The result of this storytelling exploration so far has produced a slew of long-form, interactive multimedia pieces. Where before a sprawling 7000 or 8000 word-long article would suffice, these new articles pull together photography, interviews, video content, infographics, maps and more; presenting them all as a single unified narrative – often boasting some innovative use of HTML5. This approach aims to give the reader a totally immersive, sometimes even interactive experience.

The most high-profile of these pieces has surely been the New York Times’ Snowfall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Peak. While by no means the first of its kind (take a look at the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Black Hawk Down piece from way back in 1997) , it made waves when it went viral back in December 2012 and has quickly become the poster boy for this new brand of digital long-form journalism.

Written by the Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, John Branch, it’s an epic retelling of a tragic, ill-fated ski trip that combines photographs, video interviews, moving graphics topped off with an in-trend parallax design.  The result was impressive; in the six days following its release, the Times website saw an influx of 3.5 million page views.

Snow Fall went on to win the Times that year’s Pulitzer Prize and Executive Editor Jill Abramson has said that the influence has now spread so far that to snow fall has even become a verb in the Times’ editorial office.

It didn’t take long for people to begin hailing Snow Fall as the ‘future of journalism’ . But producing features like this is neither cheap nor easy and where Snowfall succeeds in elevating the narrative, others have failed. Perhaps it will be the steady march of new storytelling tools such as Creatavist and scroll kit – that remove the need for hours upon hours of coding – that will be key in moving the format forward.

In the meantime, here are five examples that have impressed us. As always, if you think there’s something missing from our list, we’d love to hear about it: drop us a line via Twitter @submarinechannl

1.) The NSA Files: Decoded

The Guardian are certainly no strangers to producing multimedia experiences of their own. Their Firestorm piece earlier this year, an in-depth look at an Australian family trapped by a bushfire, was brilliantly executed and one of the paper’s most ambitious forays into long-form journalism to date. Their follow-up, this September 2013 piece on the revelations made by Edward Snowden, just edges it for us. In explaining the repercussions of the NSA files, they provide a consummate combination of text, photographs, video interviews with experts and interactive tools that allow you to explore your own data.

2.) A Game of Shark and Minnow

Back to the New York Times Magazine now for this fascinating piece about a political drama building in a remote area of the South China Sea. A Game of Shark and Minnow was designed with the aim to keep the reader active throughout the experience. As a result, there’s no stopping to press play on a video and sitting back; instead the whole article is navigated by scrolling through the piece.  The narrative is accompanied by moving images, stunning photographs, moving maps and graphics, all of which immerses you in the world of this remote but contentious part of the world.

3.) Killing Kennedy

Over to National Geographic now with a deviation from the Snowfall-style but one that’s too good to leave out. Released to coincide with the 50^th Anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination and as a companion to a television movie of the same name, Killing Kennedy is a sprawling interactive documentary that tracks the lives of both John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. While it is far removed from the others in this list in terms of style and design, Killing Kennedy brings together a wealth of multimedia (including beautifully rendered photographs, graphics, narrated audio segments and videos) with comparatively little text and a scrolling parallax design to deliver an arching narrative on the lives of Kennedy and Oswald, all of which builds to that infamous Friday in Dealey Plaza.

4.) The Geeks On The Frontline

The Geeks On The Frontline is a Rolling Stone piece by David Kushner and produced in collaboration with HTML Hub, a new developer community sponsored by Intel. It delves into the life of hackers and in particular how the government and industry are competing for their expertise. Kushner’s story is brilliantly interwoven with the imagery of photographer Charles Ommanney and some very interesting HTML5 design.

5.) Machines For Life

In May 2013, it was the turn of Daft Punk to be Snow Fall’ed, as part of a piece featured in Pitchfork ahead of the release of their latest album Random Access Memories. The article was aimed at offering a rare glimpse into the secretive lives of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and does so with a strong multi-media aspect. As with the previous piece, Pitchfork made great use of HTML5, GIFs and a parallax layout to keep the reader hooked.

The post Snow Fall-Style Storytelling appeared first on Submarine Channel.

In the fifteen years since it was founded, RIDM has grown into one of Canada’s biggest documentary festivals. Their Docs 2.0 fixture, started last year in collaboration with the Canada Media Fund, features web documentaries, installations, docu-games and other transmedia documentary projects.

