Singles

August 13, 2009 4:42 PM

Singles, a wonderful animation by young artist Rebecca Sugar.
posted by archagon (31 comments total)

By the way, her YouTube page has a few more short animations. I'm particularly fond of this one.
posted by archagon at 4:46 PM on August 13

I loved this, right down to the sandwich munching and quite humming at the end.
posted by ericost at 4:56 PM on August 13

From the linked page;

"... we’re proud to present the online premiere of her thesis film Singles, which picked up the award for best Experimental Film at last month’s Animation Block Party. With this film, she shows herself to be both a creative animator and a thoughtful filmmaker."

I wonder if taking LSD for inspiration is considered cheating in film school?

I kid, I kid. This was pretty remarkable, highly creative and trippy. Thanks for the digital dorito, archagon.
posted by Effigy2000 at 5:27 PM on August 13

posted by fake at 7:35 PM on August 13
posted by fake at 5:32 PM on August 13 [1 favorite]

This was fabulously weird.
posted by Nattie at 5:50 PM on August 13

I wanted to see the dude break off a tiny piece of food and then hand it to the little dude in his chest, recursively. He could feast on one tiny morsel if he passed it along enough times.
posted by idiopath at 6:03 PM on August 13 [3 favorites]

Those life-inside-a-life-inside-a-life stories always blow my mind cause I can never stop myself from trying to imagine as many of the iterations at once as possible, and then my brain hurts.

And while I liked the animation, there's a stunning and honest human-ness to the paintings of her friends sleeping (on the blog link) that I thought was much more interesting than the cartoon.

Also, did the amount of mayo he put on that sandwich make anyone else want to gag? Sorry, cartoon dude, but that's just not healthy. Someone needs to point him to Narual's comment in another of today's FPPs.
posted by philotes at 6:24 PM on August 13

Wow. That was. Wow.
posted by DU at 6:30 PM on August 13

i don't know what i just saw, but i liked it.
posted by empath at 7:01 PM on August 13

The story of the film isn't really that interesting to me, but the art and the animation are just so alive and fluid and good. (I direct you to the scene, near the end, where Cartoon Dude flings open his apartment door -- oh man yes.) This is great stuff.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:03 PM on August 13

Mayo, lettuce, and Kraft Singles cheese on white bread used to be my most favorite sandwich as a kid. I don't know how many of those things I consumed...I think I'd puke if I ate one now.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 7:08 PM on August 13

I hate the feeling of at once enjoying something immensely and being so jealous of the talent on display I could explode. My favorite was when he reached in (out???) to move his chair to the appropriate place - I would have never thought of that in a million years.
posted by andeles at 7:23 PM on August 13

I liked it, thanks.

I wonder if taking LSD for inspiration is considered cheating in film school?

It reminds me of a cartoon I saw when tripping once and I've been searching for ever since, though I know none of the production details.

In it, a male and female of indeterminate species live in a bowl or home underwater, and they can't breathe water so they can't leave. The male spends all his time thinking about plans to leave while the female is content to stay put. He can see a light far up above. The male eventually leaves his love to swim to the surface, only to find himself all alone in the middle of an ocean.

Anyone know what I'm talking about? No? OK, carry on.
posted by mrgrimm at 7:33 PM on August 13

The author's commentary below the video is pretty interesting. She's also answering questions in the comments (including the recursive feeding issue!)

kittens, she explains how she wanted to do something that was more conceptual than narrative, and had to be animated because it couldn't work as a comic.

The main guy lives with infinite selves, they all move the same way at the same time because they’re all the same person. The film is about being alone.

I wanted this film to imply that there’s a lot more going on than what the guy or the audience can see. This guy is getting a fraction of a much bigger picture that he can’t possibly understand. This film is part one in a trilogy. All three films happen in the same apartment building at the same time. What happens in all three films happens in each individual film though that character doesn’t know or see it. What is actually happening is something else entirely and can’t be known.

Part 2, Part 3 (by different people)
posted by robinhoudt at 7:38 PM on August 13 [2 favorites]

It makes a lot more sense if you view it with a Freudian lens as a kind of struggle between the components of the self (ego, superego, id).
posted by Burhanistan at 8:01 PM on August 13

That was wild! Loved the big guy, little guy imagery - really inventive.
posted by garnetgirl at 8:03 PM on August 13

A thematically-similar Perry Bible Fellowship strip.
posted by rifflesby at 8:07 PM on August 13 [2 favorites]

I totally loved this. I think it's the strongest piece of the three.
posted by ocherdraco at 8:19 PM on August 13

I'd like to have that little dancing clip as a gif, but the smallest i could manage is still 1,8MB big...
posted by kolophon at 8:37 PM on August 13

Mindbogglingly fantastic.
posted by ford and the prefects at 8:58 PM on August 13

Great great great. Also, as someone who has done a bit more than dabble in the realm of psychedelia, it scared me a little, too.
posted by ElmerFishpaw at 9:04 PM on August 13

A thematically-similar Perry Bible Fellowship strip.

Oh boy, there's some good stuff in there if you keep hitting random. I especially enjoy the dendrobates pumilio humor.
posted by peeedro at 9:37 PM on August 13

I kept waiting for a giant lump of chewed-up sandwich to fall on the guy, but it never happened. Is that a lamp on the ceiling or his esophagus?

(Was totally expecting this to be an oh-so-clever squiggly-line type monologue about dating or some such nonsense. Was very pleasantly surprised.)
posted by neckro23 at 10:04 PM on August 13

I really hope we see more from Ms. Sugar.
posted by flatluigi at 11:05 PM on August 13

I'm not sure how this fits anyone's criteria for Best Experimental Film. Doesn't experimental imply technically experimental?
posted by breadfruit at 4:37 AM on August 14

In my animation classes, we discussed experimental animation as a way of describing animation that does things only animation can do. The goal is not necessarily coming up with new ways of animating things, but of new things to be animated. I think this certainly fits with that definition of experimental: Sugar is taking a very particular conceit (the man who lives inside himself) that could only effectively be portrayed in this medium and exploring it to its limits.
posted by ocherdraco at 6:33 AM on August 14

Fantastic, thanks for posting it!

> I'm not sure how this fits anyone's criteria for Best Experimental Film. Doesn't experimental imply technically experimental?

Well, apparently it fit Animation Block Party's criteria. I guess if you ran the contest, it wouldn't fit yours. Would've sucked for Rebecca Sugar. Glad we live in this space-time continuum!
posted by languagehat at 6:50 AM on August 14

I think that is one of the most perfect narrative descriptions of the ego-dissolution hallucinogenic experience I've seen. Not due to the 'trippy-ness' of the animation, but the demonstration of the growing awareness of your own frame of reference, and the attempts made to step out of it, defined by that perfect crystal moment where you work up the courage to leave yourself behind. Is the single tear an expression of terror, or joy? That expression itself becomes the focus, as you leave behind your own image of self and only the emotions remain, hanging perfectly in a realm free to have new context impressed upon it at will. And then your clock-radio comes on, you go 'OH SHIT WHAT HUH... huh... oh yeah, I had this sammich here! AWESOME! I love sammiches!' And then the next day you go to work.
posted by FatherDagon at 10:42 AM on August 14 [1 favorite]

The Green Grassface clip is fantastic. This woman is pretty awesome at what she does!
posted by Greg Nog at 11:00 AM on August 14

Y'all should also check out Pug Davis, her brilliant comic. It's really pretty terrific.
posted by zusty at 1:09 PM on August 15 [1 favorite]

Yegads, that's good stuff, zusty.
posted by ocherdraco at 1:49 PM on August 15