her morning elegance.

My roommate showed me this last year and I fell in love. Similar idea to what we did with the flipbooks, but not quite the same (stop-motion animation as opposed to frame by frame animation). Wonderful anyway (: enjoy.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY

10.6. flip the switch.

The flipbooks came out AWESOME. I loved looking at everyone's in class because there were so many great, diverse approaches to the project. Some that really stood out to me were Kasey, Greg, Lea, and Mike. Kasey's little bug was incredibly realistic and had the most flow from frame to frame. Picking a simple figure but pairing it up with lots of motion was very effective. Greg's also brought the element of simplicity, some frames including just a few pencil marks. His artistic talent shone through and made for a fun sequence. Having two notebooks as opposed to one seemed to serve as consequence to lack of space as multiple VHS tapes do, but it made for a nice break and brought more interst to the second half. Lea's stood out to me for her use of brihgt color, and more-so, the blending that occured as the frames progressed, so that one color wasn't ever dropped completely without fading out or into another object. Being a nautical "junkie," I loevd the sailing ship, almost as much as I liked the red ball bouncing up the page. Mike's was great for the 3-D on 2-D effect, as the page was sliced open and a hand pulled it apart from the other side, like Porky Pig would do at the end of a Looney Tunes episode to let us know, "Th-th-th-th-that's all folks!" Not only was the page sliced open but it was closed back up again in the ending frames, as if all the images just seen had left with Porky back to Toon Town, or what you'd call that other dimension. I really enjoyed the blood splatter that morphed into flower petals, and reminded me of one of my favorite movies, "American Beauty."

Not to say the others weren't cool as hell also :).
Cara's brought ROYGBIV together in forms of jellybeans or bubbles and even transformed the word storm into stoves, as a forewarning to what would soon be falling from the sky. The "abstract life" title held true and she used it to her advantage. Jessica's had Batman (another love of mine) and made me laugh with the progression of the villainous frames. It had great flow into the different parts of the sequence and I liked that the entire pages were being used. Brian's used a lot of heart and club shapes, and with the positioning of the drawings on the vertical edge of the paper, brought to mind the motion of shuffling or flipping through a deck of cards. Maria's was unique for her use of real photographs, an dwas a true look at the frame by frame movement of two people. That it was two children , and a "brotherly moment," made it precious. Cheryl's use of a lime green, red, and black color scheme made the images POP with bold or bright color. Similar to mine in her use of spirals, it was effective in showing frames in motion. Gina's Pinnocchio sequence was aewsome because the little wooden face resembled the Disney version so well, but so much that I actually felt bad when he lost the tip of his outstretched nose. Would you say it was karma for lying? ;) I liked Ellery's approach because it kept with a common theme throughout, and had the potential to relay a message to its audience. Seeing the effects of nature vs. nature and how trees are constantly the losing element in the battle was sad, but true. Add humans to the fight and the poor things really take a punch...Dylan's was also inspirational, with the use of lyrics from songs I could recognize coming into form with each flip of a page. Almost made me sing along. The neon-style light that appeared with letters flashing SUBLIME flowed nicely and portrayed his passion for music.

It was wonderful to see the different styles and creativity that our class could produce, and I look forward to creating and viewing future projects.

10-1. don't hate, appreciate.

1952. The year brings to my mind an image of "Pleasantville." Stay at home mothers baking in the kitchen, bread-winning fathers coming home to dinner on the table, and adoring children at their sides. Fast forward twenty years and we see how drugs, alcohol, poverty, and freedoms have transformed society and separated it by age - one with a tight-ass, straight-edge older generation and a troubled, menacing youth. 1972s c"Clockwork Orange" portrays this successfully - and graphically. Gene Kelly's "Singing in the Rain" as used in Clockwork Orange becomes a tool for harsh mimicry, a way for younger generations to say: "Forget your happiness and your love, if you don't realize our pain we'll make you realize it by force." The irony of musical taste in this film is incredible. Gene Kelly is used to punish the innocent, while the classic genius and talent of Mozart is used to save a tattered soul. Is this to say technology has made us forget music as an artistic masterpiece and settle for digital prints??...Perhaps. But with the film's use of classical turned electronic music, it seems the message is more similar to our opera assignment - to take a previously established work of art and use technology to enhance it, so as the times change, the definition of masterpiece needn't change, only expand.

9-29. turning up the volume.

The introduction of color into film was an aspect that sparked a revolution - for film to become more real. Any color among black and white tradition is so intriguing; the pigments seem to POP off the screen. We see this in "Hello, Dolly" with its saturated reds and golds, or as Dorothy first finds herself in Munchkin Land among a bouquet of new hues and a yellow brick road. And I may have watched the colored fashion show scene from "The Women" a hundred times over if I was developing into my twenties in the same era color took the stage - the clothes and shoes are beautiful, and in a fashion sense, highly influential on some designs we see today. As the "real" revolution took new heights, audio jumped on the bandwagon. "Earthquake" of the 1920s may have caused some commotion in the theatres with its realistic sound fades and separated frequencies, but my uncultured mother ;) has yet to see the film or experience its "sense-around" audio qualities. I asked. She hadn't even heard of the thing. And after digital remastering and audio technologies of today, I am doubting it would have quite the same effect on her now.