a cat, a fish, a piano

February 10, 2006 12:10 AM

Riba - a gorgeous animation with great 3-D effects - very charming! (6 min. QT clip) (via robot wisdom)
posted by madamjujujive (18 comments total)

reminds me of the triplets of belleville - using cgi to look like classic animation. Thanks.
posted by FeldBum at 12:35 AM on February 10, 2006

teh awesome! thanks!
posted by matteo at 12:39 AM on February 10, 2006

It's very a very beautiful piece and brilliantly executed....but was it wrong of me to assume the fish was going to get eaten?
posted by djn1976 at 12:54 AM on February 10, 2006

It's not bad, but it's not great either. It had some nice images and cool music, but the story boils down to: elderly music-loving French cat is helped by way of magical fish-ex-machina. Not as deep as it seems at first.
posted by JHarris at 1:25 AM on February 10, 2006

I absolutely adored that. Thank you!
posted by ford and the prefects at 1:54 AM on February 10, 2006

I swear, i've had so many precognitive mefi fpp's it's ridiculous. I saw this one via Screenhead, after I had read this thread [and looked around a little].

Fine film though! The way it uses floating-style cel shading around each element is well done, though i think it might be better to view realtime nowadays -- that movie took me way too long to load.
posted by phylum sinter at 2:10 AM on February 10, 2006

very, very, nice...

thanks much for this link...this is what I come to MeFi for!
If you liked the famous Muppet movie, you'll also like this one!
posted by HuronBob at 2:37 AM on February 10, 2006

very pretty.

the cat puts his staff through the window right off the bat though.

related:

posted by beerbajay at 2:49 AM on February 10, 2006

Lovely!
posted by Drexen at 3:21 AM on February 10, 2006

C'est bon, madamjujujive. Animation magnifique.

on preview: mathowie, nice addition putting the title in the page.
posted by three blind mice at 3:31 AM on February 10, 2006

the cat puts his staff through the window...

It's a magic land with magic windows...DUH!
posted by sexymofo at 4:19 AM on February 10, 2006

The glass looks like water, fish live in water....but i must admit this was the only thing that broke the continuity for me as well, on first preview.

re: Deux-Ex-fish comment above. I think this element is outweighed by the metaphor/paradox of the cat swallowed happily by the thing he could have consumed easily earlier if he so desired.

If 'he' had given into his natural craving (cat in same room as fish) he would have eaten his dream. Instead, he lets his art - the piano - consume him, and becomes complete.

Is excellent, thank you very much. Just what i needed on a Friday evening.
posted by rawfishy at 5:26 AM on February 10, 2006

Is there a way to get the *latest* version of quicktime (which this apparently needs) without it installing fucking iTunes too?
posted by notsnot at 7:11 AM on February 10, 2006

noshot:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalone.html
posted by Tallguy at 7:52 AM on February 10, 2006

Did we kill the server? I'm not getting any video out of them, and directly downloading it fails as well.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:00 AM on February 10, 2006

Hmmm. It indeed seems to be down, fff. Drat.

For any who are interested, the parent site is one of the animators, and he has a nice gallery of images from the clip.
posted by madamjujujive at 10:45 AM on February 10, 2006

re: Deux-Ex-fish comment above. I think this element is outweighed by the metaphor/paradox of the cat swallowed happily by the thing he could have consumed easily earlier if he so desired.

Not only that, but what did he do with the fish? He placed it in water, something a (normal) fish would have needed to remain alive. In return, the fish immerses the cat in the opportunity to play music, which obviously brings the cat to life.

Something about that gets me, much in the way that part in New York Doll does where they're showing Arthur pawning his instruments. I don't think you really have to be a musician to get that, though. Most people have things which bring them to life that aren't as big a part of their lives as they'd like.

I downloaded a copy of the movie. I don't have the bandwidth to mirror it on my server, but if anyone does, I'd happily pass it along so people can watch.
posted by weston at 1:12 PM on February 10, 2006

Does anyone have a mirror of this?
posted by rhapsodie at 2:04 PM on February 10, 2006