Week 11_Response_William

    For this response, I have chosen "Bad Apple!! - Stop Motion PV" from Shige-ruuu.

                                                                     Link --> Bad Apple!!

    I suppose the topic of highest precedence that I must acknowledge is the fact that this video is based off of a meme. Indeed, that remains the case. Despite that, however, this version impresses me on a couple technical levels. 

    First off, the sheer workload of such a video execution. This person printed out 6,566 individual frames of animation, and individually re-shot them in stop-motion at the same 30 frames per second as the original. And these frames are not all in the same place, they move around the room and require their own camera changes. Thus, even though the main animation in focus was pre-established, the creator still had to exert a load of effort for a creative project with little payoff, an exception being Internet brownie points, of course.

    Second, the concept of using cutout stop-motion to animate something already animated. Now, re-animating something in a different format is one thing, but providing new flourishes via the placement of the slides was a wonderful touch. Many of the slides actually move in tandem with the visual transitions within the animation itself, resulting in an intriguing dynamic where the display of the slides can have just as much character as the content of the slides themselves. Examples include: slides involving flight also being suspended midair, slides involving falling will drop down in live space, slides involving thrown objects will layer previous slides underneath the current one, and an ending trick where previous slides layer underneath in a rotating spiral fashion that complements the Yin-Yang symbol forming in the slides themselves. All of that, plus a constantly moving camera, light changes, and location transitions. To summarize, there is way too much movement for this project to only have shallow motivations behind it. The creator was genuinely putting extra work into the finished project. 

    While the premise for this animation may not be considered worthwhile or long-lasting at first glance, the execution of this stop-motion completely justifies itself while also introducing new visual ideas that could very well function in more professional contexts. It fulfills its purpose as a mutated meme specimen, fulfills its intention of being original art, and is living proof that someone on this planet had way too much time on their hands. Then again, that may not have been a bad thing.