Alter's Blog is a tumblelog.

Storyboard for final project! There are two images there, tumblr’s doing a weird slide show thing with them.

I chose “David Shrigley” because you can’t go wrong with crude drawings, a macabre British sense of humor, and Blur. His style of video can be placed in the “hand-drawn” genre.

Blur Music Video

1. Structure and Composition- Despite the crudity of the drawings themselves, Shrigley’s compositions are surprising balanced and framed well- he clearly communicates the scenes visually. We know that in the beginning, we are looking through binoculars, and that it is a love story between a fairy and squirrel. The video vacillates between close-ups of the figures involved, and shots where the figures are up against large white or black space.

2. Image and Image Type- The images are crudely rendered, cartoonish figures in black and white, mostly of mundane, everyday life (besides the fairy lover and fairy warriors). This effect is an inescapable hilarity, regardless of whatever tragic story line takes place. The black and white and pathetic cartoonish renderings are very reductive, lending itself to a more humorous effect. The style mimics the art of children and the mentally ill, or someone who simply cannot draw.

3. Symbols and Symbol Types- Shrigley skews the perception of ordinary symbols into something twisted and macabre. The main character, a fairy, is culled from images of fairies from children’s books, but this fairy is just a crudely scrawled man with paltry wings. When the fairy is united with his lover- a squirrel- a kaleidoscope of nuts and hearts twirls around them. The psychedelic hallucination of love causes the squirrel to mistake the fairies head for a nut, and accidentally kills his lover. The fairy goes to pick a flower and it dies with cartoon “X’s” as its eyes. In combining the macabre and “innocent” cartoon imagery, Shrigley is parodying cartoon iconography.

4. Time- I tried turning down the volume and playing fast, chaotic music to the Shrigley video, but it just didn’t work. Which tells me that the video is paced slowly, along with the music. The video is also meant to illustrate a story- half of it is devoted to the “search” for the lover, and the bliss with the lover, the second half is devoted to their deaths. Each “incident” in the story line occurs within an equal amount of time.

5. Sound- The music of Blur is soft, slow, and bittersweet, which smooths out the crude disjointed images. The music, being bittersweet, allows you to both laugh at and feel sorry for the fate of the fairy and squirrel. Shrigley also superimposed the sound of a leaf-blower over the music towards the end, so the music does not drown out the humor, and the animation is allowed to be dominant over its purpose as a “music video,” briefly.

6. Intent- It’s hard to say exactly what Shrigley intended, but he probably just wanted to portray the tragic love story of a squirrel and a fairy. See “Meaning” below.

7. Meaning- A love between a fairy and a squirrel can never be. The squirrel mistakes his fairy lover’s head as a nut, and the fairy clan mistakes him as an enemy of fairies. A leaf blower blows the carcass of the squirrel, and no one will ever no their heartfelt tale. However, the leaf blower continues to blow and destroy indiscriminately, regardless of the “good” or “bad” outcome- he blows the carcass away but he also blows away the plane away from the Twin Towers, and the golf ball away from the hole in one. That’s just life- it creates and destroys indiscriminately.

The Seed

1. Structure and Composition- We never see the entirety of the scene. We only see portions of the environment the seed is traveling through. This helps us focus attention on the tiny seed, which might otherwise be lost if say, the entire body of the human being it travels through is shown.

2. Image and Image Type- The video consists of two styles- a black and white hand-drawn quality and a full color 3-dimensional style, that mimics 3-dimensional paper sculpture (like origami). I do not think the animators intended anything inherently significant about each style, but the changing of style throughout the video creates a satisfying visual symbiosis- our eyes get to “rest” from the 3-D color forms with the flat, quieter hand-drawn animation.

3. Symbols and Symbol Types- Natural forms are made geometric in this video. For example, the apple from which the seed comes from is a geometric prism, and so is the seed itself. The seed travels down a human intestine which resembles a hard-edged maze. When the “organic” tree grows, it grows more in the shape of a Mondrian painting than an actual tree. The geometric motif is a clear choice from the designers, perhaps better illustrating the cyclical “system” the seed journeys through

4. Time- The animators do not try the viewer’s patience. When presented with an elaborate maze, they do not make the see travel all the way through the maze, so that the seed can proceed onto the next scene. Each portion of the seed’s journey is about the same length in time as the previous and next. This creates a feeling that no portion is more significant than the other.

5. Sound- A “marching” sort of electronic music is in the background. The music reaches its crescendo when the seed enters the “pipeline.” But this is perhaps not because the pipeline is more significant than the intestinal track, but more of an acknowledgement of the seed’s determined but seemingly endless journey.

6. Intent- The collective intent of the piece is to illustrate a visually satisfying journey of an apple seed.

7. Meaning- Matter cannot be created or destroyed. Everyone, like the seed, must go on a personal journey of adversity, with no adversity having more significant meaning than the next. It’s just life, y’all!