The Uncanny Resemblance Between Disney's "Frozen" Teaser And A 2009 Student Animation

Shortly after posting the teaser to Disney's upcoming Frozen feature earlier today, it was brought to our attention by a concerned individual that there were some striking similarities between the teaser and a short written, produced and directed by Kelly Wilson in 2009 called The Snowman, which featured an identical scenario, down to the resolution. While we initially wrote it off as coincidence, after comparing the two shorts closely it did raise some suspicion as to whether some ideas were borrowed without Wilson's knowledge.

We initially assumed that Frozen's scenario might simply be based off of an event that happened in the fairy tale it was based off of, but following some research about the Danish fairy tale we realized that there was no comic relief snowman in the original story (The Snow Queen), just a reindeer that accompanies the ice princess. We did a comparison between the two plots, and if you watch the shorts you can judge for yourself whether Disney might have lifted some ideas from the student animator. Considering Disney's history of borrowing ideas, like the infamous Lion King/Kimba The Lion controversy, we wouldn't be terribly surprised.

• Both shorts feature a clumsy snowman that loses his nose, which lands on a frozen lake that gets the attention of a carrot eating creature. Rabbits in The Snowman, a reindeer in Frozen.
• In both shorts the carrot lands on a frozen lake, and a struggle ensues in which the snowman and creature struggle to get the carrot back.
• Both shorts feature the creature getting the carrot instead of the snowman, nearly eating it, and changing their mind last minute before handing it back to the snowman.

The Colorful Pop Art Of Manuel Kilger

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German based artist, Manuel Kilger is a master at transforming iconic characters into cartoonized versions of themselves in the most colorful way possible. With his unique style, Manuel has a knack for creating extraordinary detailed pieces featuring amazingly creative takes on pop-culture icons.

Featuring his own takes on iconic protagonists Samus Aran, Isaac (Dead Space), and Donatello, Manuel's work features an awesomely diverse cast of characters, including some of his own original creations. After the break I've included a few more of Kilger's work. I'm quite keen on his work for Dead Space, but unfortunately prints aren't currently available.

The Les Gobelins Annecy 2013 Lineup - SeeSaw, The Fancy Family, Copernicus, Sawa

Continuing their yearly tradition of contributing signal shorts to the yearly Annecy International Animated film festival, this year was no different for the students at Les Gobelins animation school. As part of their curriculum, 5 teams contributed their own unique 30-50 second animated bumpers to the festival. We featured The Retake individally yesterday thanks to it's creators reaching out with their extensive making of, so here are the other 4 submitted to the festival this year.

A soft NSFW for stylized nudity in the See Saw and Sawa shorts. The short above was created by Marlène Beaube, Marion Bulot, Thibaud Gayral, Guitty Mojabi and Raphaëlle Stolz

Biomorph

Crafted at the 3d College of Denmark, Biomorph is a truly amazing little short headed up by director Henrik Bjerregard Clausen and a group of 12 students as a means of simultaneously promoting the school and it's students. Inspired by Blizzard's cinematic for games like Starcraft and World of Warcraft, as well as his love of gritty 80's era science fiction, Clausen crafted a short teaser that would play to his students strengths: Texturing and modeling.

Due to the lack of animator support, his pitch revolved more around building up suspense and a good emphasis on cinematography to establish the setting, before ending the entire short of a really cool high note with a biomechanical creature exploding out of a sea of human skulls. If anything this short perfectly accomplishes what Clausen and his group set out to do, leaving us wanting more.

Billy Butcher's Videogame Pop Culture Mashups

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Is it a game? A movie? A band? We don't know anymore, but it's undeniable that Brazilian based illustrator Butcher Billy created a series of truly amazing illustration pieces. Starting off with a solid foundation of classic videogames, the artist then proceeded to layer and dot these illustrations with elements of of pop culture in the form of vintage movies, rock stars, iconic Hollywood celebrities, anime icons and more to create some truly striking mashup imagery.

If you can guess the sources of every one of these twisted images, consider yourself a pop culture savant of sorts. Check out seven more amazing images from Butcher Billy's series after the break!

