I wish I could favourite a newspost. This stuff is all very interesting, and I like your reviews of them!
P.S. I also liked Problem Solverz ?
The Pete Best of internet animation
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Comments
Wow suddenly I feel less alone in this world
Because that man wanted to FUCK you, and maybe you'd would get sick with AIDS
I reacted with a smiling man
Thebigsnitthebigsnitthebigsnitthebigsnitthebigsnitthebigsnitthebigsnitthebigsnitthebigsnitthebigsnitthebigsnitthebigsn actually I'm glad you instead showed things that haven't had as much attention, even if The Big Snit is one of my favourites.
I think the thing with ac-bu's success vs. Problem Solverz is that ac-bu has that ironic deconstructionist element the kids love so much these days. By deliberately misusing Adobe tools that would be obvious to anyone familiar with them, and pointing loudly at it. Problem Solverz is a show (already at a disadvatage) with plot, so wouldn't have as easy a time making a statement about the medium. It's unfair that to get away with "ugly" you have to make that the sole purpose, but people want to be reassured that what they're looking at is indeed ironic, and thus OK to like, or be impelled to like it for the same reason even if it goes against their gut.
It's funny that now people still export Flash animations with the default low quality streaming audio of yesteryear *because* of its association with the software. It's cosy and reminds one of simpler times.
Because of the much larger palette of colours available in software today, to use it to its boundaries would actually be to use those subtler shades alongside the bright ones. (If you were in fact not comparing Problem Solverz's use of off-the-shelf Flash to Weldon's custom-tailored-to-the-one-short software from 40 years ago, then ignore that bit.)
I think by using every tool available by a piece of software, the result can appear "thoughtless" or "lazy" — even if it was a very conscious and concerted effort — because the style ultimately becomes more representative of the software (culturally, the automated element) than the artist (the thinking element, supposed to be "in charge" of the art), as it approaches that program's limitations.
The old software (in Weldon's case "by right" since he wrote the code, and had one short to show all of what it was capable of) the artist would push to its limits because it *was* limited (leading to the interesting results idiosyncratic of the tool e.g. all Scanimate stuff looks wonderfully "Scanimate"). Now the boundaries are set by the artist within the much broader range present in modern tools. (Not saying modern Flash isn't recognisable, it certainly is. I guess I'm speaking at a lower-level, like what video codecs and file formats can portray now. Or just that there's way more overlap between programs now, so you can mix and match to "obfuscate" the individual programs' distinctions.)
Paradoxically then, by having all the range of tools and colours we have, it's how we limit them that defines a person's style (speaking strictly from the angle of starting with the tool: not "what can/can't I do with this?" but "what should/shouldn't I do with this?"). Denying the use of certain things representative of the software's "look" hopefully lets the artist speak instead.
Now what was the point of that? I suppose it's I can't like Problem Solverz because the artist is obfuscated by the tools he used, rather than the other way around like in Of Dice and Men (To Be, for instance, is still recognisable as Weldon's, and that's traditional). Or, simply I don't have as strong a gut lol.
This is a really nice post, and would be cool if you did more in this format with your commentary and tangents. And I showed my parents Rectangle & Rectangles & Rectangle a while back, in the environment you suggested; it was a fun shared trip!
(edit: some expansion but maybe that just confused it more)
I'm on board with you there - I should clarify that I'm not suggesting PS was done in the same way as of dice and men where the intent was to make full use of the tools, but they are similar in how they embrace the weirdness of computer animation instead of shying away from doing anything too extreme. In PS's case it's like a celebration of "the first thing anyone makes when they steal a copy of flash," which probably has some nostalgic value for me since I started fucking around in flash when I was nine and made my fair share of visually obnoxious and rainbow-gradient-overloaded flash movies. Another way of saying it, it's like if you took a real kid's kidpix canvas and said "what if we spent some time in that world? What would that even be?" I can acknowledge that not everyone is going to think that's an interesting idea or well executed, but I always got the impression that very few people even recognized that it was a deliberate choice.
The only reason I brought it up, actually, is I think of dice and men is a more refined and blatantly creative version of the aesthetic appeal of PS - it's visually loud, high contrast, and unabashedly computery - an acquired taste for sure, but I thought maybe putting several examples side by side would help to convert some people to liking it!
Maybe someday I'll sit down and make a proper "cartoon that does all the stuff flash can do" and we'll see what weird tricks I can Frankenstein together into a movie. It definitely doesn't have the same problem that the pinscreen thing has where it's constantly hitting it's head on it's own limitations, but there's definitely stuff that it excels at and some wacky "advanced" techniques
(Also, neat that you could do rectangle & rectangles with your parents!)
I like how bright the explosion flash is when the car explodes in Karate Kids, I'm impressed when effects create the illusion of a light brighter than a screen is expected to produce. The rest of it was great too!
Excellent article and short picks. Refreshing to see such substantial writing, it reminds me I should really get back into writing about what I like outside of twitter. Also your music is awesome, exactly the kind of stuff I've been looking for lately. Keep up the great overall artistic practice.
Hey thanks! Glad you like the music!
There needs to be more government funded programs like that out there. There are beautiful projects out there that haven’t been released because artists have to pay the bills and don’t have more time to finish them.
I somehow missed this comment till now!
Yeah it's a real bummer how the whole money thing seems to prevent great stuff from existing. At least the internet has broken Hollywood's stranglehold on entertainment somewhat, but as of now good internet stuff is few and far between, and just sort of seems like a little peephole into how great art could be if we knew how to set up the economics to support it. I don't know if government funding is a bureaucratically-feasible solution or not, but I would be supportive of such a thing in the US, if that ever exists. (I feel like the Andrew Yang UBI thing could have solved everything, but I guess he was too bad at getting people to vote for him!)
Anyway, hope you're doing well JB! Hmu sometime, huh?
I thought Problem Solverz was ugly and eye-bleeding but in an avant-garde experimental way and was interesting for that specific reason. It makes more sense when you see the original Adult Swim pilot. When you see what it was supposed to be. I felt the same way about that Cryptozoo animated film that was making the rounds a couple years ago, though that one wasn't even a comedy and took its story completely seriously despite the janky style.
I agree with Harvey's observation that this stuff becomes more acceptable to people when its presented in a non-narrative context, though I wonder how he'd explain the fact that we live in a world where internet cartoons like Interface and Ratboy Genius and Ena have fans? These things all have stories, even if they aren't presented in the most conventional way.
Some potential explanations for why people might hate problem solverz in a world where ratboy genius is beloved - at the time of it's release, I think a lot of people were pointing out the decline of animation quality on CN as things were homogenizing into a sort of thin-lined bubbly computery style (well, they called it the "calarts style") and animation nerds were lamenting the replacement of hand-drawn animation with increasingly inexpressive and cheap looking rigged animation. Then of course, once the party line is "haha wow this is the worst show ever" people pile on without really thinking twice about it. In contrast, an underground web animation that is the product of one outsider-artist guy wouldn't be seen in that same "this is what the animation industry has become" way. Liking ratboy genius feels like cheering on an underdog, but I bet if it was on mainstream cable TV it would be a different story.
PS is also a comedy show, and there's no better magnet for hate than trying and failing to be funny. Ratboy, not intentionally a comedy show, doesn't have this problem.
Emrox
Forgot to mention - there's a whole documentary on the pinscreen animation process, also on the NFB youtube, directed by the guy who animated the paint-on-film thing I linked here! Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ3DSFv4vAg