The Beautiful One With Wings

As I watched the Animation entitled The Beautiful One With Wings, I was very interested in it. Not only were the images very interesting, but, being a fan of poetry, the poem was also very touching and attention-grabbing. In fact, parts of the poem continue to come into my mind. I end up reciting them over and over in my head. I assume that that may have been one of the purposes of this animation. To help achieve this goal, the animator had the lines appear in the animation and also have them spoken. This, to me, causes the viewer to remember something better than just reading or just hearing audio.
The images the animator uses are somewhat plain, but effective. For example, at one point, the animator uses the drawing of the inside of a human ear and the poem line reads, "It's quiet here. I can't hear." As this is said, the ear drum slightly fades away before the rest of the picture. Also, a line says, "A bird, free yet caged." During this line there is a bird that flies in and lands on a pole. However, the bird isn't very detailed, it's more like a shadow, which gives the lines a little more than what they are interpreted. I could tell that the creator didn't want to over power the lyrics to the poem, but rather compliment them and give them more meaning then just lines written on a piece of paper. I feel that the poem is much more meaningful to the viewer/reader. It sends the message about how the writer is feeling much more clearly then words written on paper. Because the poem is written about being deaf, the poem seemed much more emotional as it's read by a deaf person. Overall, this animation was very affective in many ways than one. I believe that its purpose is to express some of the feelings of a person who is deaf. Two Words: mission accomplished.

Flash Forward Animations

I visited the Flash Forward website in search of an animation that I could write about and I found one that I thought was interesting but simple. The one I enjoyed to watch was the Color In Motion animation under the Application category in the film finalists. Once you enter the site and click on the movies choice, a pop up appears with the movies. Each little movie is about the emotions and words that a certain color expresses. For example, in the color blue's movie, some of the words to express the color are: free, deep, peaceful, and clean. As these words fade in and out there is a little blue man made up of (what looks like) popsicle sticks showing an action for these words.
The animation is somewhat simple because there are no cartoons of people or elaborate backgrounds. Instead there are two-dimensional figures and props that look mostly flat. Also, without speaking audio, the messages of what the color represents is used with music. In the blue movie, the music was very calming and relaxing, while the music in the red film was jazzy and more upbeat. This helps show that red is a much stronger and a bright color compared to the peaceful and cooling blue color.
This animation about color was not only enjoyable, but it helped me to understand a little more what colors are best for certain types of emotions or situations. It's very cute and I recommend watching it because it's so creative. Oh yes, I also remember one other thing I noticed. When the movie is paused at certain times, the frame freezes except for a small detail of movement that was moving in movie. It's very hard to explain! In the blue movie, when I paused it during a scene where there was water and a boat, the water continued to move while everything else was paused. The same thing happened when I paused the scene with a bird flying out of a cage. The bird and everything else would freeze, but the bird's wings would continue to flap so that it would stay in the air. A creative little thing there that I wouldn't have noticed before. I'm really glad that I picked to view this animation because it was very creative and charming. You should check out Color in Motion!