Dark animation
There is a fantastic collection of Russian Flash animation at KOMS.ru (English site), most of which tends to the morbid and the surreal. It is the work of a collective of artists, many of whom have their own websites full of great work.
Scary Dolls is one of those sites. For a quick intro to his style, try Smiley Fairy (created for the Ten Sec Film Fest). Lots to watch under "Cartoons", plus other features, like a gallery of, well, some rather scary ragdolls. The site is in both Russian and English. (The movies are mostly Russian only, but often subtitled where dialog is essential.)
FarUnder is another nice one. I would recommend Candy Venery and The Boatman's Call Remix.
Kollaps.ru is the site of artist Kol Belov. He's created an impressive number of Flash movies with a distinctive vision -- highly stylized, surreal, and quite grim.
That's it for the KOMS.ru crowd. Now some other stuff:
Childrin R Skary explores the premise that children are scary. Their main feature is the very Burton-esque The Little Girl Who Was Forgotten By Absolutely Everyone (Even The Postman).
Bitey Castle has some good animation, including Bingbong of Brackenwood, about a boy who doesn't heed the warnings about the Faery Folk, and Taken, about an alien invasion. The site has a nice flash interface, too.
Now some series:
Strindberg and Helium is a classic. The adventures of a melancholic writer and his hallucinatory demon friend.
Making Fiends is beautiful and brilliant. Vendetta, a dark, sadistic little girl who brews monsters at home and terrorizes her school, meets her match in the unrelenting friendliness and cheer of new girl Charlotte, who is determined to be her pal. Whimsical animation and great humor.
Finally, some single films:
The Cat With Hands is an incredibly creepy short film. A mix of live action and very well-done claymation.
The Periwig-Maker, on AtomFilms, has long been one of my favorite animated shorts. A wig-maker makes do during a London plague. (For the record, whoever described it as "medieval plague-infested London" is disgustingly ill-informed -- this is surely closer to the 17th or 18th century. Some people apparently use "medieval" as a synonym for "before electricity.") The claymation is simply gorgeous, and the story is sweet and, like everything else in today's post, quite eerie.
Scary Dolls is one of those sites. For a quick intro to his style, try Smiley Fairy (created for the Ten Sec Film Fest). Lots to watch under "Cartoons", plus other features, like a gallery of, well, some rather scary ragdolls. The site is in both Russian and English. (The movies are mostly Russian only, but often subtitled where dialog is essential.)
FarUnder is another nice one. I would recommend Candy Venery and The Boatman's Call Remix.
Kollaps.ru is the site of artist Kol Belov. He's created an impressive number of Flash movies with a distinctive vision -- highly stylized, surreal, and quite grim.
That's it for the KOMS.ru crowd. Now some other stuff:
Childrin R Skary explores the premise that children are scary. Their main feature is the very Burton-esque The Little Girl Who Was Forgotten By Absolutely Everyone (Even The Postman).
Bitey Castle has some good animation, including Bingbong of Brackenwood, about a boy who doesn't heed the warnings about the Faery Folk, and Taken, about an alien invasion. The site has a nice flash interface, too.
Now some series:
Strindberg and Helium is a classic. The adventures of a melancholic writer and his hallucinatory demon friend.
Making Fiends is beautiful and brilliant. Vendetta, a dark, sadistic little girl who brews monsters at home and terrorizes her school, meets her match in the unrelenting friendliness and cheer of new girl Charlotte, who is determined to be her pal. Whimsical animation and great humor.
Finally, some single films:
The Cat With Hands is an incredibly creepy short film. A mix of live action and very well-done claymation.
The Periwig-Maker, on AtomFilms, has long been one of my favorite animated shorts. A wig-maker makes do during a London plague. (For the record, whoever described it as "medieval plague-infested London" is disgustingly ill-informed -- this is surely closer to the 17th or 18th century. Some people apparently use "medieval" as a synonym for "before electricity.") The claymation is simply gorgeous, and the story is sweet and, like everything else in today's post, quite eerie.
brewed by Jess Haskins at 02:37
9 Comments:
The Periwig-Maker was wonderful!--the perfect Sunday morning treat. I love claymation, you know.
Featured sites on this blog keep reminding me of people. Does Anya read your blog? A lot of your featured short films make me think of her, especially the colors one, which seemed to be a digital imitation of her style of animation in Hamlet and the Girl with No Name. I think I'll have to plug your blog in my blog again, if you don't object.
By the way...what program do you use to alter images? I keep trying to figure out how to resize images without paying for software, but none of the free ones seem to do it.
Absolutely not -- you think I want anyone to read this rag? :p Sure, thanks.
For complicated stuff, I use Paint Shop Pro, which I bought, but to just resize images I mostly use Irfanview. Remember, that nice, compact, free, useful little program I installed on your computer for you?
http://www.irfanview.com/
Oh, yeah! I've just now installed it on my new laptop.
Great collection of links. Thanks for sharing it :)
PS.: Scary Dolls is redundant... dolls are always scary.
Good point.
Hi there!
I found my way here thanks to the adorable Bibi.
Nice collection of links, my dear. I hope you don't mind if I add some to complete your list:
- Angry Alien Productions
- Happy Tree Friends
- Hooger Brugge
- Fat Pie (check out the Mr Salad Finger episodes!)
- I Hate London Underground
- Ill Will Press
- Jojo in the Stars
- Lenore Flash Toons
- The Freak Show in my Pocket
I hope you enjoyed at least some of them. :)
Love & monkey brains,
- S.
I especially like Hooger Brugge, Ill Will Press, and Lenore. I was just about to comment that those last two reminded me quite a bit of Invader Zim, when I saw that Lenore was by Roman Dirge, who worked on Zim -- neat!
Thanks for sharing the links!
You're most welcome! <3
We should do this again one fine day. :)
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