Autobahn - the animated short film

in 1979, british animator Roger Mainwood did an amazing animated film around Kraftwerk's "Autobahn", while working at the Halas and Batchelor studios. This short film was Mainwood's first assignment for the company.

The Halas and Batchelor Colllection website describes the clip this way:

A visual interprtation of Kraftwerk’s music Autobahn. A fast paced experimental film which proved to be a ground breaking combination of electronic and manual animation. It has now become an icon of late seventies design and music. One of the first films produced specifically for video disk.

The clip has recently been restored, and is now available via YouTube:



There is also a short documentary/behind the scenes type clip about the making of the Autobahn animations available. See it here.

Kraftwerk comics

I've written before about the spanish cartoonist Calpurnio, and his el bueno del Cuttlas stories, that from time to time include the four Kraftwerk characters. But now, it's time to take a peak at two Swedish examples.

This first one is from the strip Rocky, published daily in Dagens Nyheter. This is from a few days ago. Look at the wall, next to other excellent choices such as MF DOOM and Yngwie Malmsteen, and you will see four familiar album covers.



Then there's this, from the Galago magazine and the year 2000. This is a 6 page story called "GOD" by Swedish surrealist/cartoonist John Andersson, who once published an entire comic album starring Florian Schneider, called "Schneiderduschen".

In the story sampled below, the first sentence on page one is "God is a lefthanded office clerk and as you can see, he bears a striking resemblance to Florian Schneider". Brilliant stuff.



Hey, click the images for larger versions.

Zirp fiep fiep

Florian Schneider, the baldest and weirdest of the Kraftwerk members, drew this pretty little picture in 1974.

El bueno de Cuttlas

Spanish cartoonist Calpurnio lets his old stick figure Cuttlas meet Kraftwerk in a four part comic strip series. It might be hard to understand what it is abour for some, but still... It looks rather interesting, doesn't it?



The other three parts can be found here, here and here.