Idol

October 13, 2006 12:20 PM

Idol
posted by gwint (87 comments total)

Yeesh, how about a description?
posted by MegoSteve at 12:22 PM on October 13, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

Thanks, but no, I don't want to save that particular virus.
posted by Citizen Premier at 12:28 PM on October 13, 2006

Yeah, I'm at work so I can't watch .mov files, and you're not telling me what this is... come on. Gimme a reason to come back to this and watch it later.
posted by buriednexttoyou at 12:28 PM on October 13, 2006

Uh, what is this?
posted by OmieWise at 12:29 PM on October 13, 2006

that was a most awesome crash of my Firefox browser.
posted by docpops at 12:29 PM on October 13, 2006

Flagged.
Sticking around.
posted by PantsOfSCIENCE at 12:32 PM on October 13, 2006

I don't know what you guys are complaining about, but it was a quite excellent short animation/film. Worked great on Safari. It's about a gold idol found in a rabbit and two children that try to turn it into a jewel-making machine.
posted by neustile at 12:33 PM on October 13, 2006

Lame. I'm not going to click on an undescribed video at work.
posted by Kickstart70 at 12:33 PM on October 13, 2006

This is an animated movie about a girl who wants a muff, a boy who kills a rabbit for her, and the trickster devil inside that rabbit. Creepy, well animated and scored.
posted by boo_radley at 12:34 PM on October 13, 2006

"I'm not going to click on an undescribed video at work."

What about doing some work at work? Or are you overpayed?
posted by davy at 12:34 PM on October 13, 2006

Maybe it's a link to really shitty posting etiquette.
posted by Shfishp at 12:35 PM on October 13, 2006

Does anyone know about the kind of process/software used to create this sort of work? It was mostly 2-d drawings slightly animated and show in a very CGI-looking isometric pan. It was almost like they loaded 2-d textures into a 3d compositing app and moved them around.
posted by neustile at 12:35 PM on October 13, 2006

So there was an idol and a false idol, and it was animated and cool. But it did do something funny to firefox half way through.
posted by peeedro at 12:36 PM on October 13, 2006

Wow - I that that was cool. Thanks for the link.
posted by Staggering Jack at 12:38 PM on October 13, 2006

"What about doing some work at work? Or are you overpayed?"

why do you hate teh internets?
a description would've been nice, though.
good vid.
posted by Busithoth at 12:38 PM on October 13, 2006

That was the creepiest goddamn thing I've seen in long while. I loved it.

I'm running firefox also--no problems here.
posted by joedan at 12:40 PM on October 13, 2006

Apparently there's a DVD available

Artist's website
posted by neustile at 12:41 PM on October 13, 2006

That was pretty cool.
posted by hammurderer at 12:42 PM on October 13, 2006

Very cool. Maybe a short description letting people know that it was going to be a short animated film would have been nice, but too much detail would spoil it. No idea why people are flagging it.
posted by justkevin at 12:43 PM on October 13, 2006

Nice video. Unique way to showcase illustration. It felt a bit pseudo-Mark Ryden— I wonder if he ever made any animated shorts...

Oh, and everyone doesn't need to know that you flagged something, just STFU and flag it if you have a problem.
posted by lovejones at 12:44 PM on October 13, 2006

What do you know, 18 comments after 20 minutes, right on track, give or take...
posted by Pastabagel at 12:44 PM on October 13, 2006

What an evil boy and girl. Thank god this wasn't posted to Metachat. Killing bunnies is never good. I'm so glad the bunny comes back and the children are dealt with appropriately.

Also, every object had labels on it except the people. What is up with that?
posted by birdherder at 12:51 PM on October 13, 2006

two links about "Rabbit" by Run Wrake.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 12:54 PM on October 13, 2006

I agree, this was very cool. While I initially found all of the words distracting, I think it meshes really well with that faux-1940s-catalog style. I think I'll save this one right next to "Rejected".
posted by TheNewWazoo at 12:58 PM on October 13, 2006

Great animation; lame post. What is this, memepool?
posted by sportbucket at 12:59 PM on October 13, 2006

Stunning animation, a little to black for my taste in the subject matter. And yeah, the link could have used a bit of description.
posted by GuyZero at 1:01 PM on October 13, 2006

thx for those links MonkeySaltedNuts!! Looks like a combination of photoshop+aftereffects for the compositing. Must have taken forever. -- 16 months!
posted by neustile at 1:02 PM on October 13, 2006

A fantastic film! I'm a better man for having viewed it!
posted by soundofsuburbia at 1:09 PM on October 13, 2006

For those of you who can't see it, its sort of like those animation tournee compilations you saw in college that flow right along fine until they get to a Zagreb studio buzzkill.
posted by hal9k at 1:09 PM on October 13, 2006

Also: Windows Media and RealPlayer versions available from the BBC.
posted by sportbucket at 1:12 PM on October 13, 2006

COOL, IT TOTALLY CRASHED FIREFOX. THANKS 1 LINK, NO DESCRIPTION POSTER
posted by endivebreakfast at 1:12 PM on October 13, 2006

Great video. Worked fine in my Firefox. But yeah, descriptions are helpful.
posted by scottreynen at 1:13 PM on October 13, 2006

Stunning work. Thanks!
posted by dobbs at 1:19 PM on October 13, 2006

One more vote for "cool!"