Across the Atlantic is DocLab. Founded in 2007, it’s a festival program hosted as part of Holland’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). Doclab is devoted to showcasing new media platforms and interactive documentaries that push the boundaries of storytelling. The Amsterdam event has quickly grown into an unmissable part of the calendar and has given a platform for projects such as Prison Valley, Highrise and Hollow – to name just a few.

Through the years both of these festivals have offered an international voice for some truly groundbreaking documentary work and the talented individuals behind them; no surprise then that this year proved no exception.

In fact narrowing this list down to just five projects was no easy task. But nevertheless, let’s take a look at the Top 5 Interactive Documentaries from RIDM and IDFA Doclab 2013. As always, we’d love to hear what you think – so let us know over at @Submarinechannl

1.) I Love Your Work

Brooklyn-based artist and computer scientist Jonathan Harris is someone whose previous work has often touched on the way humans and technology interact. He was the co-creator of the brilliant, We Feel Fine, an interactive website that acts like a kind of emotional seismometer; scouring the web for expressions of human emotion before transforming them into visually-striking depictions.

This November he presented his latest project, I Love Your Work, an interactive film that was featured at both RIDM and IDFA Doclab – the latter presenting him with the firestarters IDFA DocLab Award 2013.

I Love Your Work is an interactive documentary that places us in the day-to-day routines of 9 young women in New York City, each of them working in the lesbian porn business. Shooting over 6 hours of footage over 6 days, the final piece is comprised of 2,202 ten-second clips taken five minutes apart.

The result is something raw and authentic, an often poignant look the realities behind the fantasies. In fact, even the method of viewing is a statement on society’s relationship with internet porn. Viewings of the documentary are limited to 10 people per day and must be scheduled in advance; Harris’s own way of challenging the growing culture of instant gratification.

2.) Fort McMoney

At the end of Canada’s infamous Highway 63, nicknamed the ‘Highway of Death’, lies Fort McMurray – a bustling black-gold-rush town tucked away in the northern reaches of Alberta’s sprawling oil fields. It’s this small town, population: 76,797, that has become the setting, and perhaps also the leading star, of Fort McMoney – a fascinating new interactive web documentary game created by David Dufresne (Prison Valley, 2010).

A starring feature at both IDFA DocLab and RIDM, Fort McMoney places the fate of the Alberta oil fields in your hands. Part simulation game, part real-time documentary – the goal is to take control of the world’s largest energy project and try and impose your own view; the experience peppered with the stories of the real people at the heart of this world, from oil barons to environmental activists.

While you’re free to discover the complexities of Fort McMurray alone, there are also multiplayer elements such as weekly referendums that allow players to vote on certain topics and attempt to convince other players of their opinions. The results of these votes will then dictate the course of the game. A groundbreaking work, Fort McMoney is as fascinating as it is ambitious.

3.) 17,000 Islands

“Break down the old image…break our film apart”, is the invitation from Indonesian filmmaker Edwin (Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly, 2009) and Norwegian transmedia director Thomas Østbye – together the makers of this innovative documentary.

17,000 Islands was originally inspired by a Disneyland-style propaganda park in Jakarta, an idealized open-air museum named Taman Mini that was built by the government in an attempt to present a unified, homogenized image of the culturally-diverse islands of Indonesia.

It was this idealized depiction of reality that spurred the pair to create 17,000 Islands; to produce a documentary experience that, like Indonesia itself, would be an archipelago of impressions. What makes this so unique is Edwin and Østbye’s willingness to lose control of their own film. Using the custom-built video editor, you the viewer are invited to break down the original film, taking parts of it to build your own film – and your own islands – to build an entirely new, living map.

4.) Money And The Greeks

Money and the Greeks offers no solutions. In fact, it clearly and painfully illustrates the complex dynamics of the political, cultural and economic forces at work in Greece, where any form of progress seems to be stalled, and a long-term solution for those Greeks that are suffering the most seem further away than ever. But then again, maybe Florian is just a pessimist. Watch, learn, and decide for yourself.

5.) Type:Rider

Technically speaking, Type:Rider isn’t a documentary at all but a video game about typography. More reason to give RIDM and IDFA Doclab – both serious docfests – kudos for both including Type:Rider in this year’s selection of interactive documentaries.

Published and partly-funded by Arte Creative, Type:Rider is a video game of the platformer genre, that playfully guides you through the history of typography via a series of very elegantly designed levels that, at Arte’s request, also contain some background info on each font. Each level revolves around an important, well-known font, starting with the classics from the early Gutenberg bible. Later levels feature newer fonts such as Helvetica (1957) running all the way up to screen fonts.

