Animated Thoughts: Art Comes in Many Forms, pt. 5

Did something a little different this holiday season. For a couple months now, Fever has been advertising a candlelight music program at one of the churches in my area. I'm not really into "people" events, per se, but I do love attending the church candlelight midnight services on Christmas Eve. And I have been listening to a lot of Mozart and Vivaldi lately--in addition to the Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 soundtracks. So, after a little back-and-forth where I looked for legitimate excuses not to go, I begrudgingly bought the ticket a couple hours before the performance (Bah, Humbug!).

Wasn't sure what to expect and I admit to being a little crestfallen about how it wouldn't be a "true" candlelight performance--the "candles" would be those fake candles with LED lighting. Not a big deal, really, but over a short period of time you start to see repeating patterns in the "flickering" of the LEDs. Again, it's a minor quibble, but it kind of takes me out of the immersive experience when the candles synchronize for a second or two and the pulsing looks like a wave of light and shadow washing across the candles more akin to a stock ticker. It's kind of hard to explain, but the 'Beta Movement' was there, I assure you.

In the end though, it was a very nice program and I'm glad I attended. The performers were very skilled at their craft and effortlessly built a rapport with the audience. The playlist itself was solid. In addition to a couple traditional Christmas songs, they added in a little Vivaldi, some Debussy, and some Tchaikovsky. But the highlight of the evening for me was when they played a selection from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, Op 71.

Once the string quartet started playing that set, I was instantly transported to the world of animation and saw dancing flowers and faeries in my mind's eye as I heard "Russian Dance", "Waltz of the Flowers", and "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy". Forty-six years after the first time I saw it, Disney's Fantasia is still one of my favorite animated features of all time and it still holds such a treasured place in my heart. 

Pixar director, screenwriter, and storyboard artist Madeline Sharifian once said "Classical music makes tiny worlds feel so grand." I would add that there's just something about animation that makes classical music so accessible.

As we prepare to close the books on 2024, I hope everyone out there has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year filled with wonderful memories of family and friends. :)

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Animated Thoughts: Art Comes in Many Forms, pt. 4

So while the weather was still good, late last month I drove out the John Ball Zoo. It was one of the final weekends for their 'Dinosaur Hunt' event where they had this big open-air display containing life-sized animatronic dinosaurs, along with a number of others scattered around the rest of the zoo. 

They did a decent job with the interactivity. There were motion-sensors and pressure-sensors near some of the models. And when you passed by or intentionally moved into one of the sensor fields, the dinosaurs would come "alive".

It was all relatively basic motion, head and tail movement, mouths opening and closing, stuff like that. We're still dealing with the limits of the technology, you know? So it didn't bother me. And all the kids running around still thought that they were pretty cool. I could've done without the background music though. Got tired of hearing the Jurassic Park soundtrack real fast. But, that's what headphones are for.

As I wandered through the exhibit, I pondered some of the advice I received from the R.I.T. professor who taught me 2d hand drawn animation: former Disney animator Jack Slutsky.

One of the exercises that Jack had us do back then was go to a public place, sit down on a bench, and do multiple gesture drawings of people.

Later on in life, I would expand his advice to doing size comparisons at museums and zoos. It started with figuring out how a normal-sized human compares to a dinosaur skeleton. Then finding size-comparable animals at the zoos and observing how they moved. Obviously, there's a big difference between a T-Rex and an elephant. However, you can get a feel for certain things--like how their muscles would deal with gravity when they're moving all that body mass. Or how fast they might be able to move. I don't have a project that requires such knowledge right now, but it's a good thought exercise and I'm glad to have in my back pocket just in case I need it in the future.

Afterwards, I couldn't leave the Zoo without taking some photos of the flowers while they were still in bloom. Winter will be here soon enough.

And the critters at the John Ball Zoo are always interesting. I spent a fair amount of time watching the new lynx enclosure. Apparently though, Mom wasn't in the mood to play.

Then there was this chubby chipmunk outside of the lynx enclosure.

The Otters also decided not to play while I was watching them, but rather they got snuggly for an after-lunch nap.

This visit to the zoo left me with a lot to think about. I have to admit, once again I was more interested in how the technology worked than the novelty of the exhibit itself. Might look up motion and pressure sensors and see how they operate--more to the point, how they could be tied into animation installations. Chapter 24 in Maureen Furniss's book deals with animation in art and it does cover animation installations--like the ones Elainie Lillios and Bonnie Mitchell used to bring to KAFI back in the day. Would be fun to set one up for my students to experience once we get to that chapter. Even moreso to show them how it's done. Another tool for their animator's toolkit.

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Animated Thoughts: ASIFA International Animation Day 2024

Happy International Animation Day!!