The Shynola session at ACMI the other night was excellent. All four members of the UK animation crew spoke about and screened a collection of music video clips and short films from their student days through to their most recent video for Beck. I had seen most of the clips beforehand, either on rage or online but it was great to see so many, the session went for almost three hours. Audience members were free to ask questions in between the clips which worked well. Questions ranged from the technical, through to how they work together, how they started, and what they’re up to now.
Some highlights:
“what software and hardware do they use?” - I think the person who asked this was expecting to hear about custom written software and render farms but they actually use fairly standard off the shelf software such as Maya, Photoshop, AfterEffects etc, with no special plugins and regular computers.
Looking at their 3d work with this in mind it is interesting to note their use of very simple wireframe graphics and scenes with fairly low polygon counts, which wouldn’t take too long to render. These elements are often treated as layers and mixed together with other imagery to produce a look that is quite different to the stereotypical, clean 3d look. In clips such as Pyramid Song for Radiohead and Eye For An Eye for UNKLE some of the layers have been intentionally compressed with highly lossy compression to produce an almost painterly effect.
“how they work together / how did they start out?” - they met at uni, shared a house and have been working together ever since. They all work on every project and have similar skills in each area.
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