Brent Sievers

The Divide from Brent Sievers on Vimeo.


I think it's easy to see why this animation was chosen as a vimeo staff pick. The quality of the animation makes it stunningly beautiful. The simple and childlike feeling is juxtaposed with a very adult colour scheme and older themes in the narrative, it works really well. What I like most is the jerkiness and the flash like motion in the cars, traffic and lights, which is all matched with shapes with very sharp edges that never quite align. Then there’s the softer motion, coinciding with the rounder objects like the worms, the movement of the dog and the persons arms. It's a lot more fluid and really has an impact on the visual aesthetics when you're constantly flicking between the two. Also this matches the narrative of the flickering of nature, the green worms and grass, with the man made environment.



I then decided to find out more about the animator and went onto his website. I was a little disappointed there was nothing about him on there but I watched Sievers Showreel, which does give a lot of information about his style of animation. I think the song fits really well because it's all very lively and it did make me want to watch more of his work. I particularly liked the one of the bird and the very long eye lashed fish.




This animation is immensely charming with the complimentary textures of the different types of paper and the quality of line with the crayon. I think the way it changes underwater makes the colours really pop and the part of the narrative where the long eye lashed fish rescues the bird is such a wonderful piece of animation because it looks like nothing else you've seen.

I did also watch a couple of other pieces of his work but I didn't enjoy them as much mainly because one seemed very heavily inspired by Run Wrake Rabbit.




I think they are different enough to say he was inspired by Run Wrake Rabbit, especially with the gray colour scheme and so on. I think that I am bias as I don't actually like Run Wrake Rabbit so I find it difficult to understand why anyone would be inspired by it. But what I do think is successful about his version and in all his animation is that his style embraces traditional medium. I really like how there's water marks in this and although it does look like photoshop animation, it's very personal in that it is in his drawing style and I think it's very important that we embrace traditional mediums in modern technology.


Finally the last animation of his I shall comment on is this entry for Loop de Loop. I think this animation actually has several qualities I don't like in it. For starters I really think he could of worked on his walk cycle. It is very flat people have a lot more motion when they are walking and their isn't even any easing in it. The second thing I don't like is the style of the lady's face for that split second it's all you're looking at and I actually don't want to, there's no appeal in that character she's very indifferent, I think the pout could've been exaggerated with more lines it was lacking detail after all she is a dog murderer! However saying that the more I've watched it the more I've realised how successful the sound is. The slaps and muted bangs make are perfect and set a really good pace to the overall animation. And actually it's an unbelievably clever narrative how the hand starts it at the machine and it ends up with the dogs hand at the end and then a subtle pan to the machine. It's really well done.

http://www.brentcsievers.com/
Student of Rhode Island School of Design.
http://www.risd.edu/