The Ruffled Crow

Animation, Art, and Other Shiny Things

Category Archives: General

Varmints – Marc Craste

While a bit long at nearly a half hour, you won’t notice the time spent watching this haunting animation.

Adapted and directed by Marc Craste, Varmints is a 24-minute film based on the award-winning book of the same name by Helen Ward and illustrated by Craste, that tells the story of one small creature’s struggle to preserve a world in danger of being lost forever through recklessness and indifference. via

From Studio AKA.

Paperman

Reblogged from The Ruffled Crow:

Directed by John Kahrs, this Oscar-nominated animation shows the power of the paper airplane (and persistance). This wonderful short from the animators at Disney uses a new technique that seamlessly merges computer-generated and hand-drawn animation.

http://youtu.be/Rqmh1GoZjnw

For The Remainder

Reblogged from The Ruffled Crow:

This is an incredible little piece of animation. Akin to bringing a minimalist painting into three-dimensional reality, Omer Ben David uses shading, few lines, and movement to suggest forms and describe the world.

The film sets the story of an old house cat who bids farewell to his home, his owner and the world he used to know. via

http://vimeo.com/36818561…

Read more… 51 more words

On this Christmas eve I'd like to re-post one of the most powerful animations I've ever seen. We adopt our cats from the local shelters and generally look for the older, harder to adopt cats. While the last times of any pet can be difficult for a family, we hope that we enriched their last years as much as they added to ours. Please give a pet from your local shelter or pound a gift this holiday season and adopt. You and they will be rewarded every day.

Miscellaneous Shiny Things

This has been a very full week around the Crow household and the next few days are going to be non-stop. Generally, when Mrs Crow is gone (in this case to dog-sit for one of the kids until Saturday) my starvation is a definate possibility, or at best, a vitamin deficiency from a diet consisting of raman-based products and candy bars.

Oh Boy Oberto/Miss Madison

This time, however, I’ll be smack in the middle of dozens of food booths down at Stan Sayres pits, and, provided I can climb my way out of the space in the middle of the broadcast tower scaffolding, there is a possibility of my feeding myself. I forsee a diet of skewers and coffee so I may still be in poor shape by Sunday night…

Anyways, the point of this post is to note that I’m volunteering at the Seafair Hydroplane races this year and I won’t have much, if any, time to check the blog here. I have scheduled posts through Sunday, but nothing beyond that. Considering we’ll be tearing down the network late into Sunday night, Monday’s animation is in question at the moment.

And if that isn’t enough to make my year, one other spot of news is the proverbial cherry on top: my post about J P Patches has been linked to by none other than the official JP Patches website! (a big thanks to Super Patches Pal and Webmaster over there Bob Alexander!) It’s quite an honor!

I’ll put together a post of pictures and such sometime next week once I recover.

Thanks JP. Signed, A Patches Pal

With apologies to the folks that are stopping in for a daily animation, but in addition to a full weekend working on Seafair stuff (more on that next week, perhaps) a Seattle icon died yesterday.

My son was almost apologetic when he brought me the news that Chris Wedes had succumed to the blood cancer that had plagued him for the last five or so years. Like many of my generation that grew up here, I had to sit down for a few moments and I will admit to tearing up again as I write this.

I wrote about J P Patches last year just after he retired from public appearances. During the 1960′s and 1970′s every kid I knew (including me, of course) watched JP’s show. We loved JP, and that’s not exaggeration.

Anyways, today I offer you a video of the clown’s last public appearance as well as one of Chris Wedes’ last interviews

Thanks, JP. It was our priviledge to have grown up with you, or rather, thanks for being a kid’s best friend whatever our ages.

Do Not Adjust Your Set…

… I’m changing the theme and am trying my best not to break the blog in the process.

The narrowness of the theme I’ve been using for the last couple years makes the video size fairly small and, as the majority of the posts are videos, it is well past time I did something about that.

So don’t be alarmed if you see things get moved or go missing (as long as it’s not the posts that disappear. in that case a good panic is called for), I’m still messing about but hope to have things nailed together by the end of the weekend at the latest.

Maneki Neko, The Beckoning Cat

Gotoku-ji Cemetary watercolor by Mister Kha

The legends surrounding Maneki Neko are many and varied. The bones of the old narratives appear placeable in history, but much that wraps them have their roots in Japanese folklore and tradition. (as well as occasional, simple, voracity)

The legend I prefer takes place during a dark and stormy night at a monastery near Edo, Japan (now Tokyo) in the year 1615.

Gotoku-ji temple was very poor. The monk had barely enough food for himself and a cat he had taken in, Tama, but he made do, tending the monastery and following his path as best he could.

