Joaquin Baldwin is an Annie Award nominee director and animator from Paraguay. Living in Los Angeles, he is now finishing his MFA in animation at UCLA. He has received over 50 international awards for his animated films Sebastian’s Voodoo and Papiroflexia, and also several grants including the Jack Kent Cooke full Graduate Scholarship in 2006.

Joaquin achieved great texturing and lighting in this piece. The chest of each voodoo doll moves when they breathe to portray their fear- this is great realism. His other animation Papiroflexia follows the same theme of a struggle towards a happier ending.

Bonnie Bassler talked about her research at the TED conference in February revealing how bacteria live in a democracy. They vote on whether to carry out a task based on how many of them are in the same vicinity, tasks like defending our bodies against disease.

An illustrator graduate from University of Brighton and the Royal College of Art in London, James Jarvis has seen success in work for Sony, Nokia and Parco. His latest piece is this animation entitled Onwards depicting a character running through a line-drawn landscape. Directed by Richard Kenworthy, the animation includes some great camera panning, a great lightning storm scene (03:04) and a beautiful night time shot beneath a starry sky (03:52). Crayon by Caribou was a perfect backing track choice. The animation makes you want to go for a run. See more of James Jarvis’ work here.

A Japanese stop-motion artist produced this clever video which includes stop-motion within stop-motion. The outdoor sequence was photographed first resulting in 1300 images which were then laid around the artist’s bedroom to create an ‘outer’ stop-motion sequence. The timing is so good at some points that it is easy to forget the video is shot in two locations.

Twenty-three year old Danny MacAskill has taken street riding to a new level in this video shot by Dave Sowerby. Filmed over a few months in the beautiful city of Edinburgh, UK, he achieves some of the most technical and imaginative riding, including a jaw-dropping back flip from a tree trunk at 03:08.