And one more vote for "Shut your yap and do some work at work for once."
posted by elwoodwiles at 1:27 PM on October 13, 2006

Crashed your firefox, you say? MAYBE YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.
posted by boo_radley at 1:31 PM on October 13, 2006

Let me get this straight: people are upset that they weren't provided an executive summary because they're worried about getting in trouble for viewing it at work? That's the objection, here? Do you have any idea how stupid and self-serving that is and sounds? Get off Mefi at work if that's even an issue, knucklehead. Good grief.

If this place were any whinier, it'd be the Napa freakin' Valley.
posted by joe lisboa at 1:39 PM on October 13, 2006

I THOUGHT OCT 22ND WAS CAPSLOCK DAY NOT OCT 13TH.
posted by HyperBlue at 1:42 PM on October 13, 2006

The only thing worse than a one-word FPP to a YouTube is a one-word FPP to a 56 MEGABYTE FILE!!! This is a shitty post.
posted by StarForce5 at 1:44 PM on October 13, 2006

A fine life-lesson for children of all ages.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:44 PM on October 13, 2006

Does anyone know about the kind of process/software used to create this sort of work? It was mostly 2-d drawings slightly animated and show in a very CGI-looking isometric pan. It was almost like they loaded 2-d textures into a 3d compositing app and moved them around.

It's hard to say for sure, but you could probably do all of the animation (assuming competence, of course) in Adobe After Effects (Mac/Win) or Apple Motion 2 (Mac only, part of Final Cut Studio).

I think both apps offer some sort of 3-d type space for doing effects, or at least an approximation. i've seen very similar stuff done in Motion, so I know you could use that is you want to do that sort of work.
posted by illovich at 1:46 PM on October 13, 2006

No idea why people are flagging it.

Because this kind of ostentatious "I'm too cool to bother giving you a description, you'll just have to trust that I'm not an asshole or idiot" post pisses a lot of people off, including me. I didn't flag it, because it doesn't piss me off nearly as much as other things that piss me off, but I thought I'd explain it for you.
posted by languagehat at 1:48 PM on October 13, 2006

That was creepy-cool. Particularly liked the film's use of labeling. What a strange, strange concept.
posted by meh at 1:56 PM on October 13, 2006

2 things:

Good audio never gets enough credit. Watch it again and pay attention to the music and effects. Really well done.

Something about the pace and feel of it reminded me of The Brothers Quay.
posted by davebush at 2:04 PM on October 13, 2006

I saw a trailer for this a few months ago. It was made by scanning tons of children's vocabulary books from the 50s and animating them, thus the words and stuff.

Much darker than I expected. Cool.
posted by fungible at 2:05 PM on October 13, 2006

The post is perfectly fine. Screw you people who need to be spoonfed what to think and how to react.
posted by crunchland at 2:22 PM on October 13, 2006

While I agree a description would have been nice, to put more than a couple of disjointed words (e.g., "idol" "knife" "jewels") in the FPP would have strayed from the spirit of the animation (IMHO).

Also the links that MonkeySaltedNuts provided talk about how the animation was made and how look it took (for people that like to read about these types of details).
posted by parilous at 2:25 PM on October 13, 2006

This was delightful and I was especially happy to have no preconceptions going into watching it -- I might not have started or finished otherwise. A tiny bit of description might have been useful.

I had a couple of books illustrated by this guy when I was a kid, so it was very nostalgic.
posted by dhartung at 2:50 PM on October 13, 2006

I wish I could complain about that awesome video I just got to watch for free, but I can't really think of anything to complain about.
posted by Durhey at 2:54 PM on October 13, 2006

crunchland writes "The post is perfectly fine. Screw you people who need to be spoonfed what to think and how to react."

