Pet Peeve: Animation Cels on the Wall

[nemorathwald]

As an artist my only interest has been to tell stories and bring characters to life, which is why I revere comics, puppets, costumes and animation as art but disdain museums as decoration. Why frame a cel of animation or a page from a comic book and hang it on a wall? I would feel like I was using something wonderful for something pointless. I have no interest in images in frames on walls, lacking narrative context; but if you do, there are lots of them already created specifically for that, which are actually good at it. "Animation" is a word meaning "life." A collectable cel in isolation looks like a cross section surgically extracted with a dull razor from the context where it worked. It's as ugly as a taxidermy kitten.

Comments

Hrm...

[wormquartet.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. I collect old video games and video game systems rather than something like animation cels or baseball cards because you can PLAY with them. :) I'm not one of those "leave it in the package" kinda people either...noooo way dammit, if I get an Atari 2600 game I didn't have, I don't care how valuable it is, I'm gonna friggin' pop it open and PLAY it.

Incidently, I've got 2 comic books hanging on my wall:

1. Oni Double Feature #1, signed by Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes. This is on my wall cuz I'm a big friggin' Kevin Smith fan, and it looks cool next to my comic book collection, dammit.

2. Webspinners - Tales of Spider-Man #11. This is on my wall because the letters column has a letter from ME in it, so it has personal value.

Both are primarily for resminiscence and conversation-starting purposes, and neither is framed...they're just in bags so they can easily be taken down and read at any moment. :)

My nipples burn with apathy as I contemplate spackle,
-=ShoEboX=-

[wulfthestampede.livejournal.com]

i collect dust.....its not very useful, but its special, becuz some of it used to be part of me......ah, nostalgia!!

[wulfthestampede.livejournal.com]

oh...btw, Taxidermy Kitten would be a rad name for a band.....

[treebones.livejournal.com]

*smile* Unless you're one of the people for whom that one image conjures the entire animation when you look at it. Using decorations as memory cascade triggers for important, fun, or otherwise rewarding memories isn't, I believe, particularly rare.

Is this one of the things you are wired differently for? Or had you just not made that connection for the cel image people? I'm truly curious. (:

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

For them does it somehow bring back the feeling of what it was like to watch the complete motion picture? Music, soundtrack, voice artists, backgrounds, script. For me the best flat motionless image to trigger such a memory would be one created specifically to look good standing still. However, since Disney, for instance, tended to wash and re-use their cels, most so-called "collectable cels are unapologetic and overt fakes. They do not appear anywhere in the actual film, and were drawn and painted for the collectables market as a montage of characters specifically to look good standing still, in order to evoke the feelings to which you refer. An authentic cel depicting one character who is halfway through leaping off the frame, or doing some un-identifiable action while not facing the viewer, wouldn't trigger memories.

When I was young I used to put Will Vinton claymation specials in the VCR and... watch... them... one... frame... at... a... time. A full half-hour's worth. For me this is the "True Worship" of the illusion of motion. In this way I see and understand the animator's technique in a way that only one frame would never impart.

If you've been to my house recently, you've seen my own claymation figure, complete with armature, sitting on the bookshelf outside my room. I possess him only because I made him.

[treebones.livejournal.com]

Ah. The answer is, I don't know. But if I cross paths with the one person I know with a thing for Disney, I'll ask. (:

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

You know two people with a thing for Disney, including me. And if you meet Cory Doctorow at Penguicon, it'll be three. :)

[wulfthestampede.livejournal.com]

matt where have u been?

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Right here. Why do you ask?