, a fine illustrator himself and the producer of ongoing excellent book work and more under the izrock title.
• Rob Barton and The Commons. Landscape designer and restaurateur, Bob, and the hard working crew at the Commons are bringing a much needed slice of Melbourne to the Sydney Bar Scene.
• Renny Kodgers. Performance artist, Burlesque compere, radio game show host to name just a few of his talents, he is part man, part amazing.
• Chris Wu. Chris’ record label and promotions company is bringing all the latest indie sounds to a range of new venues, with a cult following ever growing in his wake.
• Billy Goat and The Mongrels. Billy Goat and the Mongrels are a balls-out romp into a deranged musical forest where you’re not sure if anyone will ever get out. They’re as heartfelt as they are troubled and for this reason are unsung wunderkinds who Sydney should be proud of.
• Pia Van Gelder. Pia is an artist and curator of Serial Space and manages the Sydney chapter of “Dorkbot” = Mover + Shaker
• Doug Bayne. Doug is one of the unsung heros of the animation and special effects in Sydney. Consistently making hilarious and polished work. There’s a lot to love.

Find out more about who chose what and why here

We’ve been all over the festival this year, apart from being selected to be 10X10 curators, Mark and Matt appeared in the promotional material for the Vivid Sydney.

Oh, and here’s a photo of Mark at the festival in 3D.

Photo by Alex Fry and Jamie Nimmo. Check out more here.

Matt and Mark appear as hot models in the promo shots for Creative Sydney this year where Sixty40 represents the face of “Ideas”. Apparently: Not only are we creative but we are beautiful as all get out.

If you’re a creative, you should get along to this excellent event based in and around the city.

Find out more about the festival here.

No, that’s us in the back. For the Zimmermann parade at Sydney Fashion Week we helped extend the catwalk into an infinite illuminated hall. The LED screen at the back was aligned to create a trompe l’oeil for the (many) cameras at the end.