animation

The Keyframe Bias

I love new metaphors for enduring experiences, and Jack Cheng’s got one with the keyframe bias. He’s chosen so well. The keyframe: a tool from hand-drawn animation now used in 3D animation and video compression and elsewhere too. The keyframe is the moment that matters most, the one that holds the most information. Time, experience, and memory are not spread evenly across the universe like cartoon peanut butter. They’re all lumpy—thin in some places, dense in others. The keyframe is the densest moment.

Go read Jack’s post—it’s terrific.

 

Brought to you By the Committee to Find and Rescue Alma

Apparently this short film by Pixar animator Rodrigo Blaas is only available for a limited time. Which is good, because otherwise an unlimited number of children would have their nightmares haunted forever.

(MetaFilterrific.)

 

Animanifestos

I like this neologism from Chris Coldewey: He calls the short, type-heavy, idea-rich videos that are used, more and more, to explain products and services “animanifestos.” Here’s one example.

As one of those people who often likes title sequences better than the movies they introduce, I like this trend a lot. It’s also very Rise of the Image, Fall of the Word—except (of course) the word isn’t falling out of the picture, it’s falling in to the video frame. Words spinning and dancing, bumping up into pictures, emphasizing (or contradicting!) the voice-over track… mmm, good stuff. More animanifestos, please.

To answer one question Chris poses in his post: This kind of animation is still mostly done in Adobe After Effects, but I think the field is wide-open for something more mass-market. Some new iMovie to After Effects’ Final Cut Pro. Prezi could grow to meet this need, if they made the tool a lot more flexible—so it was built for making media, not just giving presentations.

 

Prince Achmed BYO Remix

I’ve got one! But you’re going to have to be quick.

Right now, press play on the soundtrack here:

While that’s playing, drag the sound down to zero on this clip—from Prince Achmed, made (impossibly) in 1927 and thought to be the first one of the first animated films:

Hit play on the Prince Achmed clip when the music hits 0:22.

Matt: best genre ever.

Prince Achmed via the always-great Jillian Tamaki.

Update: Lots more on Lotte Reiniger, the director of Prince Achmed, here and here, thanks to Britta. You must click those links, scroll down and look at the stills. They just sent me spinning into a beauty-induced fugue state; I think I saved every single one into my Dropbox.

 

Annabel Scheme

Not a book trailer; more of an animated book cover. That wasn’t my initial intent, but sorta just how it evolved. As I was playing with the twisty lines in Processing, I found myself thinking: I want these writhing on the front of the book! Hmm. Some day.

You can see it mega-widescreen over on YouTube.

The soundtrack is a track by Boy Eats Drum Machine, one of my current favorites. Here he is on Amazon MP3.

More meta-notes here. My latest Kickstarter update here.