while ago, I posted about Long Ago & Far Away. At the time, I couldn't really find any videos on the internet of it, and I kind of think I wouldn't have known how to embed them anyhow. I'm a little amazed, looking all the way back then, that this blog has been around for three years at this point. Anyway, I was looking back at those old videos again because my younger brother and I decided to watch an old paleontology program that we used to watch all the time when we were little. I randomly looked them up on youtube, and lo and behold, someone's posted quite a few of them, including one of my favorites, Svatohor.
There are three parts in all. It's a pretty intense stop animation. I think I get some of my creepy, aesthetic leanings from having watched these things. My mother said there was also a creepy french circus claymation one, but I have no memory of it. It is actually one of my aspirations to, at some point, do a stop animation with dolls and a set I have designed and made myself. Stop animations have such an interesting atmosphere to them that really adds to stories like this Russian folklore.
Of course, one of my other favorites was the phenomenally done Wind in the Willows.
This was also a stop animation, and it was terribly British in an awesome way. Of course, it features animals that are known only by what species they are (obviously there is not more than ONE Rat, Mole, Toad or Badger. These creatures simply appear and are only men for some reason). Mr. Toad is akin to a Bertie Wooster who hasn't a Jeeves, and Mole, Rat, and Badger are the straight men who smack him in the head from time to time. Like Svatohor, the stop animation lends a great atmosphere. Because a great deal of time was spent on these projects because they are stop animation, it often feels as though their worlds have more depth to them then a good deal of the cgi stuff coming out now. A prime example of this would be Tim Burton's latest version of Alice in Wonderland, which felt exceedingly one note, obvious, and flat to me. Like anything else (for example, mass manufacture over something hand done) there are pluses and minuses, and budget cuts and time saving leads to a loss of attention to detail and an obvious passion in the project.
Finally, I finished my RISD application a week or so ago. We were supposed to send in three drawings: one of a bicycle, one that used both sides of the paper, and one of something from three different perspectives. I am really hoping they haven't gotten any bicycle drawings quite like this yet:
I really like tea.
