I thought I’d mention a few things that have inspired me lately and try to explain why. Hopefully without too much dissection, because to dissect something you have to kill it, and thats definitely not my intention.
Coraline
Harmony and I saw this opening night in 3D (with the glasses) and I was absolutely mesmerized by this movie. As an animator I was in heaven watching the characters and world simply move. Every nuance and detail felt inspired and alive- I think the glasses might have helped with that. With or without them though, I was in that world fully experiencing it the entire running time.
Since I kind of understand what it takes to create a feeling of life in inanimate objects I tend to nit-pick a lot while I watch most animated movies or shorts or whatever. Not that I’m good enough to do better, but I notice certain things. “Oh, they cheated that pose – it feels unnatural.” “This character is flapping his arms around and overacting while he talks- no real person does that!” etc etc. That inner voice was quiet the entire time and I purely enjoyed myself.
I felt like the story got a little thin near the end and the plot turned into weird video-game like item retrieval, but other than that it was flawless. Absolutely beautiful- every frame.
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
This album is really great fun. You should check it out if you like the idea of 20 year old Beach Boys time-traveling to 8 years ago, getting sudden musical and motor skill amnesia, taking a vow of silence in the deep woods and learning to communicate with each other with grunts and howls and twig scrape sounds, beating on rocks and using nearby caves to stretch their voices with echoes and reverb until they end up communicating in song-form. Deep in the recesses of their Beach Boys subconscious their sense of melody and rhythm starts to re-emerge, but weirder, edgier. They discover man-made instruments and develop what they learned in the woods for years, slowly but surely getting more in touch with their inner popness and end up releasing Merriweather Post Pavilion. Or something.
A Web Page As a Canvas
Remember when the web used to feel more like a strange, fun, Flash-fueled, bloated art gallery? Man, I sure do. I remember when I first saw Presstube, back when he used to fill the browser with experimental full-window looping animated madness. It shifted my brain lobes in a good way. Now his site is more like a blog, like everybody else’s. (And he rarely updates it… Well, at least he’s archived all the good stuff...) Not to solely pick on him, but that site used to be alive with his experiments. It was Christmas in my brain every time a new animation came out.
I mean, that kind of stuff got out of hand after a while, and I understand and respect the need for usability. I also know its much easier to maintain a personal site through blog software, I really do. At the same time though, it feels like the only sites that get the full, rich audio-visual treatment are commercial sites pimping the latest blockbuster movie or fast food product. I miss experiencing the inside of somebody’s thoughts and dreams on a webpage – a medium thats largely untapped strength is that its hardly restricted to a linear timeline. I mean, think about that… its pretty incredible. And its where I want to spend some time tinkering around for sure.
Anybody seen anything really strange and/or beautiful online lately that takes advantage of and maybe stretches the medium of a webpage?