Studio4°C

A couple years back I had gotten really into Utada Exodus album, so I went on YouTube to see if they had playlist of the album. As I was browsing I found these amazing animations for her album and they seemed really familiar to me even though they were just 20-30 sec cuts of animation.The animation company who did her animated album is Studio4°C. Their animation is pretty out there and can make some closed minded people have a weird WTF moment so, this just warning for those few.

The studio was founded by Eiko Tanaka and she yes, she founded the company in 1986. She producer on TEKKON KINKREET and MIND GAME, both STUDIO4°C films. She also produced on The Animatrix project and previously worked with Studio Ghibli as a line producer on My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service. They just recently work with Ghibli for the film Prinecess Arete. But if you have watched Animatrix you see why it seems so familiar now. I'm really a fan of their work even before I knew who were behind the paper and pen.

Anyways, they are highly talented team, working on dozen of  projects, some of them I've own and/or are big fan of like Memories, based of three short manga series, and My Neighbor Totoro which I have at home with assorted anime collection. But what I'm really fan of is their shorts and hour long films series like Genius party(beyond) and Amazing Nut!. My favorite short is from Genius Party(beyond) has to be Gala Directed by Mahiro Maeda and Happy Machine directed by Masaaki Yuasa. And my favorite from Amazing Nut! is Kung Fu Love - Even If You Become the Enemy of the World(explict). But I'm really impressed that that they've also worked on Toyota, Honda, and Nike campaigns and worked on games like Catherine, .hack/link., and Asura's Wrath. I've made a playlist of some their work which I continued to added to but enjoy it since might take while for you to get through all them but it's totally worth watching.

I forgot to mention their website, which is most coolest construction(design) I've ever seen running on flash for a unique touch on what they stand for as an animation company. Now, they have both an English and Japanese side of their website which is quite awesome. They also have a blog which you can Google translate to your native tongue to see what latest projects they are working on and they are always updating it. But if your interested in this company here are some links below:

Studio4°C

 Blog

Twitter

Playlist



Also, they will be at this JPOP Summit festival up in San Fransisco...I wish I could go because Kyary, Tanaka Reina and her band, and Sebastian Masuda are also going to be their this weekend.