Of particular note is the final level, which has been dedicated to the (in)famous Comic Sans MS. The game designers clearly went all out on this level.

The post Interactive Docs at RIDM & DocLab appeared first on Submarine Channel.

Often used as the basis for some eye-opening big data visualization, interactive maps allow people to explore their own neighborhood with new eyes, become intimate with far flung corners of the globe and see geographical trends in a neatly packaged and easy-to-grasp form.

They can also provide the foundations for plotting web documentaries or transmedia stories; an interactive pinboard for plotting out photographs video and various media. In the case of web documentaries, they can provide an almost literal roadmap for the narrative, guiding the viewer through the story while still giving them enough freedom to discover the different media on offer for themselves.

Last year was a great year for interactive maps with storytellers, journalists, documentary makers, social scientists and big data researchers all producing some incredible work. With that  said, reducing this list to just five was very difficult indeed and if you think there are some glaring examples missing from our list, we’d love to hear your suggestions (after all, there’s always room for a sequel here at Submarine Channel). We love to hear from you, so leave us a comment below or get in touch via Twitter!

1.) Earth Wind Map

The US National Weather Service collects huge amounts of weather-related data, and while immensely useful, this data is not always easily available in a form that us non-meteorology experts can understand.  Last year software engineer Cameron Beccario produced the mesmerizing Earth Wind Map, an interactive map that turns data collected by the US National Weather Service into a clickable and dragable globe that displays the world’s current wind patterns in near-real time.

2.) American Cities: Before and After

Last August, the Smithsonian Magazine published ‘American Cities: Before and After’, a simple yet hugely engaging idea. Focusing on the cities of New York, San Francisco and Chicago, the Smithsonian have created a series of interactive maps that allow you to compare the infrastructure of today with those of the mid-1800s. To do this they teamed up with map expert David Rumsey, a collector with more than 15,000 maps in his collection, and overlaid these historical maps with modern satellite photos. Before and After is a fascinating way for people to get a better understanding of how America’s biggest cities have evolved over the centuries and one that also gives a new-found appreciation for just how talented the cartographers of years ago really were.

3.) Wanderlust

 Wanderlust is an interactive feature from GOOD Magazine that allows you to track some of history’s most famous journeys and routes – both real and fictional – on a world map. Whether it’s Emilia Earhart’s cross-navigation of the globe or the famous fictional road trip of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty in Kerouac’s 1957 novel On The Road, Wanderlust has plotted the numerous stops of each journey on an interactive map. Visitors to the site can then explore the pinned route, which in each case is accompanied with various entries about notable locations and photographs.

4.) Mars Curiosity Rover Tracker

Who said the maps have to be of our own planet? The New York Times is back again with an interactive app that allows you to track the entire route taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars. The route is shown on an interactive map of Mars, accompanied with a slew of information and a selection of some of the 36,700 photos Curiosity has sent home to Earth thus far.  If you want to know more about tracking Curiosity’s journey across the Red Planet, then this fascinating article from mapbox’s Chris Herwig is definitely worth your time.

5.) Google Chrome Experiments: Build with Chrome

And now for something completely different. Google and LEGO teamed up last year to produce Build with Chrome – a browser-based tool that allows you to build your own Lego creations and then place them in the real world. What started out as a Chrome Experiment, Lego Builder features a world map that allows you to discover the creations of Lego-lovers across the globe. Build With Chrome can be accessed on any browser enabled with WebGL, including Safari, Firefox, and mobile browsers. Kiss goodbye to your productivity.

The post Interactive Maps appeared first on Submarine Channel.

Perhaps once the dream of journalism professors, multimedia storytelling is gaining momentum. Whether it’s journalists, filmmakers, documentarists, marketeers or brands – the importance of good storytelling is leading more people to abandon walls of text and a single media approach and instead adopt range of different media to draw in their audiences.

Storytelling with multiple media, often a combination of written text, photography and videos (but can encompass all kinds of media – from illustrated graphic novels, to interactive visualized data) make for a much more captivating and engaging narrative. As more and more people head out to craft their own multimedia stories, so we’ve seen more app and web developers rise to the challenge of making this easier and quicker to achieve.

Some of the new storytelling tools have taken the form of desktop and HTML 5 web-based tools, while others the form of specially-developed applications for iOS and Android devices. Some of them are aimed at casual storytellers, others for those who have devoted their lives to it. One thing most of them have in common, is a thorough embrace of the multimedia or interactive approach.

