Well special effects fans, month after month seems to go by with out a new post here on the Elemental Magic Blog, and I think it's time to remedy that! I really need to get into this whole blog thing, and I'd like to get a lot more traffic to the sight, and a lot more feedback too! This is necessary practice too, as it looks like I will soon be hosting an animation blog on the AWN site (Animation World Network). For those of you who don't already know, I wrote a column for AWN Magazine for almost three years, entitled 'The Animated Scene'. They have changed the look and content of the AWN website a great deal, but if you dig you can still find most of my columns.
http://www.awn.com/search/node/The+Animated+Scene
So somewhere in that slick new look for AWN, my new blog will be featured, and linked to everything else in the animated cyber-universe. Damn, the next thing you know I'll be 'Twittering'. Blog sounds bad enough, but 'twitter'? And with a limited amount of text...God forbid that anyone spending hours a day online should actually have to read anything longer than a freaking paragraph. Even the paragraphs have to be abbreviated, or the texting generation will lose interest.
Well, forgive me, but I'm going to try to keep some kind of literary standard going, even though I'm an uneducated bum, air force brat who never graduated from anything......even though I can't stand academic snobbery, I am even more put off by the use of 'u' instead of 'you' and all other forms of text abbreviations, acronyms, and sloppy, just plain lazy English. I could live with the silly American habit of dropping letters out of words to simplify them, as was done with words like colour (color). But must we continue with this gross simplification of the English language, until all we can do is sit staring at the sunset, a bit of drool leaking out the corner of our mouths, uttering the last known human word....."Awesome..." Is that it?
And you know where I see it most? Right here in the cozy little world of ANIMATION. I mean, why say something as long and complicated as 'motion capture' when the quick and clever 'mo-cap' says it all? Centre of gravity? C.O.G. baby!! In fact, to talk to a current pipeline technical assistant or visual effects pro, one might mistakenly assume they are actually allergic to forming entire words, such is their zeal for clipping and shortening everything into a snappy 2 or 3 letter buzz phrase......
Hell people, I am almost illiterate compared to what passed for a real writer only decades ago, and now I am stuck here whining about the oversimplification of the English language....why....that's AWESOME!!
Well, to hell with all that. I'm here to carry on about animation, what it is, what it isn't, what it could be, what it should be, etc, etc....In a universe of opinions, I throw in another one, just in case there is a gap in the fabric of animajournalism....I had better fill it up! Of course, opinions are as useful as tits on a bull, but then you know, from the perspective of a calf whose Mom has just gone to the slaughterhouse, tits on a bull might not be such a bad idea after all! So surely there's a wayward animation calf out there, too far away from Mama's milk, that could use a little animation wizardry to suckle on! Far out. Good then. Let the breast feeding begin....
It's all Elemental, and it's all magic. It's all organic, right?
What think you?
2 comments:
I kinda understand what you mean. I know how it started though. Definitely before the T9 chip on phones came about. It was time consuming to type simple things on phones. Thus the shortening. But when it starts affecting your own writing, there is a problem as you pointed out. the T9 now actually makes it a bit harder to abbreviate because you have to program those in manually. Ya have to know how to spell too though. However not everyone knows how to activate it. Frankly, I've been hanging around the nets since I was 10 and I don't get what the point of Twittering is. Seems like a sea of mindless thoughts; hard to keep track of. I have to admit, congress passing notes through Twitter is kinda amusing. Regardless, it's a trend the English language has. Straight to the point, not as descriptive. Tis why Shakespeare is so hard to read for many ya know? I don't think it makes us stupid... but it's like putting a compression on an already overloaded with info society... ya know? I know how ya feel though.
Very wise words Carly, very wise. Of course it doesn't make us 'stupid', but I can;t help but think that if we never venture to write more than a quick phrase filled with shortcuts, we will forget how to write real stuff....when I was a young child, having pen-pals was very popular, and we actually wrote long letters by hand. Ask the average North American 8-10 year old to write a real letter today, and see what yo get....yikes!
Anyhoo, very wise words Carly, thanks!
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