The animated short Jinky Jenkins & Lucky Lou is an adorable little video about two people who were always meant to be together. While there were a lot of folks involved with this one, it is predominately the creation of Michael Bidinger and Michelle Kwon. It has won dozens of awards, including the Best Student Project Prize at the 2014 SIGGRAPH Asia convention, which impressed the heck out of me.
The animated short Roadkill Redemption was created by Karl Hadrika. Or most of it, at least; he did the story, animation, modeling, rigging, compositing, editing, lighting and sound design, but the voice was Lidia Labuda. This one made him a 41st Annual Student Academy Award Finalist, which is fairly impressive for a single person production. He did go on to join Warner Bros, where for the last year he has been on the team creating Bunnicula (yes, about a bunny vampire), which is now airing on the Cartoon Network.
The silly animated short Print Your Guy was quite enjoyable; if you like it, check their web site for all the details.
The SIGGRAPH 2016: Computer Animation Festival is the heart of what comes next for movies, games, and so much more. Watch and be amazed, and remember, no show gets more than 5 or 10 seconds of screen time! I would love to make this gathering in person and see each entire presentation come the 24th through the 28th of July 2016 in Anaheim, California.
Another excellent CG animation, Exode won a dozen awards on the festival circuit, including one from SIGGRAPH last year. The animation was done by Kathleen Cartier, Sandrine Gimenez, Nicolas Mrikhi, Baptiste Roy, and Thomas Saez, with Yuichiro Maeda creating the music. This was another graduation film project from Supinfocom Arles in France.
EXODE from Exode movie on Vimeo.
This is a movie I want to see, from a game I should be playing; it is amazing. Blur Studios, the folks who put this together are heavy into both worlds, with movie special effects credits including Thor: The Dark World and the upcoming Deadpool. In this case, League of Legends happens to be a game, but after watching this video I am ready to plunk my money down on the counter to see the finished production on the big screen. Mind, I was gasping for sympathetic breath 30 seconds into the trailer; I suspect that same 30 seconds might end up being my best time staying alive were I to actually attempt to play.