Progressive Wednesday

The TGIF Movie Review: Daily Monsters

Last week, I kind of cheated by reviewing the TV show Weeds: the first season is available for rent or sale on DVD, and it is, quite bluntly (pot pun intended), the best television has to offer. This week, it’s more like I’m bending the rules than breaking them.

One of the forgotten Oscars handed out each year is for Best Animated Short Film. Often, these films can be found on that cute little thing affectionately called the “Internet.” Now, this week’s review isn’t for an Academy Award nominee, but it is a review for short animations found on the web.

Each day, for one hundred days, graphic designer and artist Stefan G. Bucher posted time-lapse video of himself drawing a monster (you may have noticed his page on our “16 Daily Reads”). Each monster begins with an inkblot that he then blows with a straw, resulting in a crazed, random shape. He uses this as a starting point for a monster. Some have enormous mouths and wear tiny high heels, others sport wild wings and fangs sprouting from their beaks, still others don neckties and waggle ugly tongues. The result each day is a delightful, imaginative drawing — it’s like Jackson Pollock meets Charles Shultz.

I love these videos because they show an artist at work, and an artist having fun. It’s this pleasure aspect of creating any art that I sometimes forget as I wander through museums, contemporary and classical alike. To watch the fun made incarnate is to have a kind of vicarious fun of your own as you wait and watch how the drawing will ultimately unfold its creepy hands or misshapen head.

I’ve included a trio of my ab-fab videos below. Each is hosted through Revver, and the videos end with an advertisement. If you click on the ad, you’ll make Mr. Bucher some money, money I think he definitely deserves for giving us his unique art. I’ve never seen anything this bizarre and innocent before, and frankly I’m glad — it’s made my experience with his work all the more refreshing. My greatest hope in sharing is that your experience will at least be in the beastly ballpark of mine.

(You can still see all 100 shorts on his home page DailyMonster.com!)