Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Aesthetics veiwpoint, and Aardman

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.

7 comments:

Cliff Prince said...

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.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

What I noticed the most was the designs of things, especially the relief-objects on the walls.

Alex said...

I 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.

There 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.

Alex said...

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.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

... 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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creature_Comforts

Alex said...

Yes, but they were foreign, so a novelty still.

Did you guys get the Aardman Chevron adverts in the UK?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Beats me, I only watch TV shows on DVD.