Nice strawman, crunchland. The post is, by no means, fine. It's a single word linked to a very long file. At this point it's pretty clear what that file is and why folks might be interested in downloading it, and what they might expect from doing so, but when it was posted, and for a bunch of comments thereafter, it was a piece of shit post. This spoonfeeding line is bullshit. I actually really like one word posts, but they work best when they're either html or small files. Larger files do need to be justified in some way.
posted by OmieWise at 2:55 PM on October 13, 2006

I also meant to say that just a few words in the first comment could have taken care of the issue, avoided the contretemps, preserved the mystery and made everyone (well, most everyone) happy.
posted by OmieWise at 2:57 PM on October 13, 2006

Shit post.
posted by knave at 3:12 PM on October 13, 2006

good post ... by the way, there's this wonderful thing on the bottom of your browser that tells you what kind of link you're about to click when you move the mouse over the link
posted by pyramid termite at 3:27 PM on October 13, 2006

Great movie, horrible post.

What an evil boy and girl. Thank god this wasn't posted to Metachat. Killing bunnies is never good.

This was posted on metachat ages ago, can't find the link atm though.
posted by bigmusic at 3:38 PM on October 13, 2006

For anyone curious, I'm pretty sure the slightly off-putting song that plays in brief bursts throughout the short film is a Boards of Canada track off of "Geoghaddi". A short thirty-second Boards of Canada song was also used in Salad Fingers.

For all the people whining about this post, please save it for Metatalk, wouldya? It's far more annoying to have to sift through a few dozen people crying about an unidentified movie than it would be just to, like, skip the post and check it out later when you get home. Of course he could have mentioned what it was, but the way he presented the post fit perfectly with the thematic elements of the film itself. That's fine by me. If you don't feel comfortable trusting a post who has been posting here for over five years, then don't. But there's no point trying to spoil the fun for everyone else. Carry on.
posted by The God Complex at 3:42 PM on October 13, 2006

Great movie and PERFECT / appropriate description in the post.

(Buncha whiny whiners should get back to work. Which part of .mov didn't you understand before you clicked?)
posted by j-dub at 3:49 PM on October 13, 2006

I agree the post should've had a description. Here's my suggested modification:

post
Idol

Great animation, btw. I especially enjoyed it when the children were eaten.
posted by effwerd at 3:52 PM on October 13, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

The post is perfectly fine. Screw you people who need to be spoonfed what to think and how to react.

I guess you shop at a market where all the labels are removed from the canned goods, too, since you don't need to know what you're getting before you open it.
posted by MegoSteve at 4:01 PM on October 13, 2006

Kind of Henry Darger-ish. I liked it and agree the music/sound was amazing.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 4:09 PM on October 13, 2006

I guess you shop at a market where all the labels are removed from the canned goods, too, since you don't need to know what you're getting before you open it.

That's sort of the point... hopefully this joint doesn't become a list of canned goods.
posted by j-dub at 4:25 PM on October 13, 2006

Sure. How else are you gonna figure out that cling peaches go with pork chops better than string beans?
posted by crunchland at 4:50 PM on October 13, 2006

SURPRISE!!
posted by pyramid termite at 5:03 PM on October 13, 2006

It's a fine post.

Except that without any information, I just skipped it entirely.

I thought maybe it was American Idol or something, but it wasn't really worth thinking about, so I just moved on.

Then it was posted on boing-boing with a real description, and I watched it and loved it.

So, basically, you're doing your link a disservice by not describing it. I assume you posted it because you wanted others to see it. This isn't the best way to do it.
posted by team lowkey at 5:08 PM on October 13, 2006

#StarForce5: The only thing worse than a one-word FPP to a YouTube is a one-word FPP to a 56 MEGABYTE FILE!!!

That is why I wrote and use a Greasemonkey script highlight heavy links that visually warns of such things. In this case my computer was not consumed with anything else so I started what turned out to be a long download.

After I saw it, it took less than 1 minute to Google up some explanatory #links which could/should have been attached to the post.

The biggest "sins" in this post are

1) The title is not "Icon" - it is "Rabbit".
2) The creator is not mentioned.
3) There is nothing in this post that would help someone find it if they want to post it again. At this time the only tags are animation
and film. It is easy to change tags after posting but this drive-by poster does not seem to be interested.

posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 6:53 PM on October 13, 2006

WHY DO WE CARE SO FUCKING MUCH ABOUT HOW THE FUCKING POST WAS PRESENTED????

Just watch the goddamned movie and comment on it, or not.

My God. It's insanity.
posted by ORthey at 7:03 PM on October 13, 2006

#ORthey: WHY DO WE CARE SO FUCKING MUCH ABOUT HOW THE FUCKING POST WAS PRESENTED????

Because some people want a clue about what they are being directed to. I really do not enjoy fart jokes, nor do I like to download porn from a vague description.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 7:27 PM on October 13, 2006

Good link, bad post.

And for everyone who is so concerned about what other people do at their jobs:

1) Remember that some people are paid to do certain duties, rather than to just fill up 40 hours per week. People with those types of jobs get paid the same, whether they spend 8 hours at work working, and 1 hour at home on Mefi, or whether they spend 8 hours at work working, and 1 hour at work on Mefi.

