A brief partial history of the land called Israel. THIS IS NOT FINISHED. Please restrain yourself from nitpicking historical accuracy of costumes. This is a CARTOON. In progress. Not finished. But you get the idea.
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A little talk I gave about Seder-Masochism-in-progress and Civil Disobedience at Brooklyn Law School’s “Legal Hackathon” several weeks ago.
I’m finally using this great plugin for Flash, that even works with Ye Olde Macromedia Flash 8 (considered by most animators to be the best version ever made, far superior to Adobe’s crippled messes). The Library Symbol renaming tools alone have made me a fan.
Judah Maccabee will ultimately prove no match for these guys. They happen to look exactly like some Macedonians I used earlier in the scene, but I gave up designing more costumes.
Here’s our pal the Angel of Death, hero of the Old Testament, doing what He does best in a scene I’m working on. It’s been slow going working on Seder-Masocochism. In fact I’ve hardly worked on it at all. Instead I’ve been shuttling between New York and Urbana, IL, attending Ebertfest, hanging out with my Momz, and dating this guy. This “human relationships” stuff takes time, time I could be sitting in a lonely garret with nothing to do but animate. But don’t worry, Urbana will eventually become as boring as I remember it growing up, and I’ll turn inward for solace once again. Did I mention I plan to spend this Summer in Urbana? It’s just as hot and humid as New York, but the garbage cans are spaced more widely apart and there are fewer tourists. Plus I will have access to a swimming hole out in the prairie. After 8 consecutive Summers in densely-packed New York, that alone is reason for me to spend the hottest months away this year. Well that was exhausting. I recorded 3 Seders, 2 in Urbana IL and 1 in New York. One would have been enough, dayenu. I expect it’ll take months to go through all those hours of audio; that’s the masochism part. Here are the digital audio recorders the generous Kickstarter backers paid for:
Right before I flew to Urbana I was in Salem, MA, for a Sita screening and Q & A at the excellent Peabody Essex Museum. My friend Margo Burns met me there and snapped this photo in a nearby Salem churchyard:
This pretty much sums up the second half of the Book of Exodus (with Jesus standing in for Yahweh). I’m still processing metaphors for Seder-Masochism, even though I’m not animating right now. This afternoon I gave a Sita Sings the Blues talk to a roomful of 15-to-17-year-olds. Near the end I explained Free Culture and my stance against copyright, which led to some interesting discussion. Turns out most of them are manga fans, and familiar with publishers’ complaints about scanned and translated manga shared freely online. They all read them anyway (except one, who prefers to read entire manga in the bookstore). I asked them how they would choose to support artists they liked (once they had some disposable income) and they said:
Semi-related, I took an informal poll of how many would prefer to read a book on paper vs. an e-reader. The vast majority said paper, but what they really seemed to want was dual formats: paper copies to read comfortably and collect, and digital copies to search and reference. Makes sense to me. Only two of them had iPads, and none used them for “enhanced eBooks.” My favorite quote of the afternoon:
This outstanding use of animation and design to illustrate otherwise difficult or dry concepts is by Dermot O’Connor. Last night I finally watched Exodus, as research for my Seder-Masochism project. It was actually a much better movie than I expected. The film is mainly about showing a very hot young 1960 Paul Newman from various angles, mostly in sexy profile but sometimes portrait, but it’s also about the pressures that created Israel, and very sympathetic to the desire for a Jewish Homeland. Today, fortunately, we have this excellent alternative: Guess what I found at my parents’ house in Urbana? A VHS tape called “NINA PALEY DEMO REEL 1998.” It contained my very first animation as an adult (my very very first was when I was about 13, but I’ve lost those Super-8 reels). I didn’t go to school, I just taught myself from books and asking friends. It helped that I was dating an animator; he owned an animation table, which I’d never seen before let alone used, and it was on that that I made this: For “Cancer” I drew, scratched and painted this directly on an old 35mm porn film. My boyfriend-at-the-time’s sister had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Music is the Del Rubio Triplets singing the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction.” |
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♡ Copying is an act of love. Please copy. |
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