Here it is, my latest and greatest short film Please Say Something! Winner of the Golden Bear for best short film at the 2009 Berlinale.
*DVD in the works, many extras & other shorts included, drop me a mail for notification. Should be ready next week*

I worked hard to make this free online, so pass it around to everyone you know and if you have a blog, embed it. Embed it several times over! The downside of making it free is that some festivals will no longer value it and certain channels wont buy it, and the only real way of making up for that is to spread it far and wide. Help prove that the web as a distribution model for animation works!

The film is under exclusive distribution by Future Shorts, proudly being the first ever HD film on their channel.

*update: feature on BoingBoing!
*update 2: comments are enabled for the first time on this blog.
*update 3: youtube seems to wash out the colors/subtitles, check the vimeo instead
*update 4: feature on Motionographer

If you live in Ireland, Belgium or France please take my advice and see The Secret of Kells. Take everyone you know. It’s beautiful, charming, touching and intricate as any of the great classics of animation, you have to see it.

This film is of enormous significance to Irish animation, it’s our first ever Animated Feature.

My first job was scanning & painting drawings for this 9 years ago, it might be hard to believe but the main character design was also originally based on me. The studio gave me my first taste of making short films and it’s thanks to artists there like Aidan, Barry, Fabian, Nora, Ross and Tomm that I got into this whole thing in the first place.

The film opens of the 6th of March in Ireland and Belgium and is already playing in France.

I’m obligated to write a post about all this nonsense relating to using compression in video work, I’ve received many messages claiming I’ve been ripped off and asking how to get the effect.

First of all, datamoshing is an extremely lame title for the effect, it’s another attempt at branding a basic technique as something new and edgy, there really is nothing hardcore about removing keyframes from a video file. The title is and always has been using compression artefacts.

While I did what was probably the first intentional transition using compression back in early 2005, I never structured my identity around it or overused it. It was obvious it would eventually hit mainstream and join the ranks of interesting effects which become embarrassing after they’re easy to do (posterize, glow, van-gogh, mosaic etc). My goal aesthetically has always been the more broader aim of simply not hiding the artefacts of software, the same way Bacon didn’t hide paint strokes, that includes compression but about 1000 other things. It’s not a big deal that it’s now mainstream.

The only criticism for some of the recent, popularized versions of the effect is that it’s being stuck on to a normal performance, when the music or content doesn’t remotely call for it. I don’t believe any form of cinema should be about cherry picking new effects, aesthetics should always serve the content.

“When exaggeration is not inherent in the imagery, but is merely an exaggerated attempt to desire and please, it’s a sign of provincialism, of the wish to be noticed as an artist”

- Tarkovsky

Here’s the press release.

The first prize of the 2009 Berlinale just went to my short Please Say Something! It’s crazy, I think what honours me most is that something so small, made on a single computer in my tiny apartment is considered in the context of world cinema, it was side by side with live action films. It’s a big step for me but a even bigger one for independent 3d, it’s an award I share with both Svankmajer and John Lasseter.

I don’t have time to write a full post yet (or rather, I don’t quite know what to say!) but I just wanted to share the news. Thank you to everyone who supported this, and of course to David and Bram for all of the sound and music.

Here’s a little interview I did about it before the award, also on german tv tomorrow morning but I don’t say anything remotely cogent.

but you can finally get the latest Psst! Pass It On project on a special edition DVD, order it now!

As most people in the bidness know, Psst! is a rare project, literally all of the short films are entirely independent and essentially works of love. There simply is no better platform for seeing the state of modern computer animation, it’s very important this kind of thing exists.

This year was bar far the largest one yet, there were over 150 people involved. My team alone included the talented Chris Harding of Shynola and the often-imitated king of the absurd David Shrigley. Order this artifact of history now, there are only 500 copies being made.

Here is that link once again.