Amazing animated shorts by Cerberus
You should not miss to watch the following eight amazing animated shorts by the artist Cerberus (Tirrel) on YouTube. Four of them even features raccoons.
“Deep in the jungles of… Hyde Park London, the squirrels discover the sinister truth behind their poor harvest. Vyle Bakeries Ltd have devised a cost-cutting scheme to obtain ingredients for their Cookie range and are stealing nuts right from the rodent’s own stash piles. Faced with the prospect of either starving or having to pay extortionate prices for Starbucks cookies, the squirrels join forces and tackle the problem at the source… in an inexplicable and highly implausible way.” |
Rescuing Ghosts is without a doubt one of the most beautiful shorts I’ve ever seen. The evocation is accompanied by the song “Talking with Ghosts” by Fox Amoore. |
“This is the story of Katan, a little aztec critter who works as a stonemason on huge pyramid projects. He’s an eager, talented employee who beleives strongly in what the project stands for, putting in endless overtime to get things done. When a less committed, self-serving employee hatches a plan to steal the soul jewel of the temple, the mysterious crystal skull, Katan finds himself under blame and attack from the very monument he helped to create.” Katan won the award “Best movie of 2010” on Newgrounds! |
Raccoons doing what they do best ;-). |
The first music video of the rock band Rockoons, featuring the song “Fever” by Aerosmith. |
The second music video of the rock band Rockoons, featuring the song “Separate Ways” by Journey. There are a couple of really cool scenes you just have to see several times. |
The third music video of the rock band Rockoons, featuring the song “Let Your Love Flow” by The Bellamy Brothers. The Looney Tunes would be proud of the amount of cartoon violence. |
[ You’re the One that I Want ] And another violent music video in the tradition of Looney Tunes. |
Always good to see someone discover these 🙂 the guy (?) is an amazing talent … and has a brilliantly sick sense of humour too, without actually getting offensive (the early ones which haven’t been linked above show it off even more so). Even better when they then share the love.
It’s just something of a shame there’s such a huge gap between the release of each work, but then they’re almost exclusively hand-drawn (digitally, yes, but using a Wacom and based off lots of pencil sketches – there’s a “behind the scenes” video for Katan that’s heavily sped up with a lot of jump cuts, and it covers a bare five seconds or so of the finished work) … it’s worth the wait. Besides, although AFAIK they’re trying for a pro animation career, this is currently just hobbyist and (with Nut Job, Katan and Saving Ghosts at least) portfolio work, not paid.
I like how you’ve hosted the actual SWFs, by the way… I might actually be able to watch them in full crisp quality for once. I’ve had to settle for a variety of blurred, choppy youtube recordings so far…
BTW, I could swear Rockoons was originally something else (“Woman”, by Wolfmother?), but then there’s a “V2” in the thumbnail so perhaps it’s been extended and had the music changed to fit. And Rockoons II actually uses a -cover version- of the Journey song, by Roland Grapow out of Helloween. Although it loses a little complexity out of the guitar solo, I think it’s actually better than the original overall 🙂
(And in case The Nut Job seems to cut off short – it’s supposed to be in two parts. You might have got the full version, I haven’t had chance to play it through and find out!)
Cheers
Disclaimer: No I am not Tirrel 😀
addenda:
Yep, Rockoons “v2” is more or less an entirely different production, save a couple of shared scenes, to the “v1” I saw before, which was probably about half the length of this one…
And it IS the full version of Nut Job 🙂
BTW if it’s not mentioned in the credits, and you were looking for it, the music for Katan is actually the waiting-queue music for a ride at a UK theme park. Can’t remember the ride, but I think it was Thorpe Park. One of the youtube uploads contains better detail. It’s downloadable… somewhere.
thanks for the heads up on these delightful flashes…I seldom find any really worthwhile, but these were different.
while I found “nut job” fairly straightforward as far as most of the flash anims I’ve seen, what really grabbed me was the music vids.
after a wild take on the Bellamy Brothers’ classic, I followed it with “separate ways”. i’ll have to dig a bit deeper on the music, as it wasn’t the original version of the song, but the video that went along with it was nothing short of fabulous. and while i’m not a fan of aerosmith, “fever” was worth the ride.
“raiders of the trash”…all that work for a trash can? (shrug) I guess it’s true about it being another’s treasure.
then I watched “katan”…a lot of folks like to say that payback’s a B….h, but the video quite eloquently demonstrated it.
finally, “rescuing ghosts”…not even remotely what I had expected…it wound up tugging on my emotions almost as much as “snow snow for lucy”, which is saying quite a lot…
tirrel should go far with this talent…
This is epic, 100% my type of animation. Too bad that I didn`t know about this artist sooner.
Also maybe someone knows, who is creator of this (my favorite racoon animation) – http://www.speedyshare.com/y3QH5/jenots.swf
@ Zaurijs:
Lol! Also Cerberus!
Darn it, *which* creature was sitting by the rock in the end of Rescuing Ghosts?..
In both cases it is painful…
Yes, I would like to know also, which character was it.
Chuck4444 – just found, that it indeed is Cerberus – http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2647271/
@ Danila E:
Answer from Cerberus –
In Rescuing Ghosts, it is the young fox who is seen at the end. The mother has taken her place in the afterlife.
Ha! I remember the Rockoons and Nut Job from YEARS ago with Newgrounds, when he first uploaded them there! Nice.
@ Zaurijs:
Thank you.
Katan has been one of my favorite flashes for a few years now. Still watch it every now and then because of how well done it is.
firedome wrote:
As per my earlier comment, that was a bonus track off a Roland Grapow solo album (guitarist from Helloween, which is what makes it a bit strange that the guitar line was simplified but the singing improved…). And Aerosmith are much better when they actually rock out rather than trying to do horrible syrupy ballads… 🙂
Zaurijs wrote:
That’s totes Tirrel – in fact that’s the ghost-coon character (he has a name, I forgot it…) out of Separate Ways and Let Your Love Flow. I think that was just some halloween bonus thing he did. The big productions don’t come along very often but there are a good few little bits and bobs which fill in in-between.
Barrage7667 wrote:
I find it astonishing that it was pretty much all the hand-drawn work of just one guy, with the computer used basically just for lightboxing and flood-fills… as before it’s a shame that they only come along once every year or two, but it’s quite easy to see why! What would take a whole team of largely computer-assisted professional animators a week to create, but instead made entirely manually by a single artist, and at fairly high framerates too… (Saving Ghosts was apparently the first one which used any more advanced software assistance)
Rescuing Ghosts is new to me. Otherwise I can verify that ~ALL~ of these flash videos are the sum of all awe.
funny i have already seen most of those on newgrounds i liked the second rockoons i still watch it from time to time
I loved ALL of the vids, but especially Rescuing Ghosts (so beautiful, and I nearly cry every time I watch it….) and the Rockoon music videos! And being Flash, they download and play so well, too!!!
I agree, rescuing ghosts is one of the best animations I have ever seen. I believe the animator enjoying using animals due to the fact that you can convey more emotion through them other than just facial expression (eg. ears rise and fall depending on mood) and I believe this rather anomalistic approach to be more effective while trying to convey a story through a short animation.