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beige colored homes

that photo album feels much older than me. the popping sound binders it makes opened, and how one photo always manages to fall out. the release of a smell that takes you right back to childhood (how do old books manage to do this?), and food stains on the corner of a page.

the album depicts the beige colored homes of a small village, draped in layers of thick fog. curtains of fog like a stage framing the small area captured. photos of picking mushrooms in the woods for a stew, rusted slides, deep towering pine, top to bottom submerged in fog. i cant remember what it looks like there. i dont think the pictures do either.  

those old defa films always felt so old too. always featuring some evil grandma with messy hair, the texture of cotton candy. i remember one called baba yaga, she stood atop a cottage with legs, covered in a deafening snow. another show, the sandmännchen, featured this old man and he’d send you into sleep with magical sleep sand. that show, too, had snow, and it was represented by tufts of cotton strung across the set to imitate the coziness of winter.

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recently found this lost pc game...

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i love and adore the look of the 90s render. i am very new to the software so its very amateurish though.

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patlabor 2: weaponized realism

i think its safe to say that everyone would agree that mamoru oshii’s film Patlabor 2, is a beautifully animated film... but there’s more to it than just that. the movie demonstrates the use of anime as a medium to confuse us, via the incorporation of live action elements.

something that i am criminal of is trying to force meaning out of anything and everything present on screen at a given time. the mise-en-scene in anime is of course, intentionally designed... up to every last element. there are no “accidents” in anime, different from live action. like a bird flying into frame, or an extra crossing the road, sometimes things recorded in live action are unintended. we as members of the audience expect that, so it is afforded little attention... as if it’s noise. yet anime is largely devoid of this “noise,” so when i watch anime, i want to hold on to every last detail as something that could potentially contribute to some greater meaning. its very rewarding to be so attentive, and fit together elements like a jigsaw puzzle. precisely because of this, Patlabor 2 likes to subvert our expectations of intentionally. in interviews, oshii has mentioned that the recurring motif of birds were designed to create “noise,” that would “confuse the meaning of the film.” creating confusion, i believe, is core to the film.

pushing forward the budding industry of digital animation, oshii’s team frequently simulate camera lenses in the film; notably a fish eyed and wide angle lens. not only do these lenses warp the way we view the world, but the off-kilter blend of live action elements in an animated form lends to the unclear nature of the film.

another notable tension in the film is its relation to the original Patlabor movie. The complete tonal shift, shift in art style, music, etc... gives this feeling of whiplash--especially in the art style. The switch from sharp, bishoujo characters to rounded, realistically proportionate faces immediately leads us on to the adult nature of the film.

In this way, oshii is able to make a twist on the anime medium to give Patlabor 2 its unique sense of uneasiness and confusion that it is so revered for.

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recent aimless illustration