So without further ado, let’s take a look at Submarine Channel’s Top 5 Storytelling Tools. As always, if you have your own suggestions, let us know here or via Twitter.

1. Storehouse

Produced by a team led by former-Apple designer Mark Kawano, Storehouse is an App that turns your iPad into a visual storytelling tool with which you can share your life experiences through a blend of text and multimedia content.  Launched last month, Storehouse was envisaged as a way for all of us to turn our daily iPhone snaps and journal entries into engaging, multimedia narratives.

What makes this app stand out is the UI and its gorgeous, intuitive design (Storehouse is surely one of the prettiest storytelling tools we’ve ever seen), all of which is perhaps little surprise considering Kawano’s background. What’s more the interface is easy-to-use and results can be produced quickly.

There are already some great examples of what Storehouse is capable of and if you want to try it yourself, it can be downloaded for free from the iTunes App Store.

2. Racontr

Developed by a French team, Racontr is a new storytelling platform based on the Djehouti interactive storytelling software. As the team describe themselves, Racontr aims to be a “a place for interactive writers, journalists, directors, artists, photographers, designers, producers to gather, create and share their web-documentaries, interactive videos, websites and mobile apps, interactive comics, long-form articles and all those formats defining the future of storytelling.”

The Racontr team have already released some tantalizing examples of what it’s capable of, such as this one; Gare du Nord, an immersive journey through Europe’s biggest train station. Featuring multimedia and a parallax design, it allows you to scroll down to reach lower levels and maybe stop to watch some videos about the people roaming the station.

Equally interesting is their One Year of Scrollitelling feature: also created with Racontr it takes a look at some of 2013’s most noteworthy examples of scrolling, storytelling features – something we also explored in our Top 5 Snowfall-style Storytelling feature.

Racontr was unveiled at the Tribeca Hacks event last December and although not yet released is currently about to enter beta phase. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

3. Interlude Treehouse

If you’re familiar with the rise of interactive music videos, then there’s a good chance are you may already have seen this storytelling tool in action. The viral interactive music videos for last year’s Bob Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone or Chairlift’s Met Before were both made with Interlude Treehouse.

Founded by Yoni Bloch and Tal Zubalsky, the Tel Aviv-based Interlude is a digital media company that designs, develops and markets interactive video technology. Treehouse, is a web-based HTML5 web app they have developed that’s designed to allow anyone to tell their stories in the form of interactive video experiences.

One of Treehouse’s boons is surely it’s ease-of-use; with its drag and drop interface, within a few hours users can create an interactive video experience that tells their story and allows users to explore the outcomes of different choices and decisions.

In fact, this year sees Interlude team up with the Tribeca Film Festival by inviting filmmakers to re-imagine storytelling for the digital age by creating an interactive music film for Damon Albarn, Aloe Blacc or Ellie Goulding.

If you want to find more about the Bob Dylan video – as produced with Treehouse – head on over on 2Pause!

4. Exposure

Primarily aimed at photographers, Exposure is for photographers who are looking to publish their photographs as part of a more meaningful narrative. In many ways, Exposure is reminiscent of Storehouse but in a desktop format; just like Storehouse the emphasis is on eye-catching, big-impact photographs which drive the narrative. And like Storehouse, it’s also very pretty.

Exposure’s Post Editor works by allowing you to drag and drop photographs into your browsers and then add various texts in between the photos. The result is an attractive blend of text narratives and photographs that are almost reminiscent of Medium – the blog publishing platform launched by Twitter founder Ev Williams.

5. Explory

In the late ’90s, Robert Tatsumi and Jonathan Gay created Futuresplash Animator, a vector-based animator editor that would later go on to become Flash. The pair were joined by Gary Grossman, Peter Santangeli and Peter Goldie, and together they made software history. Having created one of the world’s most famous pieces of software, the quintet teamed up again in to launch Explory, a Kickstarter-funded iOS storytelling App.

While not as visually attractive as Storehouse or Exposure, Explory is simple, well designed and makes turning photos and videos — (together with music, narration and text if desired) into compelling narratives. With Apps like Snapchat, Vine and Instragram Video on the rise, Explory offers a nice alternative that seeks to turn a variety of media into something longer and more engaging.

Update: also noteworthy storytelling apps are Steller and Pixotale.

The post Storytelling Tools 2014 appeared first on Submarine Channel.

