The big festival this week was of course SOFA. I went to Eyeworks Experimental Animation Festival instead. This event screened both classic and new experimental animation. Each animation utilized materials not limited to paper or pen; all of them obviously experimental, a few were perhaps created while going through a bad trip. Good thing an animators bad trip equals entertaining cinema. Someone wins in the end. Featured artists included some of SAIC faculty and students, including Jim Trainer, Matt Marsen, and Aaron Wendell (student).
There was a general feeling in all of the animation of a sort of extreme disconnect from reality which was both comforting at times and extremely unnerving. Jim Trainer's The Presentation Theme left everyone in a confused stupor. The description does the animation justice: "A Peruvian prisoner of war finds himself outmaneuvered by a hematophagous priestess. Based on a true story."
Perhaps my favorite animations had to be Accumulonimbus, dwellings, The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century AD and Mermaid. You can really feel the creative mind at work in each of these films, but its a creativity that doesn't take itself too seriously. The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century AD, by Dash Shaw, is about a man pretending to be a droid model so he can pose nude for academic figure drawing lessons in order to track down and destroy... Mermaid is no less wondrous. It is the story of "Carl and Doris, the darlings of marine biology whose marriage becomes strained under the weight of the giant squid".
Mermaid clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDud1qTLiGA
Unclothed Man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLxFegbyWwQ
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