Strongbad's email and art works
Many of you FTVMS203 students might be familiar with www.homestarrunner.com. It is a cartoon website but mostly viewed by teengers and adults. Its most popular character would be Strongbad. You can write email to him and if you are lucky or your email is just weired out, he will answer it and make it into an animation and publish it on the homestarrunner.com, so that fans can see how he makes fun of your email. Well, yes, that's what Strongbad does, making fun of people! I mean, otherwise he wouldn't be called StrongBAD, right?
Anyway, after taking this course, I think homestarrunner.com is a great example of showing some of the topics we have covered so far. First of all, Strongbad email makes the website different from any ordinary cartoon website. It involves interaction and creates a virtual community. Obviously, Strongbad himself is a made up character but someone in real life, on the other side of the computer, is responding to your email. It is almost like blogging. Strongbad (or should I say the creator of Strongbad) sometimes includes short webcam films in his emails. For example, if you go to strongbad email at www.homestarrunner.com, you'll find an email entitled "Death Metal" which has a short webcam film in it. This is related to the topic that we discussed this week about films in the digital age. Different from those 15 sec films at the nokia website, Strongbad email combines digital film and virtuality together rather than a film website for pure entertainment.
There is also an animation series called "Teen Girl Squad" created by Strongbad. An animation series with a group of random teen girls in stick figures. In recent years, 3D animations have dominated the industry. From Monster Inc. to Hoodwinked. We hardly see any 2D animations now. I mean I was wowed by how real the ocean looked in Finding Nemo, but what happend to imgination? Everybody knows what water looks like, but what we want to see is what quirky things animation can do about the water, not how much it can get the water to look like real water. Todate, 3D animations are trying too hard to achieve the 'hypereality' and forgetting about the original element about animation. Compare to those big budget 3D animations, Strongbad's "Teen Girl Squad" might seem roughly sketched (I mean, he did it on refil paper...), but it is different. When was the last time you see stick figure animations in the theatre or on TV. In the digital age, it is all about being quirky, which is why digital films are so popular. The 'Grass root' culture is taking over.
Anyway, hope you guys enjoy Strongbad's email and his "Teen Girl Squad".
-Karen
Anyway, after taking this course, I think homestarrunner.com is a great example of showing some of the topics we have covered so far. First of all, Strongbad email makes the website different from any ordinary cartoon website. It involves interaction and creates a virtual community. Obviously, Strongbad himself is a made up character but someone in real life, on the other side of the computer, is responding to your email. It is almost like blogging. Strongbad (or should I say the creator of Strongbad) sometimes includes short webcam films in his emails. For example, if you go to strongbad email at www.homestarrunner.com, you'll find an email entitled "Death Metal" which has a short webcam film in it. This is related to the topic that we discussed this week about films in the digital age. Different from those 15 sec films at the nokia website, Strongbad email combines digital film and virtuality together rather than a film website for pure entertainment.
There is also an animation series called "Teen Girl Squad" created by Strongbad. An animation series with a group of random teen girls in stick figures. In recent years, 3D animations have dominated the industry. From Monster Inc. to Hoodwinked. We hardly see any 2D animations now. I mean I was wowed by how real the ocean looked in Finding Nemo, but what happend to imgination? Everybody knows what water looks like, but what we want to see is what quirky things animation can do about the water, not how much it can get the water to look like real water. Todate, 3D animations are trying too hard to achieve the 'hypereality' and forgetting about the original element about animation. Compare to those big budget 3D animations, Strongbad's "Teen Girl Squad" might seem roughly sketched (I mean, he did it on refil paper...), but it is different. When was the last time you see stick figure animations in the theatre or on TV. In the digital age, it is all about being quirky, which is why digital films are so popular. The 'Grass root' culture is taking over.
Anyway, hope you guys enjoy Strongbad's email and his "Teen Girl Squad".
-Karen
posted by Anonymous at 3:26 pm
1 Comments:
Teen Girl Squad is brilliant. I wish they'd make another series.
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