Best Of 2012: Animations That Will Rock Your World

It’s been a vintage year for animations, there’s been some incredible stuff surfacing online and chances are you probably caught some of it. But not everyone can spend all their time watching videos online, not when you’ve got other stuff to do, like update Facebook.

So in case you did miss out on some of the gems from the year, we’ve collated a few of them together in the list below. Some of our faves all in one handy place so when you feel like slacking off from the day job, you can catch up on some fine animation.

Best Use Of Psychedelic Neon Unicorns: Fancy Mike – "Miami Vice" by animator Alexandre Louvenaz

You can’t make a video for a track called “Miami Vice” without putting lots of neon in it—that’s just an unwritten rule. And so

Alexandre Louvenaz

does, with an added touch of psychedelia, along with some palm trees, a sports car, unicorns, demons, and a bear shooting fire out its mouth.

Best Use Of Mythical Japanese Snow Spirit As Vengeful Seagull: The Carp and the Seagull by Evan Boehm

Evan Boehm

’s haunting interactive film takes place in two worlds, as you follow a fisherman whose life takes a turn for the doomed after he messes with a seagull who turns out to be a Yuki-onna—a snow spirit—who takes him on a journey into strange dimensions. The user gets to explore the spaces and the dualistic worlds the action takes place in, augmented by a score

from Plaid

.

Best Use Of Rainbows As Visual Representations Of Music: IV.10 by Beeple

Set in an environment reminiscent of

Super Mario World

Beeple

’s video takes the concept of giving sound a visual equivalent to the next level. Everything that happens musically is represented by a different component of the video, as Beeple explains: “The video and audio are meant to have a one to one correlation so that you can see every note of what happens in a piece of music.”

Best Realisation Of McLaren P1 Concept Car As Long Exposure Photography, Light Painting Animation: Marshmallow Laser Feast

Virtual and physical get fused together so much that you can’t tell the difference in this piece that uses wind tunnel data to create shards of light that fizzle through the air in a range of colors to reveal the outline of a car. 720,000 frames were used to create the animation and each second was filmed as a long exposure photograph so it looked like trails of light.

Best Use Of A World In Turmoil To Create A Generative Non-Linear Film: FIELD – Energy Flow

FIELD’s unique film, which is also available as an app for

iOS

and

Android

, explores the tensions that exist in our world through different themes like gravity, riots, chance, and infinity to create what they call “digital paintings in motion”.

FIELD

were inspired to make the work after the tumultuous year of 2011 that saw major events impact the world—they turned these real life events into a beautifully rendered experimental film that gives users a different experience every time they watch it.

@CreatorsProject