My response to the two videos below:
When at a Certain Party in NYC - Amy Schmitt 2011
When at a Certain Party in NYC from Amy Schmitt on Vimeo.
I chose this animated poem because I really like the different textures it uses, it rally gives it a graphic design edge and make it more interesting and eye catching. The shapes are really simple, but it looks effective with all of the textures. I also really liked the colours used, they look dull and dark, reflecting the poem's subject and point of never being as good, rich or attractive as the people you observe in the streets of New York. It's really effective how the animation fits with the words of the poem, for example, at the start when it says "Wherever you’re from sucks and wherever you grew up sucks" the characters is on a mode of public transport, the background shows mountains, tress, cows and grass, a somewhat boring environment for a party. The train passes though a tunnel and then the background becomes the complete opposite, a busy town with bridges, shops, bars and people dining. The animation is smooth and flows together really well.
POEM:
"Wherever you’re from sucks,
and wherever you grew up sucks,
and everyone here lives in a converted
chocolate factory or deconsecrated church
without an ugly lamp or souvenir coffee cup
in sight, but only carefully edited objets like
the Lacanian soap dispenser in the kitchen
that looks like an industrial age dildo, and
when you rifle through the bathroom
looking for a spare tampon, you discover
that even their toothpaste is somehow more
desirable than yours. And later you go
with a world famous critic to eat a plate
of sushi prepared by a world famous chef from
Sweden and the roll is conceived to look like
“a strand of pearls around a white throat,” and is
so confusingly beautiful that it makes itself
impossible to eat. And your friend back home—-
who says the pioneers who first settled
the great asphalt parking lot of our
middle were not in fact heroic but really
the chubby ones who lacked the imagination
to go all the way to California—it could be that
she’s on to something. Because, admit it,
when you look at the people on these streets,
the razor-blade women with their strategic bones
and the men wearing Amish pants with
interesting zippers, it’s pretty clear that you
will never cut it anywhere that constitutes
a where, that even ordering a pint of tuna salad in
a deli is an illustrative exercise in self-doubt.
So when you see the dogs on the high-rise elevators
practically tweaking, panting all the way down
from the 19th floor to the 1st, dying to get on
with their long planned business of snuffling
trash or peeing on something to which all day
they’ve been looking forward, what you want is
to be on the fastest Conestoga home, where the other
losers live and where the tasteless azaleas are,
as we speak, halfheartedly exploding."
Typography - Ronnie Bruce
Poem by Taylor Mali
Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.
I really liked the different fonts used in the animation, the different fonts work well to capture the audience's attention, but also to empathize the point of the poem. Powerful works are written in CAPITALS and weaker words are written in swirly italic lettering. I also liked the textured background, I feel it worked greatly against the bold black lettering, if the background was just a block colour or white, it would not have the same effect on the audience. I also really like the way the directions and point of views flip and change throughout the animation, making it look more interesting and graphical. The animator made some parts of the animation pan down across the lettering, this also looks really effective for a typography animation
