Boing Boing: Quirky human behavior

Boing Boing: Quirky human behavior

In 1988, psychologist Fritz Strack of the University of Würzburg, Germany, asked two groups of people to judge how funny they found some cartoons. In one group, each person held a pencil between their teeth without it touching their lips, which forced a smile. The other group were asked to hold the pencil with their lips (not using their teeth), forcing a frown.

The results revealed that people experience the emotion associated with their expressions. Those with a forced smile felt happier, and found the cartoons funnier than those who were forced to frown...

Anthropologists and psychologists have long been interested in superstitions. One of the key categories of superstitious thinking is the "law of contagion", which says that when an object has been in contact with someone, it somehow acquires their "essence". Psychologist Paul Rozin and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania have investigated how common such thinking is today.

They asked people to rate how they would feel about wearing a nice, soft, blue jumper that had been freshly laundered - but previously worn by someone else. As they varied the fictitious previous wearers of the jumper, it became clear how strongly people follow the age-old belief in magical contagion.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the volunteers were unhappiest about wearing the jumper if they were told it had previously belonged to a serial killer. On the whole they would rather have worn a sweater that had been dropped in dog faeces and not washed - raising genuine health concerns - than a laundered sweater that had been worn by a mass murderer.

Even in the 21st century, we are far from being the rational creatures that we like to think we are, as a final part of the experiment made dismayingly clear. When asked to imagine that the laundered sweater had been worn by someone who had contracted HIV through a blood transfusion, most people once again said they wouldn't wear it.

Animators expanding their lines of work - Los Angeles Times

Animators expanding their lines of work - Los Angeles Times

One of the students in my Class 1 at Animation Mentor sent this link out last night after Q & A. Good article, definitely something for everyone to keep in mind: Diversify as much as possible.

The Happiest Monster - by Jonathan Kim

Saw this on YouTube today, I laughed.

Long Flicks: to Cut or Not to Cut?

I think a lot of films could do for cutting out of about 20 - 40 minutes. If you can maintain pace and interest at that length, that's fine. But any time you notice people starting to squirm or fidget in their seats, yeah, go ahead and cut something already.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Director David Fincher knows some people may think his serial-killer saga "Zodiac" is too long at two hours, 40 minutes.

He's wondered the same thing himself but decided the film needed that much space to tell the story he wanted.

"Zodiac" and other recent epic-length films such as "The Good Shepherd" reflect an age-old Hollywood balancing act: satisfying filmmakers' artistic desires without causing audiences to squirm in their seats.

"I would have loved the movie to have been shorter. I just couldn't find a way to dramatically do that," said Fincher, whose previous films include "Fight Club" and "Se7en." "Nobody wants to wear out their welcome, but you want the audience to have a meaningful and varied experience.
...
"`The Godfather' merits all that time and more," said critic Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times and TV's "Ebert and Roeper and the Movies." "But 80 to 90 percent of the films I see could benefit from 10 to 15 minutes in cuts." (full story)

Cartoon Brew » Mickey Like You’ve Never Seen

I love the look of this.

"Based on a Neo-comic style, Mickey exists in a world of translucent imagery, shape shifting creatures and detailed patterns. With the help of a power-packed Neo-Suit full of gadgets, Mickey encounters extraordinary creatures from many new worlds, with stories and adventures that extend way beyond our galaxy."

Cartoon Brew » Mickey Like You’ve Never Seen



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The Living Animation Festival: Blog with lots of animated shorts listed

The Living Animation Festival:

Eye candy!

YouTube - Ishu Patel - The Bead Game

YouTube - Ishu Patel - The Bead Game:

YouTube - The Grandfather of Soul by Keytoon Studios

YouTube - The grandfather of Soul:

A crazy character dressed in the style of the sixties comes into a room and plays his favourite mom's old phonograph

Another nice one here showing off some water physics schtuff from RealFlow.