LSD ABC

After a year of work, Laura Sicouri & Kadavre Exquis have finished this awesome short featuring some awesome design work and animation. Accompanied by an entire album which you can download or purchase on vinyl over here, LSD ABC sets a great mood for each letter of the alphabet. Just when you start to assume what the next letter is going to stand for, they throw a curve-ball and take you further down the rabbit hole on a design induced drug trip.

Music Video Roundup - Young Galaxy, Siriusmo, David Lynch & Lykke Li, Washed Out

The latest video from the Canadian electro-pop band is an exercise in stark, disturbing contrasts and apocalyptic melancholia as all hell breaks loose. Director Ivan Grbovic commented that the epic spectacle was born out of many a conversation with band members, who sought to address the lack of substance present in many modern music videos with this ambitious endeavor.

As frontwoman Catherine McCandless sings 'Here it comes again, the beautiful, warm weather,' the world as we know it comes to an end. Young Galaxy's 'New Summer' is from their fourth LP: Ultramarine and now available via Paper Bag Records.

Disney Releases First Teaser For "Frozen"

Following the massive success of 2010's Tangled and last year's Wreck It Ralph, Disney has finally given us a taste of what's to come this year with their teaser for Frozen, which is set to release in late November. Adapted from the Danish fairy tale known as Snedroniggen (The Snow Queen), Frozen follows the story of a queen called Anna on a quest to reverse a curse cast on her by her estranged sister, the cold-hearted Snow Queen Elsa. Joined by a rugged outdoorsman called Kristoff, a one antlered reindeer and a clumsy snowman, Anna must race against time, battle the elements and battle an army of frozen warriors if she ever hopes to melt her own frozen heart.

Directed by Christopher Buck (Tarzan) and co-directed by the recently promoted Jennifer Lee (Screenplay,  Wreck It Ralph), I'm optimistic that Frozen will be yet another hit in the Disney repertoire. While this initial teaser is reminiscent of Ice Age's humorous Skrat shorts that have preceded every installment, the official trailer for Frozen will premiere along Pixar's Monsters University coming out this Friday. It has also been rumored that the feature might be accompanied with a brand new Mickey Mouse short titled: Get A Horse! 

Mirage

Most student thesis films are generally composed of one to two minutes of quality animation, but Mirage ups the ante with a nine minute short of awesomeness. With some beautiful hand drawn animation and an endearing set of characters, Mirage propels itself into a short list of one of my favorite student projects I've seen yet.

The dialogue-less short tells an adventurous tale of an Eskimo child and his husky companion that continues to progress into something more and more fantastical as time goes on, that by the end you'll be wondering if it could have gone even further. Kudos to the composer for Mirage, the musical score definitely propels this short to all new heights.

Gesaffelstein - Pursuit (NSFW)

French electro artist Gesaffelstein has been making waves recently, especially since being outed last Friday as one of the collaborators on Kanye West's upcoming Yeezus album (Dropping tommorow). Considering the extremely eccentric and fastidious nature of West's tastes, the revelation drew a ton of attention to the French producer, who whether through coincidence or not decided to give us a look into his pandora's box in the form of this brooding, heavy industrial track.

Replete with some mind bending, surreal dystopian imagery, Pursuit is extracted from his upcoming studio album, which has been in the works since 2011 in between collabs with artists like Lana Del Rey, Miss Kittin and other artists on top of their game. Directed by Fleur & Manu, the overlying theme to the unsettling visual narrative centers around the pursuit of power at any expense: Morality, dignity, sanity. The golden gloved individuals in each scene represent the supposed reward, everything around them represents the cost of the pursuit. By far one of the coolest music videos we've seen in a while. Gesaffelstein's studio album will be dropping sometime towards the end of the year.

The Art Of Lizzy-John

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Lizzy-John is a female digital illustrator based out of Brooklyn. As a self proclaimed gamer, art freak and all around nerd, Lizzy got into the art game thanks to a talented older sister who drew her into the craft during her childhood. Her focus is definitely more illustration oriented, with her pieces being executed by scanning in pencils and painting over them in Corel Painter. The overall style, colors and thematic elements definitely fit in the 'modern American' illustration style pushed forward by artists like Jon Foster and Julie Dillon, with a few personal elements thrown in.

