Unicode Animation
A study in animation created by arranging Unicode glyphs based on their perceptual similarity, utilizing apparent motion.
This work was created as a video for a song by the Japanese band MONO NO AWARE and the producer imai (group_inou), inspired by tongue twisters.
The production involved practical filming techniques using a pen plotter, as well as the development of a dedicated animation software “Unim,” which integrated a machine learning-based search system by Nao Tokui (徳井 直生), a well-known AI researcher.
The video also won the Grand Prix at the Tokyo TDC (Type Directors Club) Annual Award 2025.
Director: Baku Hashimoto
Music: MONO NO AWARE / かむかもしかもにどもかも! (imai remix)
Logo Illustration: Tezzo Suzuki [鈴木哲生]
Research & Development: Nao Tokui [徳井直生]
Bokeh Game Studio ID
Director: Baku Hashimoto
Music: Yaporigami
Produce: Archipel
Also made a series of graphics based on the circuit data for the camera rig.
Milling Stop-Motion
Everything was made practically using stop motion and a CNC milling machine. Brand ident for Vice TV.
FEM – Light
The working-in-progress video that I’ve been making.
New Chitose 2018 Idents
The motion ident for 5th New Chitose Airport International Animation Festival (第5回新千歳国際アニメーション映画祭).
director / animator: Baku Hashimoto
music: toiret status
100 Motion Designers in Japan ’18
An ident for “Japanese Motion Graphic Creators 2018” (映像作家100人), the most authoritative yearbook of video directors which has published more than a decade. From this year, the will be announced as not a book but online.
producer: Yusuke Shono
director: Baku Hashimoto
music: toiret status
logo design: Semitransparent Design™
The producer and editor Mr. Shono also runs the online magazine MASSAGE which is focusing on various experimental scenes around the Internet. I’ve been deeply influenced by what he had introduced during my early twenties. So in this project, I tried to integrate all of my own approaches for video production such as generative art, motion graphics, and wired usage of GPU rendering with a kind of Internet-ish atmosphere.
imai – Fly ft. 79, Kaho Nakamura
♪ imai – Fly feat. 79, 中村佳穂 from the album “PSEP”
A stop-motion video of various types of mochi🍡, popular sweets for old people in Japan. I had been shot this the whole summer at my grandparents’ house.
director/animator: Baku Hashimoto
logo design: 79
producer: Hiroto Ise (INS Studio), Munekazu Harada
project manager: Yu Murooka (INS Studio)
To realize the free camera movement, I built a special tool integrating a stop-motion software and position tracking device attached to a camera.
Depthcope
3D rotoscoping.
This is made for “TECHNE – The Visual Workshop”, a creative educational TV show. Every episode introduces one visual technique such as stop-motion, and my theme in this episode is to use a rotoscope. I developed the shooting system enabling to trace ‘height map’ with clay using a pair of Kinect and projector which works like human-powered 3d printing. We’ve reproduced each frame of the pre-visualization and shot pictures one by one for more than 500 frames.
director: Baku Hashimoto
art director: Poisson Gris (Laurent Gray & Hu Yu)
producer: Hiroto Ise
music: Phasma (“Sinus” from W Records vol.02 Bunkai-kei Records)
lighting: Ikuma Ogawa (SECT)
special thanks: Koji Aramaki, Kosuke Tsukagawa, Yako Naohiro, Kyosuke Ochiai
“Berserk” TV Ad
All the pictures taken from real comic books frame by frame. After extracted the leading character from more than 6000 pages, I carefully collected and re-ordered their faces to move sequentially.
The glitches of roughly morphed frames originally come from this my experiment.
creative director: Kaita Arai
planner: Ai Shibata
director: Kenji Tomita (OOO)
animation director: Baku Hashimoto
editor & adviser: Yoshiteru Yamakawa (INS)
News Release
Olga Bell – ATA
♪Olga Bell – ATA
Taken from her “Tempo” album, released from One Little Indian.
director: Baku Hashimoto
concept: Baku Hashimoto & Olga Bell
photography: Josh Wool
makeup: Stephanie Peterson