The Retrospective

The Retrospective random header image

“Art is also a friend of mine. A Mexican guy…nice guy.”

March 9th, 2008 by

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDo_vs3Aip4

In my office at home I have a small TV and unfortunately it’s not hooked to cable or a DVD player. It’s sole use is to watch videos, which I don’t own many of to begin with. But going through my small collection I stumbled upon a gem: Nick Park of Aardman Animation’sWallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers”. The insane range of expressions Park is able to convey through these goofy lovable characters is amazing. Wallace’s dog, Gromit, for instance, doesn’t even speak but we know exactly how he feels in each scene.

Claymation is an art few select and even fewer do well. It’s a form of stop animation where each frame is built up to achieve a continuous motion. At it’s best, with tons of man hours put in, we will see anywhere from 5-30 minute shorts to feature length films (i.e. Chicken Run). Creature Comforts is another great animation by Park, which happens to be circulating facebook at the moment (my good friend and fellow artist, Racheal Anilyse, had some thoughts about it on her blog too).

I remember seeing these aired in Britain when I was a child. They took interviews from different scenarios in British life and created animal characters to match the voice of the interviewee and the environment to match the discussion topic. My favorite right now is the American 7 minute short on the creature’s opinion of Art. If you haven’t seen any of Park’s claymation mastery do yourself a favor and peep some on youtube. They are dead brilliant!

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Tags: Animation · Art2 Comments

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2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 2Slick Mar 9, 2008 at 7:08 pm

    lol….Hey I don’t want to look at your ugly face….I’m going to throw poo at you and thats art….

  • 2 Racheal Mar 10, 2008 at 12:15 am

    hey fiona…where oh where did you stumble upon this fantastic claymation? hmm…..it is a mystery for sure.
    i still love you.