Ii Naotaka

Ii Naotaka

After splitting  a particularly meager meal, the monk said to Tama, “Your companionship means much to me, but I can not assure you a good meal. You should not starve with me, but find yourself a home worthy of your company.” The cat, of course, did not reply, but went to sit in a window of the temple as cats are wont to do.

Outside in the rain, Ii Naotaka, second son of Ii Naomasa, hereditary owner of Hikone Castle, was returning from the Battle of Tennōji. With the storm worsening, Ii Naotaka and his men took refuge beneath a tree. Looking around he saw the cat in the monastery window. It’s paw raised, the cat seemed to be beckoning the Daimyo to take shelter in the small temple. As he approached the monastery, lightening stabbed down and split the tree that he had just been standing beside. He surely would have been killed had he remained by the tree.

The urn purported to contain the ashes of Tama (Gotoku-ji Temple)

Welcomed in, Ii Naotaka found the old priest to be wise and kind and devoted to his path and his companion Tama. To repay the cat and priest for saving his life he became Gotoku-ji temple’s patron. When Tama died, the cat was given a place of honor in the temple cemetery, where many important members of the Ii family are also buried, and the first Maneki Neko statue was created in his memory.

Today, Gotoku-ji temple is still open for worship and attracts visitors from all over the world.

But the story of Maneki Neko is far from over. Read more of this post

Meet the new blog, same as the old blog

(with apologies to The Who)

As I mentioned the other day I’ve been wanting to rename this blog (and me, for that matter) for quite a while. Well, I finally got around to figuring it out and making it happen.

Welcome to The Ruffled Crow.

Ruffled Crow - pastels by Mike Beeman. Visit him at http://pastelsbeeman.blogspot.com/

The new name is even more accurate than the previous. “But I digress” has certainly been a good term to describe my writing, it’s also the way I experience the world. Everything is distracting and I tend to wander down odd little paths of thought constantly. This causes a lot of noise in my head and, as a result, can be rather annoying to me, and sometimes others.

“The Ruffled Crow” is a much more specific characterization of me and how I feel most all the time.

A ruffled crow, in my experience, is a particularly uncomfortable bird.

By nature, crows are bright and expressive birds. They are known to be quite inquisitive and if something interests them they will peck and worry at it until they either break it, figure it out, or collect it. (pick any two or all three) A crow has no problem telling you what they think, especially when you annoy them, and just about everything annoys them.

I would imagine that anyone who has been around someone like me would recognize the signs of ADHD in just the short descriptions given above. Back in the 1960′s I was diagnosed as hyperactive and it was assumed I would grow out of it. Now days doctors understand that that is not always the case. I’m currently in the process of getting it dealt with finally (in ways other than ‘self-medication’) and I’ll likely write more about it and the depression that comes along with it in a later post.

So… Welcome, again, to this little corner of the intertubes. While I primarily focus on animation and art, anything that catches my crow-like sensitivities is fair game and I will undoubtedly write at length about it. (fortunately for you it’ll get edited down to near-readability before it’s posted. sometimes…)

I want to be sure to acknowledge, and thank profusely, PurpleEevee909 over at Deviant Art for my avatar. When researching ‘ruffled crow’ I came across the image and it cemented the decision on the name. It is most awesome and perfect.

Please feel free to comment on whatever I post – in fact I’d truly appreciate it if you would as it is one of those little things that make blogging worthwhile.

Changes are Coming

This weekend you will begins seeing a few subtle changes to this small, darkish corner of the intertubes. Not much of a change, really, just my nickname, the name of the blog, and a direct URL (woot! finally) A few graphics will change too, but nothing jarring, I promise.

Ne’er to worry, the content of the blog won’t be changing at all. (should i be apologizing for that?)

This is actually a long time coming; someone else is using my ‘nym and has the domain locked up, and the blog’s name “But I digress…” is being used by everyone and their goldfish. So in order to be somewhat unique (as unique as one can be on the web) I finally settled on a new blog title and ‘nym and picked up a dedicated domain name to go with it. Hopefully I won’t break anything in the transition.

So, keep an eye out over the weekend. The changes won’t be big and shouldn’t effect browsing the site (for either of you) and previous links to it should be fine.

sacredcalf (for now)

Beyond the Mind’s Eye – Voyage Home

The last installment in the Beyond the Mind’s Eye series.

Next series up would be the Odyssey Into the Mind’s Eye, and we will get to it eventually, but not just yet. There’s a lot of excellent animation out there now and I’m getting a bit of a backlog of great stuff in the draft queue that needs to be posted.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 120 other followers

%d bloggers like this: