Some years ago, when I was an art student in Poitiers, France, learning etching and ╥experimental cinema,╙ I was browsing in a bookstore and found an old medical book from the nineteenth century with very disturbing pictures. Although I could barely look at it, I was very curious. It was a strange feeling of attraction and repulsion at the same time. Repulsion at the horrible diseases and human monsters; attraction because the people were still human, as if the artist, although scientific and detached, was able to capture precise details of a lace nightcap or a strange expression on a little girl╒s face as she lifted her dress to show her hermaphroditic genitalia. I took the book home hoping to use it in cut-paper animation, which did not work out. Later, when Apple Computer invited me to do animation in the ATG graphic group, I took the book with me, just in case. The people working there, Peter Litwinowicz and Lance Williams, were developing Inkwell, a 2.5-D animation program. It was the perfect medium to animate the book╒s stiff etchings. Eric Chen built the 3-D room with texture mapping and camera motion. The difference between technologies╤old etching and fast computer╤creates an interesting contrast that reinforces the feeling of discomfort.
Credits
Animated and directed by: Laurence Arcadias
Software: Peter Litwinowicz
Title sequence and special effects: Lance Williams
Rendering and editing: Peter Litwinowicz
Radiosity rendering and 3-D motion: Eric Chen
3-D modeling Steve Rubin
Sound: Richard Millward
Voices: Scott Maddux
Sponsors: Apple Computer, Inc. (U.S.A.), Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres (France)
All motion in this film was created with Inkwell, a system for doing 2-D animation developed by the ATG graphic group at Apple Computer. Only one picture was created for each character per scene; outlines for the characters were then animated and used to warp the characters for animation.