It’s not even been a year since we presented our last selection of the best in Interactive Music Videos, yet since summer last year we’ve already been treated to some genre-bending, status quo-defying experiments in music videos.

Interactive music videos aren’t particularly new but what does seem apparent is that technology is beginning to catch up with ambitions of music video directors and musicians. Tools such as Treehouse from Interlude – which 2Pause took a closer look at this month – have made the production of interactive videos immensely easier.

Perhaps what’s even more encouraging than the increased experimentalism of music video directors is the reception they’ve received. One of the music videos on our list (we’ll give you a clue: the only one who can get away with a pair of tuxedo shorts) was arguably the most talked-about music video of the year, while each and every one of them were shared across the globe upon launch.

As we have seen in gaming, in documentary, in film, works of storytelling that use technology to their advantage, to draw their audiences in with interactivity, are making waves with a generation brought up on technology. In fact, Interlude have recently teamed up with car-maker Lincoln, Genero.tv and the Tribeca Film Festival for “Tribeca Interactive: A Music Film Challenge“. Launching at this year’s festival in March, the competition is offering $10,000 to any filmmaker who produces the winning music videos for songs by Damon Albarn, Aloe Blacc, and Ellie Goulding.

Is a music video revolution upon us? Well for now, the traditional form still reigns supreme but one thing’s for sure; inventive and engaging interactive music videos are on the march. Interactive video is coming of age and interactive music videos are capturing the imagination of an audience who is spending more and more time online, switched onto their computers.

No doubt we’ll have a completely revised list before 2014 is through, but as always we want to hear what you think. Let us know here or on Twitter at @SubmarineChannl or @2Pause.

 1.) Pharrell Williams – Happy

Not content with co-penning two of the catchiest pop singles of 2013 in Blurred Lines and Get Lucky, the Neptunes producer set the internet alight once again in November with the release of the world’s first 24 hour interactive music video. The result of a collaboration between Pharrell and the Paris-based directing team We Are From LA, the video features an interactive clock that viewers can click on to take them to different incarnations of the video – each featuring a diverse cast of dancers (including some famous faces, from Steve Carell to Kelly Osbourne). Filmed in Los Angeles in a marathon 11 day shoot – and using just one Steadicam – it’s doubtful that there were many music videos talked about in 2013 as much as this one.

 2.)  Bob Dylan – Like A Rolling Stone

Although ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ first hit the airwaves all the way back in 1965, last year saw Bob Dylan’s legendary hit being given the interactive music video treatment. Produced to tie in with the release of the singer-songwriter’s 47-CD Box Set (The Complete Album Collection), the video allows viewers to flip between 16 television channels – each mimicking a classic TV format. In each one – from Price Is Right to a cooking show – the television stars can be seen lip-syncing Dylan’s classic song. The video – which quickly went viral when it was launched in November – is also the first in our list to be made with Interlude Treehouse – a tool developed by Tel Aviv-based company that allows filmmakers to easily create interactive video experiences.

3.) Arcade Fire – Like A Reflektor

The Grammy-winning Canadian indie rock band are no strangers to exploring the creative potential of new technology and with the release of their last album Reflektor they enlisted the help of director Vincent Morisset.  Morisset – who’s well known for constantly pushing the boundaries of what interactive video is capable of – has previously worked with Arcade Fire and Reflektor saw him teaming up with Google Creative Labs to create this stunning video. ‘Reflektor’ which appeared at last year’s IDFA DocLab  and picked up an award at this week’s SXSW Interactive Awards, allows the viewer to follow a woman’s journey in a way that integrates the user’s own reflection onto the screen – via the cameras on the device they’re using.

4.) Queens of the Stone Age – Vampyre of Time and Memory

November 2013 was a busy month for interactive music videos and amongst them was Josh Homme’s Queens of the Stone Age with this wonderfully dark effort for their song Vampyre of Time and Memory. Directed by Kii Arens and Jason Trucco and designed and produced by The Creators Project the ‘interactive experience’ is set entirely within a haunted house and allows viewers to click through different scenes. If you want to know how Arens and Trucco put together the HTML5-enabled project, then be sure to check out this great behind-the-scenes article over at The Creator’s Project.

