“The Last Train” is a collaborative project from the staff and students at the Irish School of Animation at the Ballyfermot College of Further Education and Trinity College’s Graphics Visual and Visualisation Group, as well as the new studioGiant Creative, founded by recent Ballyfermot grads. The film was assembled over a three month period with support from the Irish Film Board’s Animation Hub program.

Studio aka CD Philip Hunt: “Grant was looking to do a quick project as a break from a large, ever more complicated script he was working on, and had always loved this one-paragraph account of a city dweller’s casual encounter with a chicken. Ultimately this new ‘small, quick project’ ended up taking two years to make during studio downtime. Grant also decided the story would be three times better if we made it three times in three different ways!”

“A Morning Stroll” will premiere at ANNECY 2011 then hit the festival circuit.

Watch the trailer her

Bitteschön.tv humbly describes itself as “a studio in Berlin, Germany, that likes to illustrate and animate the world.” True, but as the execution of these two shorts by director/animator Alexander Gellner demonstrates, they view the world in their own unhinged and unhindered way.

Watch “One Minute Puberty” and “Maniman”

http://www.bitteschoen.tv/

Brooklyn motion-man John Earle extrudes five original illustrations by comic legend Michael Allred into this full minute action/fashion/crime thriller for MAC Cosmetics’ new line of Wonder Woman inspired cosmetics. Original score by Beta Petrol.

Direction, Design, Animation, & Compositing: John Earle, Original Illustrations: Michael Allred, Art Director: Loann Lam for MAC Cosmetics, Producers: Cindy Carrandi for MAC Cosmetics; Julian Duff for Beta Petrol, Music & Sound Design: Nathan Ehrenfeld for Beta Petrol

Watch on Vimeo

Chris at Blac Ionica just sent us this tasty trailer for the launch of a new site called Sneakerpedia which the the Shoreditch studio directed, produced and scored. “The Sneakers were shot in isolation as stills and then remodeled in CGI and the location and boxes were entirely fabricated in LightWave. The Grading and compositing was done in After Effects and Colour Finesse.”

Agency: SapientNitro

Watch “Sneakerpedia”

Some very nice moments in this launch trailer for Under Siege, the new real-time strategy game from Seed Studios exclusive to PlayStation Network. Directed and animated at Axis Animation in Glasgow.

Developer: Seed Studios, Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment, Directors: Wiek Luijken, Dana Dorian

Watch “Under Siege”

Director Kris Mercado and the 1stAveMachine team seamlessly mix live action drinks and a little CG dude into a convincing and charming spot for a Tassimo countertop beverage maker.

Agency: BEING, production/VFX: 1st Ave Machine, grade and finish: Smoke and Mirrors

Watch Tassimo “Brewbot Beats”

The last of three Nissan Juke spots by MassMarket thru TBWA\Toronto continues the tongue-in-cheek vibe to help skirt restrictions by Advertising Standards Canada, which forbids depictions of unsafe driving on TV unless it is clearly fake.

Watch Nissan Juke “Trophy”

Lots of beautiful rendering and engaging camera work in this latest Red Bull racing clip from Munich studio AixSponza who say they switched from using matte paintings to VRay Instances for the 3D forests in the opening fly over.

Watch “Red Bull Racing Comes to South Korea”