Animator. Director. Artist. Scapegoat.
Here they are, in order, in time for Passover: all Ten Plagues I animated for Seder-Masochism, my feature-film-in-progress. Yes, they will be joined together by a unifying narrative device in the final film, but for now they exist as separate clips. Click on each one for more information and higher resolution. Like this work? Donate here.
“4 Else, if thou refuse to let my people go, behold, to morrow will I bring the locusts into thy coast:
“5 And they shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth: and they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you from the hail, and shall eat every tree which groweth for you out of the field:” –Exodus 10, KJV
Wrapping up here with the final stanzas of Oingo Boingo’s 1982 “Insects,” which I also used in “Lice” and “Flies.” Lyrics:
Insects make me scream and shout!
They don’t know what life’s about
They don’t have blood
They’ve got too many legs
They don’t have brains in their heads
They know they’ll rule the world someday
They bite and sting me anyway
They bite and sting and SUCK
They bite and sting and SUCK SUCK SUCK
They bite and sting and SUCK SUCK SUCK
Dance (Dance)
Those insects make me –
I just drew this. What’s its name?
Yes, I know locusts hop. But I also want mine to march.
The Seventh Plague: Hail (rough) from Nina Paley on Vimeo.
“23 And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven: and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground; and the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt.
“24 So there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous, such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.
“25 And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field.
“26 Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no hail. –Exodus 9
Music: Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here by Nat Shilkret, which you can download for free here.
This has many little hailstones and cloud spirals and fiddly little things that get out of alignment easily and slow down Flash with their numerousity*. It’s under 30 seconds. It’s not perfect but I’m tired so I’m just putting it online now so I can move on. I may go back and fix some things before I put it in the final movie.
*I just made up the word “numerousity”. I prefer it to the more dictionarily** acceptable word “volume” because it’s more specific, and I prefer it to “numerousness” because it feels less awkward, in spite of not actually being a word. Update: it is a word, I was just misspelling it! Thanks commenter Joe.
** I just made up “dictionarily” too.