5.)  Guinevere – Ran for My Life

Just in time for Halloween, 21-year-old singer Guinevere transformed her song Ran For My Life, into a zombie-battling choose-your-own-adventure style interactive experience. The second on our list to be made using Interlude, the music video draws the user in by allowing them to decide how Guinevere kill the zombies attacking her. Baseball bat? Chainsaw? It’s up to you. One thing is for certain: choosing a novel, interactive path has helped set this Canadian Top 10 pop-star apart.

The post Interactive Music Videos 2014 appeared first on Submarine Channel.

The so-called Simpsons ‘couch gag’ has gone down in television history as one of the most instantly-recognizable, near-immortal title sequences. The opening sequence, although seemingly timeless and familiar features a range of unique twists in almost episode.

The couch gag made its first appearance in the show’s second episode (Bart The Genius – which first aired way back in January 14^th 1990, in case you were wondering) and with more than 500 episodes spanning nearly a quarter of a century, the Simpsons team have had plenty of chances to play with that famous introduction. As a result, in more recent seasons the couch gags have tended to become increasingly surreal and outlandish.

There have been some notable examples over the years: episode ‘What Animated Women Want‘ saw Homer channel the-one-who-knocks, Heisenberg, in a glorious tribute to AMC’s series Breaking Bad, whilst 2001’s ‘HOMЯ‘ featured a cameo by none other than one of Groening’s other famous creations, Futurama’s Fry.

With over 500 episodes under their belt, Simpsons-creator Matt Groening has on occasion handed the reins to a number of artists and filmmakers, allowing them to unleash their creativity and produce their own unique spin on that famous sequence.

1.) Sylvain Chomet

Aired on March 9^th of this year, the 542nd episode ‘Diggs’, saw arguably one of the most beautiful, obscure and downright coolest opening sequences in the show’s near-25 year history. Groening and co. commissioned Oscar-nominated French director and animator Sylvain Chomet (of The Triplets of Belleville and The Illusionist fame) and he did not disappoint. Beginning in typical Simpsons-style before quickly transforming into Chomet’s unique Gallic aesthetic, this, the most recent of the commissioned sequences on our list, is a beautifully bizarre take on Springfield’s most famous family. Vive la Springfield!

 2.) John Kricfalusi

In 2010, Groening and executive producer Al Jean turned to none other than animation-original John Kricfalusi, creator of another ‘90s cult animated series, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and invited him to guest animate the famous couch gag.

Opening the 488th episode, ‘Bart Stops to Smell the Roosevelts’, the result was a critically-acclaimed, border-line trippy and utterly bizarre sequence that broke all the rules in true Kricfalusi style. John K himself reportedly insisted on not only drawing the storyboards, but on animating the entire sequence himself, even overseeing the dubbing of the final soundtrack. Prepare to see America’s favorite family like you’ve never seen them before.

If you want to know more about the making of the sequence (including some exclusive footage, artwork and ), then be sure to check out Cartoon Brew’s fabulously in-depth interview with John Kricfalusi himself.

3.) Banksy

Despite being infamously difficult to track down, the team at the Simpsons still managed to get hold of British street artist, Banksy, after executive director Al Jean was inspired by the pseudonymous graffiti artist’s film Exit Through The Gift Shop. Inviting him to storyboard the couch gag for the 467^th episode, ‘MoneyBART’, the result was suitably politically-charged and darkly humorous. Swapping the Simpson’s couch for a sinister sweatshop, workers can be seen laboring over animated frames of the Simpsons while cute, furry animals are being made into Bart Simpson dolls.

4.) Guillermo del Toro

First aired back in 1990, the ‘Treehouse of Horror’ Halloween episodes of The Simpsons have now become something of a time-honored holiday institution. With last year seeing the airing of “Treehouse of Horror XXIV” who better to drag us down to Springfield’s version of Hell than the Mexican master of fairy tale horror? Guillermo Del Toro delivered with a masterful menagerie of famous horror references; featuring nods to everything from Cthulhu to Hitchcock’s The Birds. Even Mr. Burns makes an appearance as Del Toro’s own terrifying creation from Pan’s Labyrinth.

5.)  Bill Plympton

The Simpsons crew seemingly enormous fans of New York indie animator and Oscar-nominee Bill Plympton, with him being commissioned to take-over the opening sequence with his out-of-this-world style of animation three times now. Each of them have been fabulously strange and well, typically Plympton. In 2012’s Beware My Cheating Bart, he unveiled the sordid history of the famous couch, followed up by this brilliant film-noir sequence and a third masterstroke for the show’s 540^th episode Married to the Blob. Here’s hoping they’re considering a fourth.

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