Poetry Blog

Poetry is a great way to create a narrative within an animation. The use of words allows the artist to create a separate story around the already written ideas. Each of the examples that are on the PBS website are excellent in their own ways, however there were two that stood out amongst the rest.

I agreed with the recommendation of “The Language” and was my particular favorite.  The thing that I liked the most was the use of various close-ups throughout the animation. It gave emphasis to individual words, which is an important aspect of that particular animation and poem. The color choice was also very muted and worked well with the narration. I thought that the scene with the eyes was extremely successful and stood out in my mind. Having the eyes be in color when the rest of the animation was in black and white was a brilliant move and worked well to make the poem stand out amongst the animation.

I also really enjoyed “Shiver and You Have Weather” because it was a simplistic drawing piece that had an interesting poem. Last weeks blog discussed how beneficial simplistic drawing can be to an animation and I think that this is a great example of that concept. I particularly liked how many sections of the animation were continuous and used panning as a way to continue the narrative. The lightness of the drawing interested me also because it was different than anything I had seen before. Another aspect that I really enjoyed is the way that objects disappeared by getting “picked up by the wind”. It played really well with the poem and kept me interested throughout.