Platforms / Shorts
We pretty much started out as filmmakers, graduating from colleges such as the National Film & Television School and the Royal College of Art. So we have a vested interest in producing new animated shorts as long as we live – it's fascinating, hard work, infuriating and yet totally worthwhile. Our films have been screened all over the glove, from Estonia to Japan, Korea to the USA and back again. And we've picked up a larder full of awards, including the cumbersomely titled 'Most Creative Use of New Technology' at the British Animation Awards, the 'Grand Prize' at Pisaf, the 'Canal + Award for Best Short Film' at Creteil, the 'Audience Choice' at the Melbourne Animation Festival, a 'Special Mention' at Prix Ars Electronica and at Dresden…
Enjoy the films below, and keep an eye out for our new film, due for completion sometime in 2010 called 'Rest In Pieces'.
Matthias Hoegg's brand new film 'Thursday' is stylistically fascinating, full of digitally-inspired patterns and geometric compositions. It tells the story of what will happen on a random Thursday in the near future, when two people finally get together on a lift to space… Here we present the Trailer, as the full film will be touring [...]
New director Leo Bridle created this masterpiece of stop-frame animation with fellow graduate Ben Thomas. Made almost entirely from paper and using a steady-handed cut-out technique, the film traces the journey of a solitary man seeking his partner through his thoughts. Selected for the British Animation Awards 2010, the London Film Festival, Stuttgart and Anima [...]
Drops morph into various aquatic lifeforms on their way through the watercycle in this elegaic hand-drawn animation by Matthias Hoegg. The film was awarded 1st Place for Screen-based Design at the Norwegian Association for Visual Communication, 'Grafill', in 2006.
Leigh Hodgkinson's dark, atmospheric and texturous puppet animation 'Stalk' was created for the Pulse Scheme. Deftly weaving model animation of the director's favourite and well-loved childhood bunny (who gratiously had her stuffing replaced by armature for the shoot…) with composited photographs and delicate lighting and smoke effects, the film plays out like a modern urban [...]
Matthias Hoegg's elegant, subtle and poetic short 'August' drops us in a caravan park where ants busy themselves beneath boozed-up sun-worshippers and reddened hedonists. The two worlds reflect one another as all the while the summertime passes slowly. Hoegg's stylistic use of 2D and 3D design, his strong, structured framing, and sumptuous colouring, add up [...]
Here is an immensely exciting sneak preview of the new short in development at Beakus. It's being designed and directed by Steve Smith and takes our 3D visualisation on to another plane. The stylistic, dark and yet humorous film follows the breakdown of a family in the far-reaches of the windswept Norfolk countryside. With ambition [...]
Joe and Mary live in a fish & chip shop on the south coast. When Mary falls unexpectedly pregnant on a stormy night, Joe thinks their may be something fishy going on with Him upstairs… This is Steve Smith's funny and intelligent 3-minute hand-drawn film commissioned for Channel 4 through it's AIR scheme. It was [...]
Beakus director Steve Smith was commissioned to make a 1-minute short for MTV's 'Load' mobile platform. 'Leap of Faith' follows the perils of being a box-headed robot in a post-apocalyptic cityscape.. Made entirely in 3D it features music accompaniement by Julian Wilson, and was actually used by BAFTA as an example of how to make [...]
Leigh Hodgkinson's humorous short for the Channel 4 AIR scheme features a little girl and her pet cow who, desperate to get her attention, jumps over the moon… well… almost. Harangued by an incensed bee (voiced by Little Britain's Matt Lucas) who has been taken for the ride, the cow starts eating all the stars [...]
This Depict! prize-winning film by Leigh Hodgkinson takes a look at butterfly speed dating… With only a short time to live, they'd better find a date – pronto!
Director: Leigh Hodgkinson
Producer: Leigh Hodgkinson for Skillset
Commission: Skillset, UWN
Fantastic director Richard Fenwick's film 'Albert's Speech' needed bespoke sequences of animation to sit in with the live-action narrative about a guy unable to deliver a bestman's speech.. Beakus director Steve Smith provided the titles sequence and subsequent rabbit carnage, all taking place in Albert's summery escapist imagination.
Director: Steve Smith
Producer: Richard Barnett for Trunk
Commission: onedotzero [...]
Made in just 2 weeks at the Royal College of Art, we thought this is worth a look for it's inventive technique whereby facial animation is added to a live-action figure. The clip is based on an interview provided by the Imperial War Museum, London, in which Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein remembers her first encounter [...]
Matthias Hoegg's graduation film from Kingston University is an elegant and atmospheric nocturnal encounter between garden wildlife and a biology book. It was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award and plugged in Aardman's Talent Showcase 2006.
A fascinating insight in to the techniques involved with creating 'Train Of Thought', Leo Bridle & Ben Thomas's latest film, made entirely in paper…
Director: Leo Bridle & Ben Thomas
Commission: Arts University College Bournemouth
Music: Portico Quartet
Starring: Napoleon Ryan & Marie Thomas Galvin
