Isaiah Saxon (left), Sean Hellfritsch and Daren Rabinovitch began collaborating on films in San Francisco in 2003. Their digital animation company, Encyclopedia Pictura, combines live action, stop-motion and CGI components into a unique visual style.
I first heard of Encyclopedia Pictura from a friend who sent me a link to a story that NPR did on them this past year. My friend thought I’d be interested in them because I received my undergraduate degree in forestry and I recently finished film school as well, so my interests share common ground with theirs.
Esquire magazine called them “the directors of the future” and they have been doing some very interesting work over the last couple of years and are beginning work on their first feature film which you can read a very brief description of it here on their website.
I’ll be working with them for at least one month on some ambitious animation and am very excited about it. I will also be moving to San Francisco, where I’ve always wanted to spend more time after I filmed for a friend’s wine label there over a year ago.
EP is probably best known for their award-winning and unique music video for Bjork, Wanderlust. It has a beautiful visual style and is quite epic in scope as the song is almost 8 minutes long:
I plan to take my time driving down there from Vancouver and hope to fly my hang glider at a couple sites along the way. One of which, Mattole, in Northern Cali was just flown by one of my ex-neighbors from when I lived at the hang gliding flight park in Georgia. It’s been a while since I’ve flown so I hope the weather cooperates and if I’m feeling up to it, I may get the camera out too. Sunday I should be flying with this guy . . . um, yea . . . and here’s another but filmed at the site we’ll be flying.
Looking back on these couple of paragraphs . . . I just realized I referenced several friends all about different things and just wanted to get sentimental for a second and say I have some awesome friends! Especially since I’m going to be living with another one I’ve yet to mention in this post while I’m in SF. Nothing but love for you all!
I took this the last time I was flying which was this fall and just haven't gotten around to sharing any photos from this flight. It had some incredible views! Near Pemberton, B.C.
On a related note about animation: Moonbot studios, a studio in Shreveport, Louisiana, beat out Pixar for the Oscar of best animated short film! I saw Pixar director, Enrico Casarosa, speak about their short ‘La Luna’ at SIGGRAPH this year and it is incredible, but Moonbot’s short is very captivating as well. If you’d like to learn more about the animation in this Academy award-winning short, one of their supervising animators is sharing some behind-the-scenes work on his blog you should check out.