Blu's New Street Animation: Big Bang Big Boom
If, like me, you're a sucker for stop motion animation, street art, slightly skewed theories of evolution and apocalyptic premonitions, the mere mention of a new street animation by Blu invokes your salivary glands. And, like a well trained dog, you stop whatever you're doing and sit to watch minutes of film that take months for the artist to create. Blu's newest release holds true to the artist's evolving aesthetic of outdoor illustrations. In true Blu fashion, Big Bang Big Boom starts small and quickly expands. Like Muto before it, outdoor illustrations multiply, converge, grow and devour each other, stumbling forward towards oblivion. This time however, Blu takes on the challe...Read more
The Twonky Movie Review
Dear All of You,I was not sleeping again in the middle of the middle of the other night and by pure inability-to-sleep-because-Helen-left me and sheer un-spellcheckable luck I happened to catch one of the greatest movies I've ever seen, on Turner Classic Movies. I was previously unaware that this movie existed before that night. The movie was called: The Twonky. I fell in love instently. I took notes while watching. What follows below is my as-it-happened notes and review, in poem form.If you haven't seen The Twonky, I've got bad news. It's almost impossible to find. I've checked. It's never been released on VHS, DVD, or any of that other type stuff. So if you haven't seen it, this review is...Read more
Until the Light Takes Us
Until the Light Takes Us will be showing at the Starz Film Center from January 29th - February 4th. Until the Light Takes Us tells the story of black metal. Part music scene and part cultural uprising, black metal rose to worldwide notoriety in the mid-nineties when a rash of suicides, murders, and church burnings accompanied the explosive artistic growth and output of a music scene that would forever redefine what heavy metal is and what it stands for to other musicians, artists and music fans world-wide. Until the Light Takes Us goes behind the highly sensationalized media reports of "Satanists running amok in Europe" to examine the complex and largely misunderstood principles and...Read more
Flash Movie Review: Avatar!
In celebration of the 3 month anniversary of Helen leaving me for the second and only-last time, I went to the movies this weekend and watched Avatar. It was ok. It doesn't hold a goddamned candle to the greatest 3-D movie of all time, The Creature From The Black Lagoon. But when not compared to that, and if you can manage to side-step James Cameron's enormous ego (yes, he did pull off Terminator and Aliens, I'll give him that), Avatar ends up being an ok/watchable flick. Here's my official review of the film, in 85 words or less. It’s like watching Dances With Wolves, if Kevin Costner had swallowed a box of day-glow colored Crayola crayons, and then found a way to construct previously...Read more
In retrospect: the Genius of Terry Gilliam.
The British animator, director, writer, and actor Terry Gilliam (most popularly known for his unique style of animation on the series Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and for directing films such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Brazil) had developed a style of stop-motion 2D animation unparalleled by any other animator. His style is completely surreal and spontaneous, as he takes combinations of cutouts from random photographs, drawings, and scraps of paper—turning them into entertaining and bizarre masterpieces. His style is easily recognizable, and deserves a great amount of credit for his painstaking frame-by-frame pioneering. Terry Gilliam manipula...Read more
Where The Wild Things Art: A Promo Video
Illiterate is working with Leighton peterson at Bie Media to produce a short film about Where the Wild Things Art and our new gallery. Here's promo for the show on Friday. Stay tuned for more footage and even more roaring... Here's the first promo video we scrapped for obvious reasons... (Good and Plenty's + Faygo = mouthful of gross)...Read more
Let's Talk About Sex!
In her Green Porno series, Isabella Rossellini makes cute and very comical short videos about sex! Before you get too excited, I must tell you it's specifically about animal/insect sex. The videos are usually one to four minutes and give funny insights into the animal kingdom. The first season was focused on insects, and it looks like her new season focuses on sea animals (the third season is good, but I prefer the first two). While you're laughing, you might just learn something. Look at her page on the Sundance Channel. Watch the videos- DO IT! " /> ...Read more
Synesthesia with Murat Pak
The three-dimensional animations created by freelance designer and digital artist Murat Pak almost make synesthesia (that is, combining the senses or cross-wiring the senses) a reality to the common viewer. MASNAVI from Murat Pak on Vimeo. His work can be described as ambient tones of harmony combined with the Zen and otherworldly in a deliberately consciousness-amplifying manner. For the most part, his work may be simple, but it is beautiful: beautiful like the stones in a sand garden—but completely synthetic. One man’s thoughts and ideas have been melded into splendor reflected by that of the natural world…or more so the human subconscious...Read more
Dark Surrealism; playing with dolls: the Brothers Quay
Do you like dark surrealism that blends both the nightmarish and cryptic? Then the Brothers Quay may be just for what you are looking. These two American-born, multinational stop-motion animators seem to have a stroke of something special…and deliciously macabre. Their works generally feature dolls and figures—sometimes dismembered or altered in some way—in amazingly detailed sets. Their use of motion and space is incredibly intricate in some cases. The music, which comes from a wide range of composers, is most definitely suiting for their themes and modern tastes (there are also some people who have synched clips from Brothers Quay productions with mus...Read more
Color Keying 101 circa 1955
It has recently come to my attention after discussing Illiterate's upcoming event CMYK+RGB with friends and strangers alike, that outside the insular design and art community, the terms "CMYK" and "RGB", along with their underlying connotations regarding print and digital media, mean about as much to most people as any other industry specific acronym: NFM (Not Fucking Much). And honestly, even as someone somewhat familiar with tossing these letters around to differentiate between digital and print projects, I too was a bit rusty on the particulars and underlying principals of these two additive and subtractive color processes. Thank god for 1955 Encyclopedia Brittanica . Check out t...Read more