Animation, Art, and Other Shiny Things
Abstainer, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. – Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
Via PrimerFrame
This sweet little film looks past the lust and ardor that is supposed to be love and into a little world of true devotion.
Last April Aunt Bee and I celebrated our 20th anniversary and I hope that when we get to whatever place these two folks are at that there will be this much romance in our lives.
By Ore Peleg
I’ve had Mr Tobin’s Out From Out Where album in my car for a few months now and I know this track well. I came across the video a few days ago, and as is my usual, I watched it with the sound off. I always do that first time through an animation, to get a ‘feel’ for the art of it, if that makes any sense.
It looked like a fairly mundane car chase, maybe even a machinima, three minutes of it. Uh, ok.
Second time through, this time with sound. I know the track and what to expect – and I was riveted for the entire three minutes twenty. The colors trailing over the cars, the occasional road hazard, the details were all in perfect synch to the music.
Beautifully animated and a touching story. (and it has crows)
Find more at Pork Chop Bob.
The zoetrope consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the slits at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion. via
In The Bellows March, Eric Dyer and his henchpeople have updated the process a bit with a fast-shutter video camera filming tiny 3D-printed hand-painted concertinas mounted on a spinning, circular conical drum he calls a “cinetrope”. The result is mesmerizing, to say the least.
Perhaps the earliest examples of animation, of cinematographics for that matter, would probably be the zoetrope (“wheel of life”). It’s invention is generally attributed to George Horner and his 1834 “daedalum” or “wheel of the devil”. (the term ‘zoetrope’ wasn’t applied until a good twenty-some years later) Many believe Mr Horner’s invention was merely a variation on the 1832 phenakistoscope (“to cheat the eye”) made by Joseph Plateau.
Although placed firmly in the 19th century by the western viewpoint, the probable first use of stroboscopic animation was 750 years earlier in China. Ting Huan, a prolific inventor of the late Han dynasty, created a device in approximately 180 CE he called “the pipe which makes fantasies appear” that used panels of paper or mica for the pictures and was powered by convection from a lamp.
Production video with stills of the cinetropes
This music video is just plain fun. The animation has an echo of the 70’s pop-art animation walking the line of psychedelia (ala yellow submarine or sally cruikshank) and is driven along by a peppy techno track. You can’t help but root for the protagonist, and the ending is perfect.
This one’s going on the ‘shiny things’ list.
Animation by Ninja Tune.
Click Me For a Random Post
The Ruffled Crow 