Simple animation that looks beautiful.

December 9, 2006 2:38 PM

Looking for examples of animation that could be described as both "beautiful" and "simple."
posted by davebush to Media & Arts (19 answers total)

I can't find a clip unfortunately, but I saw a film called Left and Leave by Yongchu Suh at the 2006 Slamdance Film Festival. A good portion of the film was drawn with the (righthanded) director's left hand. It was very simple and very beautiful.
posted by nathancaswell at 2:47 PM on December 9, 2006 [1 favorite]

"A quoi ça sert l’amour?" (Perils of Love) is deceptively simple, and wonderful, and charming, and I get a little weepy every time I watch it.
posted by maryh at 3:04 PM on December 9, 2006 [1 favorite]

Also, this Superman short from Chris Appelhans, previously posted.
posted by maryh at 3:11 PM on December 9, 2006

Stan Brakhage, perhaps?

From Wikipedia:
"Brakhage's films are usually silent and lack a traditional story, being more analogous to visual poetry than to prose story-telling. He often referred to them as "visual music" or "moving visual thinking." His films range in length from just a few seconds to several hours, but most last between two or three minutes and one hour. Most of his work was done in 16 mm film, and he frequently hand-painted the film or scratched the image directly into the film emulsion, and sometimes used collage techniques. For Mothlight (1963), for example, he taped moth wings, twigs, and leaves onto clear film and made prints from it."

His more traditional (eg, filmed) films can be jarring, but the abstract ones, I find really very pretty.

Here's some sample frames.
posted by ITheCosmos at 3:14 PM on December 9, 2006

Of course, whether or not you count that as animation is probably contentious, but the films I'm talking about are hand-drawn.
posted by ITheCosmos at 3:15 PM on December 9, 2006

Silly Hats Only
posted by Meatbomb at 3:27 PM on December 9, 2006

Samurai Jack. Especially the episodes with minimal dialogue.
posted by Paragon at 3:36 PM on December 9, 2006

David Shrigley's video for Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's "Agnes". (bottom of page)
posted by sann1657 at 3:37 PM on December 9, 2006

John and Faith Hubley.
posted by box at 3:38 PM on December 9, 2006

Seems to me the recently discussed Kiwi! (YouTube) qualifies.
posted by rob511 at 4:50 PM on December 9, 2006

Minilogue's "Hitchhiker's Choice"

Royksopp - "Remind Me"
posted by tpl1212 at 4:53 PM on December 9, 2006

Also, any of Ferry Halim's "Orisinal" games...
posted by tpl1212 at 4:57 PM on December 9, 2006

Seconding Samurai Jack. Also, highly recommending My Neighbor Totoro (the Fox version, if you can get your hands on it - the Disney version, although easier to find, has a new voice dub that isn't quite as elegant).
posted by jbickers at 9:34 PM on December 9, 2006

Maybe not what you are looking for but a recent MeFi post linked to some emotional animations with simple character designs.
posted by chairface at 10:07 PM on December 9, 2006

love
posted by Khalad at 11:47 PM on December 9, 2006

The video for the JCB song.
posted by slightlybewildered at 2:06 AM on December 10, 2006

The Dot and the Line.
posted by Alison at 5:24 AM on December 10, 2006

Meatbomb: Silly Hats Only is an excerpt from Don Hertzfeldt's Rejected. If you liked that, you'll probably love the whole thing.
posted by kdar at 7:24 AM on December 11, 2006

I'd definitely second tpl1212's pointer to the Orisinal games. Very pretty indeed.
posted by btocher at 11:05 AM on December 11, 2006