Here lies the residue of "The Animating Apothecary," a source of obscure ephemera and thought, created fresh(ish), but now reduced to howling into the wind, sketching in sand, and nibbling at the crustier extremes of an overbaked society. Instagram? see - https://www.instagram.com/animating_apothecary/ - content (c) 2006-2024 Jim Middleton
Monday, January 31, 2022
Post 453 - Early GIF for an Equally Early Pharmacology Powerpoint
In the midst of rewriting a text on basic pharmacology, I began a series of animated GIFs to demonstrate various biologic processes. Then I ran into a few technology roadblocks on integrating the things into the PDF I was using. Nevertheless, they did work well enough for the presentations in Open Office. Here is the test GIF for viral replication - I was always struck how much a virus resembled the Apollo lunar landing modules.
Thursday, January 20, 2022
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
Post 451 - Uh-Oh -- More Tests -- Nothing Good Can Come of This
In retirement, folks (ok, my brother) seem very concerned that I'll have too much time on my hands, so random assembly projects keep appearing in a (futile) attempt to keep my noggin active. OK, this was the first, about 150 pieces, and it has been sitting on the shelf for about 25 years. If I'm going to put something like this together, I'm going to "do something" with it. Here's a test (fear not, it's open book): (cc) 2022 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary
February 17, 2022 Updated version - need to align and enlarge the spinning building a bit more.
Post 450 - Seule Tod's Festival Progress - A Learning Curve (evolving discussion) - updated 12 June 2023
A learning curve, for certain - the film I completed in October of 2021, Seule Tod, has been making the rounds of Film Freeway online, and the results are mixed, but I'm learning a lot about the process. 2007 marks my previous real connection with festivals (the truly delightful KAFI experience in Kalamazoo being the last, helmed by the indefatigable David Baker, now soon to retire from FSU - 2024 update: RETIRED!), whether contributing to or serving as judge or presenter (oh, the powerpoints!).
Nonetheless, Seule Tod is being seen, I believe, and has been earning "laurels" (those leafy things one sees frequently at the start of many independent bits of animation) on occasion, even if they can give the impression of a participation prize ("Hey, his Paypal came through, better give him something or he won't submit things again!").
Seule Tod has been entered in over 40 festivals so far, and yes, that's a bit of an overkill, but again, it's a learning curve (the film's production budget of $41 left extra cash usually committed to film prints available for shameless self-promotion). I'm summarizing my observations for a upcoming issues of the ASIFA Central newsletter. Some of these online festivals seem to stand upon a very questionable foundation.
So far the Juries Say -
AUSTIN INTERNATIONAL ART FESTIVAL: They may have changed it, but their website states it is in "Austin, US." Now, what little I know about Texas, I think that if you're a real Texan, you're going to say "Austin, TEXAS!!!!! TEXAS Ya Mutha!" So I hope this is just a minor aberration in their HTML composition.
ACCOLADE GLOBAL Film Competition: To their credit, especially in the context of many festivals, the Accolade competition does list winning films AND their creators. However, trying to track the documentation is a challenge! One of the festival's sister competitions reached out to solicit the little film for participation in his west-coast festival, and that email came with a name and everything, so there is the appropriate semblance of humans working behind the curtain.
OREGON SCREAMS: For Saturday, March 12, 2022. AT AN HONEST TO GAWD DRIVE IN! Festival organizer Mikel Fair has made a helpful pdf booklet on the basics of submitting films to festivals, providing a background on his own filmwork and development of several other festivals. It's a fundraiser. He is also excellent in communication about the processes and how the films will be shown (the Dalles in Oregon having an actual drive-in theatre for the experience). And, since interaction and networking is one of the major functions of these festivals, here is their web connection:
Doing its best to create a New World Disorder... |
For August 22, 2024, Baker City, Oregon |
Post 449 - 2022 - Bring On the Mayhem! Or Aprilhem! Or Ahem!
January 11, 2022 already...
We're all hoping for a better 2022 - get vaccinated, make smart decisions, and stop tilting at windmills (or wind turbines, as is the case locally). These are your good old days at this point, and well, couldn't we do a little better?
As an aside, the old animatingapothecary.com site has been decommissioned - it was in a clunky html format that isn't always to every browser's liking, and the update process (admittedly, the last attempt was 2014) was fairly convoluted, albeit certainly secure. If you really miss my early 21st century attempt at going digital, it's still clogging up valuable real estate on the cloud managed by archive.org, a phenomenal site, one deserving praise and support, which has the entire internet backed up. Archive.org is an easier way to get lost for hours of browsing, even moreso than my other favorite distraction, libraryofcongress.gov.
As a result, the commercial end of The Animating Apothecary has suspended its operations - this is the "official notification" - although it has been primarily a service of education and consultation to pharmacies for much of the past decade. I know more about the MAPS program than anyone should.
I will continue developing print-on-demand projects (lulu press seems to have "lost" my earlier files, so another service is being sought) and keep film projects and animation announced here or on vimeo.com (as in ASIFA Central group projects, https://vimeo.com/279548703 , or https://vimeo.com/638493757 ) through several uploaded files being updated and "restored" after 20 plus years (a sobering thought to consider that, by the time Walt Disney was my age, he'd been dead almost two years).
I still do Facebook postings, with increasingly less enthusiasm for that platform as it becomes its own trope, Twitter on occasion, and even shove occasional material on Instagram. More often, it seems I have more interesting things to do. Like sending postcards.
Thanks for checking in. I'm approaching 500 posts here, so perhaps you'll find something of interest! "I take requests."