Genevieve Gauckler: Pretty Cool People interviews

Playmobil Pop! a new video from Joy Division animator

D.O. Roth, the German video director who brought Joy Division back to life in a Playmobil animation, earning more than 600,000 YouTube viewers, has struck again. Last year, the internet came alive with talk of the legendary band’s 1979 TV performance of Transmission being performed by the toy figures. Read more

Bradley Manning Had Secrets

The story of Bradley Manning, not as a Wikileaks ’hacktivist’, but as a young American soldier simultaneously going through a crisis-of-conscious and a crisis-of-gender-identity. Using Adrian Lamo’s chat logs of instant messenger conversations he had with Bradley, the film explores issues of personal and political secrets, digital identity and alienation. The film was made for Animate Projects Digitalis Commissions, supported by Jerwood Charitable Foundation.

Address is Approximate: a Google Street View stop motion

Here’s a clever, feel-good little animation made largely with Google Street View. It tells the story of a lonely desk toy who finds escape via a luminous desktop computer.

Maths explains the origin of superhero characters

I love the colours and simple reasoning in this clever series by Scottish illustrator Matt Cowen, which uses basic maths equations to explain how certain pop culture icons came to be. Read more

Star Wars Uncut: a fully crowdsourced version of Episode IV

The project of creative technologist, Casey Pugh, this full length version of the George Lucas masterpiece was created from multiple 15 second segments recreated from the original movie and submitted by thousands of Star Wars fans, which were then spliced together by editor Aaron Valdez to form the final product. Genius, as both a commentary on contemporary pop culture trends (there are references to LEGO, stop motion, memes and the like) and on the power of tapping your audience for quality material.

Filmmaker creates LEGO stop motion to propose to girlfriend

Now, this is one for the ages: back in 2010, Atlanta film-maker Walter Thompson created a jaw-dropping LEGO stop motion to propose to Nealey Dozier, his girlfriend of four years. The video took 22 hours of shooting and some 2,600 pictures to splice together, a small sacrifice to pay for years of happiness together. Right? Right! Oh, and she said yes. Bonus.