2) No amount of complaining on MeFi will make employers across the world decide that all workers should be based on a per-hour basis, so you're basically just shouting into the wind.
posted by Bugbread at 8:31 PM on October 13, 2006

i could post a link to god almighty on this site and someone would complain about it ...
posted by pyramid termite at 9:07 PM on October 13, 2006

Shit post.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 9:11 PM on October 13, 2006

Love it - even better with no description... Why do people feel that they must be spoon fed descriptions of what's coming next... Sometimes a surprise is just what I want. Especially if the quality is high..
posted by trigby at 9:43 PM on October 13, 2006

I'm embarrassed by the discussion going on here. I enjoyed the video, which obviously could have been posted in a more thoughtful way. Crashing problems? Too bad. Problems at work? Meh. Supposed arrogance or ostentation of a one-link post? Maybe, but not necessarily an accurate analysis. I refuse to get upset, petty, and downright nasty about common violations of etiquette like this--once the error has been clearly pointed out, leave well enough alone.
posted by Ricky_gr10 at 9:51 PM on October 13, 2006

Was anybody asking for a spoon-fed description? I just think it's a courtesy to alert people when they're about to click on a very large video file. Not everyone has a broadband connection that can handle 56MB in a reasonable time, and as evidenced by several posters upthread, some people's browsers don't do video well. And for fuck's sake, if the poster wants to post a one-word link to a video, at least show the creator of the piece a little respect and get the damn title right.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 9:53 PM on October 13, 2006

Okay, everybody, time out. Ricky_gr10 is embarrassed by the discussion going on here.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 9:55 PM on October 13, 2006

Okay, everybody, time out. Ricky_gr10 is embarrassed by the discussion going on here.

I can't tell--are we on a time out now? How does one hit "pause" on Mefi? (But really, let's get back to making the same obvious, unhelpful [after the first few] comments that have cluttered this page so far.)
posted by Ricky_gr10 at 10:37 PM on October 13, 2006

Sure. How else are you gonna figure out that cling peaches go with pork chops better than string beans?

Cling peaches and pork chops sounds allright to me. I'm gonna try it.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:19 AM on October 14, 2006

What's up with people calling their browsers "My Firefox" seems so odd. It's like people talking about "My Internet". You should say "My Internet connection" or "My instance of Firefox". Or just "Crashed Firefox".
posted by delmoi at 1:29 AM on October 14, 2006

I've heard many people use the phrase "my internet" before. It's a fairly obvious shorthand, one you could probably find several hundred similar instances of in the English language, were you to care enough to go to the trouble.
posted by The God Complex at 3:22 AM on October 14, 2006

Cling peaches and pork chops sounds allright to me. I'm gonna try it.

In heavy syrup?
posted by evilcolonel at 4:50 AM on October 14, 2006

What about doing some work at work? Or are you overpayed?

he may be overpayed but you're underspelled.
posted by quonsar at 8:23 AM on October 14, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

What's up with people calling their browsers "My Firefox" seems so odd. It's like people talking about "My Internet". You should say "My Internet connection" or "My instance of Firefox".

it's microsoft. they put My Music and My Video and My Pictures in My Documents on My Computer until i just want to shove My Massive Throbbing Member up Bill Gate's instance of Gaping Anus.
posted by quonsar at 8:29 AM on October 14, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

You should at least kiss him first, you cad.

And, yeah. Some people like the extra 10 to 20 comments they get from not describing the post. Plus, they save all that time actually writing 10 words.
posted by ?! at 9:00 AM on October 14, 2006

So did anyone else notice "a loaf of bread"?
posted by gauchodaspampas at 9:17 AM on October 14, 2006

I think there was also "a packet of cornflakes" in the store.

That was pretty great, though -- I downloaded it.

And I'm going to show it to my friends by announcing "Idol!" and hitting play.

Just kidding -- I don't mind this style of posting at all.
posted by danb at 10:01 AM on October 14, 2006

Totally great. Nevermind the whinging.
posted by scarabic at 10:20 AM on October 14, 2006

Shit post.

And for you folks who think that I shouldn't be allowed to take a break after a fucking 65 hour work week when Friday hasn't even finished: fuck you with rusty garden implements.

I hope you have a job where breaks are not allowed. Enjoy your sweatshop.
posted by Kickstart70 at 11:07 AM on October 14, 2006

i am in ur toobz crashing ur firefox
posted by Neiltupper at 12:10 PM on October 14, 2006

That movie was pretty well done technically. However, the heavy morality at the end is a little annoying.
posted by meehawl at 4:34 PM on October 14, 2006

My God. It's insanity Metafilter.

There, I fixed that for you.
posted by zarah at 6:20 PM on October 14, 2006