Lizzy is one of the few artists that we've featured who uses Corel Painter over the more common Photoshop or Sai packages. While the program has fantastic potential for creating more painterly work with it's intuitive brush system, it definitely has a steeper barrier to entry due to it's more complicated interface. Check out more of Lizzy's awesome illustrations after the break!

Worth Checking Out - Soul Saga

I can hardly handle the amount of love put into this project, I feel like the Grinch near the end of his grump spree, except I'm not feeling grumpy, I'm just really endeared by developer Mike Gale. Soul Saga is a return to the JRPG glory days, influenced by classics such as Chrono Trigger, Breath of Fire and Persona.

Using gameplay mechanics inspired by Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy X, Mike Gale has implemented a twist on combat, requiring a level of puzzle solving skills to defeat enemies. It sounds like an interesting mechanic, and if pulled off well could really improve the level of thought process put into each battle. Probably the most exciting thing out of this entire Kickstarter is the awesome soundtrack, it's not an everyday occurrence that an indie title get's a full produced anime theme song, vocaloid and all!

If JRPGs and indie devs toot your fancy, make you way over to the Kickstarter page and think about donating a bit of your monies. The custom figure alone is worth backing it.

Derelict Graffiti Timelapse By Sofles

Created as a collab between the Ironlak, Selina Miles from Unity Sound and Visual and street and street artist Sofles, Infinite is an epic music video shot in a series of fluid, moving timelapsed takes. Using a mixture of custom dolly rigs and plenty of post processed image stabilization, the video tracks Sofles going berserk on a series of warehouse walls, dispensing his distinct street art tagging style. The dubstep-tinged soundtrack was provided by Bassnectar, aka Lorin Ashton.

Capcom and 3A Toys Team Up To Bring Us Lost Planet

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While I do feel that the gaming community never quite warmed up to Capcom's lukewarm Lost Planet franchise, you can't deny that the game had some really cool scifi designs, like the VS (Vital Suit) mechs and the kitted out mercenaries. As much as I wanted to love the game though, the forgettable story and uninspired gameplay remained an issue in both the first and second installments of the game. Is it too much to ask for to get a scifi version of Monster Hunter? With Lost Planet 3 on the horizon, third times the charm, some say.

Following a few months of teasing, 3A Toys has finally announced the arrival of the 1:6 scale, beautifully detailed Lost Planet mercenary, which will go on sale at the Bambaland Store June 21 for $160. As an owner of one or two of 3A Toys' wallet destroying works of arts, these toys are totally worth every penny for their attention to detail, articulation and quality of materials. Some proto shots from toy fairs abroad also point to a new upcoming Lost Planet toy that will include one of the VS mechs and a 1:12 scale pilot. Check out some more detail shots of the Mercenary after the break!

The Retake

Created by a team of students over at the Les Gobelins academy in Paris, The Retake is a veritable painting in motion created as a bumper/ident for the Annecy 2013 animation festival. Despite being just under a minute, the short centers around a frustrated court artist and a King who can't see the beauty in front of him.

The entire video is a visualization of the freedom of experssion and personal pride, an issue typically brought up by artists dealing with clients aloof about the artistic process. The short was created by Maxime Delalande, Nadya Mira, Semiramis Mamata, Laurent Moing and Rayane Raji. Check out the making of the short after the break, going over the entire creation process, including some really cool shot breakdowns.

The Pirate Cinema (NSFW)

This truly fascinating project by Nicolas Maigret was developed over the last 2 years for usage as an interactive art exhibit, turning raw streams of monitored Bit torrent data into visual snippets at a machine gun pace. As well as displaying the jarring tastes of audio-visual content, IP addresses and countries are displayed to give viewers an impression of the global nature of content consumption and distribution. Considering that the data being extracted is from incomplete torrent chunks, the entire project also turns into an amazing glitch fest.

A visualized torrent chunk of PSY's Gagnam Style being transferred from Italy to Australia

In the context of omnipresent telecommunications surveillance, 'The Pirate Cinema' reveals the hidden activity and geography of Peer-to-Peer file sharing. The project is presented as a monitoring room, which shows Peer-to-Peer transfers happening in real time on networks using the BitTorrent protocol. The installation produces an arbitrary cut-up of the files currently being exchanged.