Happy Things @ MindSay

I keep trying to find the energy to blog. Blogging used to be a way for me to vent my anger and frustration to get it out in the open. Now I barely do it. I mean it can't be because I am completely happy. Life has never been very happy for me. Even though I am recently married and bought a place to live in the past year. Things have changed a lot for me. I used to never leave the house, however, I still hardly leave. There are new things I learn everyday to deal with being a non-medicated bi-polar disorder having person in a medicated world. It is still difficult to me to acceot the fact that medication just might help my situation. There was a period in my life that I was on a few different anti-depressants, but that was before I found out I was bipolar. So those medications did nothing for me. I am just torn on what to do, do I keep up my struggle day to day to be happy? Or do I medicated myself and see if that works. I am afraid of medication, one because of the sexual side effects a lot of them have. Plus I don't want to waste a year of my life trying to find out the right mix for me. If anybody has any insight on what I should do, I would appreciate it. Although I fear I blog so little that not many wil read this. :)

This blog is fast becoming a "flow of conciseness" kind of thing for me which is almost the exact opposite of what I intended it for, but it's mine and I'm not getting paid to write anything specifically, so I guess there is no harm in me waffling or waxing philosophical every now and then. Besides, I was seriously taken by this thing I saw recently and I would like to recant it in a public way, both so others can see it and I have a personal record of it.

 

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I like to watch cartoons aimed at very small children for reasons that I have pointed out before. I recently saw something that, for whatever reason, really struck me. It was simple and unremarkable, but I think that's what made it so special to me. Allow me to explain:

 

There is a show on Nick Jr. called "The Backyardigans", produced by Nelvana. It is a fully CGI show featuring five roughly pre-school age friends who all get together in their collective backyards (like a backyard cul-de-sac, really) and play. Each episode is themed, so in one the characters might be detectives or jungle explorers or spies or any number of other things that you know you and your friends pretended to be when you were five or six. It's a cute show but what got me was the animation.

 

Motion capture and reference is used to give the characters a more natural and flowing feel to their actions. Where some CGI shows feature very jerky, mechanical movements (see StormHawks), the Backyardigans feels more real... well, as real as a bunch of talking animals can feel.

 

But here is where I saw that which intrigued me so. I was watching the episode entitled "Knights are Brave and Strong", wherein the characters are pretending to be knights in a medieval setting. Uniqua, the main character for this particular episode, was to deliver a message from Queen Tasha to King Austin. Along the way she meets her other two friends, Pablo and Tyrone, who wish to assist her. They ask her why she is traveling and she explains "I have to deliver this note" and as she says "this note" she jiggles the rolled up note in her hand.

 

It was perfect. It was exactly what a real person would do. It was so subtle and automatic that I couldn't believe what I saw. I rewound the video and watched it several times, just to make sure it wasn't a computer glitch or something. But there it was, animation that captured perfectly what a real person was most apt to do. She didn't point at, raise higher or even look at the note, she just jiggled it to illustrate that that was the object she was referring to. For some reason, that struck me as beautiful.

 

I watched the rest of the episode and even though the note was asked about and explained at least three more times, the slight jiggle animation was never repeated. Most animation would leave out such a subtle nuance simply because it would be viewed as unnecessary, but in reality I think something like that makes all the difference in the world... between having a flat, lifeless object and having a fully realized living image. I should also point out that I would actually expect this kind of subtlety in a theater quality animation, but to see this in a daily series is just mind boggling.

 

Most people would say that I'm looking too deeply into a children’s cartoon and that I'm being silly. Well, yes. I'm guilty on both counts there. But I don't wait for other people to tell me what art is before I begin to appreciate it. I firmly believe that if something makes you happy you shouldn't question it, lest you lose track of why it makes you happy in the first place. Besides, if the only things in life that ever make you happy are huge major events and the like, being happy would become a task unto itself.

 

If anything, I think people should look a little closer at things that are around them all the time. You know, the brilliance of an indoor sink, the simplicity of a door hinge... things we take for granted. Who knows? Maybe we could all use a little time to notice the little things in life. Makes you appreciate what you have just a little more.

 

-Maru!

Yayyyyyy! They're bringing back Vanilla Coke! *does happy dance*