Hypnagogic State

This video has been making the rounds lately but it is too adorable not to post here. Lil Cthulhu is hug-worthy even when snacking on his followers. The Lovecraft estate should consider commissioning a Saturday morning cartoon of this. I would get up early every weekend to watch it. And that’s saying a lot.

“Vincent” is an animated short that was done by Tim Burton in 1982. It has his dark yet somewhat innocent style and is narrated by the incomparable Vincent Price- the hero of the little boy in the film.

I am completely fascinated by cryptography, though my curiosity mostly drifts towards the methods that have been shoved into antiquity by computers. Steganography is essentially a visual form of cryptography in which a message is hidden in such a way that there doesn’t appear to be a message at all.  In order to find it, you usually need to know it is there. In ancient times, a steganographic method could involve tattooing the message into the shaved head of a slave, allowing the hair to grow back, then sending the slave to the recipient, who would shave their head again.  The much more practical (and humane) methods of hiding messages include hiding a picture inside the bits of another picture or data within other encrypted data.

Here is a fantastic, thirty minute lecture on steganography from the University of New South Wales:

(h/t: Sling Words)

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello takes place in a steampunk version of Victorian England where dirigibles and flesh eating disease have become commonplace. The titular character is a dirigible navigator who caused the accidental death of one of his crew. He’s accepted on another mission and sets off with a motley crew and a doctor with dubious intentions.

The writing and animation in this film are breathtaking and rightfully earned the film an Academy Award nomination in 2005.  The animation is based on Wayang, a silhouette style originating in Indonesia. There are supposedly further chapters of Jasper Morello’s story in the works but there are few details about the projects.

According to Drawn!, this animation was created by artist Emmanuelle Walker and some of her friends at the Parisian Gobelins animation school. The colors are beautiful, the soundtrack vibrant, and the storyline a much needed bit of fun on a Monday afternoon.

Accro is an animated short depicting cycles of futility. Appropriate material for the end of the week. Marie Opron, Léonard Cohen, and David Martin are the team behind this black and white beauty.

Jonathan Nix is the Australian animator/artist/musician behind Hello, a 2003 animated short that featured a lovelorn boom box. His newest animated project, The Missing Key, is a prequel that is supposed to be released late this year (which is essentially now). The colors in the trailer for this thirty minute film are much more vivid than those featured in his previous work. But there continues a similar theme of creatures with musical devices as heads. Speaking of music, the soundtrack to this trailer is gorgeous. The film may be worth experiencing once with your eyes closed.

The Flowfield Unity is a web comic that blends science, art, and a heavy dose of snark. Artist Adam York Gregory- one of the finest people you could ever have the pleasure of knowing- has created a following for himself with his distinctive black and white illustrations. He recently began doing animated shorts of some of his past comics. I love the short above because it seems like it could play during the intermission of a grindhouse double feature. And, yes, I mean that as a compliment.

Tor.com posted The Lighthouse Keeper this past weekend as part of their Saturday Morning Cartoon series. The dark, sleek and slightly steampunk animated short features the titular lighthouse keeper battling an unusual invader. The creative team is listed by Tor as “David Francois, Rony Hotin, Jérémie Moreau, Baptiste Rogron, Gaëlle Thierry and Maïlys Vallad”.

When I went on YouTube seeking that short, I instead came across a different work with the same title. Though the second course of The Lighthouse Keeper has slight similarities in setting and pest problems, the style is much more raw. This short was directed by Josef Prokop and produced by QQ Studio and CINDY Films.