Mike Johnston, like me, looks at the whole world from an aesthetics viewpoint.
... Anyway, it's one a.m. here, and I was just down posting a letter. And it's frost outside! Eeeeeek!!
The letter is to Nick Park. I had an idea for a story which I'd love to see made into an Aardman short-film (it'd be like five minutes). Of course the chance of it happening is like winning the lottery. But hey, it's a cheap lottery ticket, so I shot it off.
I was inspired by a DVD called Aardman Classics. They have made lots of stuff I never heard of, and some of it, like "Ident" (below), is wonderfully strange and abstract.
That "Ident" vid is a classic. I've seen it before -- the moment the doggie-thing gets "free" by flying through the mirror is such a transcendental bit of writing I could never have forgotten.
ReplyDeleteWhat I noticed the most was the designs of things, especially the relief-objects on the walls.
ReplyDeleteI remember going to the cinema in 1994 or 95 with my wife to see an evening of Aardman. It was strange sitting in the theater in Berkeley watching old electricity board ad's featuring early Creature Comfort characters, TV ad's I'd grown up with.
ReplyDeleteThere was 2 hours worth of stuff back then, I wonder if they were to have an Aardman festival now how many hours there'd be.
Oh, just before hopping on here, and since we're talking UK animators, I was just reading about David McKee of Mr Benn fame. Seems he had a lot more serious work kicking about, that would be well worth seeing. He is a fantastic illustrator, and a great humanitarian.
ReplyDelete... But those electricity ads can only have been a few years old in the mid-nineties, since the original Creature Comforts five-minute short film was from 1989.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creature_Comforts
Yes, but they were foreign, so a novelty still.
ReplyDeleteDid you guys get the Aardman Chevron adverts in the UK?
Beats me, I only watch TV shows on DVD.
ReplyDelete