Solar Burns : Art in Time

So this artist Charles Ross has been making art with magnified sunlight since the 70s at least. http://charlesrossstudio.com/solarburnworks/magicsquares.html

 Solar Burn In the Time It Takes Sunlight to Reach the Earth. Jan 30, 1977

For the work pictured below, Ross burned wooden planks with a fixed lense every day of the year. This project lasted from March 20, 1992 to March 20, 1993.

This installation is of interest to me because of the patterns the burns make arranged on the floor - a double spiral. Not unlike the labyrinths of Greece, which charted a wandering path meant to represent life's journeys. It resembles the ying yang symbols of Taoism. This double spiral pattern is also considered sacred by druids, for marking the passage of the sun through the year. 

The use of such a powerful force and symbol as the sun to create this work gives it a unique power.

A Year of Solar Burns : 366 Days

An awesome concept, beautifully realized.

Gobelins Flash Animation

This is a funny short that I really enjoyed. I'm pretty sure it's made with Flash, could be wrong though.

Photoshop and Flash = Dragons?

Here is an example of Photoshop use in Animation that I really enjoyed. Reminded me of films I liked as a child like The Last Unicorn.

Subaru Commercial Animation

So for today we were asked to watch an animated commercial for a Subaru sportscar, and find another example of animation in a commercial that was frame by frame.
I had to travel all the way back to 1970 for this one, but it's a winner. I like anatomy drawings, the human body is very expressive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26780aO8tsc

Rotoscoping

So I found an example of rotoscoping that was pretty simple, but striking nonetheless.

I especially liked when Julian described what it was like to be a tree.

Caroline Leaf's Two Sisters

So on this day we looked at Caroline Leaf's animation Two Sisters,  which was a pretty and strange story about the eponymous characters who seem to live alone on an island. However, their peaceful day is interrupted by the sudden arrival of a stranger, and that interruption enriches both their lives.

 The use of light and dark in this animation were fantastic, adding a dreamlike quality to the work when perspectives shifted (which happened often). The use of color was minimal, serving mainly as an accent to the shifting shadows that composed the figures and setting. Since the entire animation was scratched into IMAX film, it was probably a practical choice on the artist's part to use the existing darkness of the film. The moods she can create with this technique are intense.

 Although Viola Gé is disfigured, she seems to be less afraid of the world than her sister Marie. Marie tries very hard to prevent Viola from going out into the sun and seems obsessed with locking the doors, keeping her keys close at hand.

 The story ends happily, with Viola convincing Marie to keep the door open. Yet Marie remains vigilant, sitting in front of the open door with her keys in hand.

Stop Motion Animation

This music video is made using cut-out pictures of people and objects, the camera is moving progressively backward away from the advancing cut outs. Pretty rad!

Len Lye's Colour Box

So I read a little bit about Len Lye and his sculptural and animation work. His film Colour Box is pretty much bright colors and pretty dancing music synced up. The diversity of the color application is important in this film, because some of it seems to run across the screen. For an artist in the 1930s this is impressive stuff. I wish I could've found a better quality version of the film for these screen shots. I enjoyed the way he shuffled the images all around and they didn't just flow in one direction.

Camera-less Film: Scratch Animation

I really enjoyed making a scratch film in animation class. It was unusual to be able to hold the film in my hands and look over the whole thing piece by tiny piece before sending it up onto the screen. I was especially pleased by scratching away some parts and removing others with bleach, and then putting colored markers to use in their place.
This is a sample animation I found which uses similar techniques to those we considered in class, but this whole 3 minute animation was done by a single person. They must have dedicated quite a bit of time to scratching away at that film. I would have gotten frustrated (probably) but their work paid off with smooth animation that uses line and color effectively to produce pleasant moving shapes. My own animation was totally random, so I appreciate the careful thought that went into this one.

Edward Muybridge Animations : Early Film

Edward Muybridge sure picked some weird stuff to put on film. But this buffalo makes it all seem worthwhile.

The 2000-Page Flipbook

This flip-book posted to YouTube by Ben Zurawski is a compilation of many individual flip-book style animations, totaling 2000 pages. Zurawski makes custom flip-books - his youtube channel "TheFlippist"advertises flipbooks as gifts for all occasions. It's interesting that Zurawski has managed to monetize this sort of personal "hand-held animation," he even has an Etsy site where he sells commissions. I like that there is a great variety of subjects and jokes, as many as can be imagined. Although the medium seems limited, it's only limitation is how far one is willing to take it. Zurawski seems to have grasped the horns of the animation bull.  I chose this animation because it represents an amalgamation of Zurawski's styles of animation. Although some parts of this are not exactly work safe, I thought it was silly and funny enough to include.

I really like the idea of flip-books as gifts, because they're neat little oddities that can amuse anyone. I'm not sure I could do what Zurawski does because drawing all those tiny panels makes my hands hurt.