Oh, I just love the work of Japanese psychedelic pop artist/designer Tadanori Yokoo. It’s not really surprising to find out he also did some animation, but still, it made my day.
Earth, Wind & Fire, 1976
poster for the movie The Trip (1968)
Emerson, Lake & Palmer concert poster, 1972
Empty Spaces as an example:
The complete movie:
Pink Floyd’s the Wall is arguably one of the most intriguing and imaginative albums in the history of rock music. Since its release in 1979, and the subsequent movie of 1982, the Wall has become synonymous with, if not the very definition of, the term “concept album.” Aureally explosive on record and visually explosive on the screen, the Wall traces the life of the fictional protagoinst, Pink Floyd, from his boyhood days in war-torn England to his self-imposed isolation as a world-renownedrock star, leading to a climax that is as questionably cathartic as it is destructive.
Here are six minutes of black and white synesthesia, to a free jazz piece by Paul Plimley and Barry Guy.
(link: Matan. thank you again!)
Euphoria (1974)
200 (1975)
Fantasy (1976)
Malice in Wonderland (1982)
The animation I’ve embedded is one of his least disturbing, Life is Flashing Before Your Eyes (1984). Now, you should be aware these are some heavy mindfuck material, especially Malice in Wonderland.
Quotes: “Malice in Wonderland is the only video on Youtube that actually scared me. Thank you.”
“your malice vid has scarred me for life man”
Vince has his own Youtube channel, but is not producing the time-consuming hand drawn stuff anymore, because this isn’t the 1970s, when there was grant money flying around for artists like him.
Frank Zappa’s 1971 feature film (93 minutes, directed with Tony Palmer) is not for the week at heart: it’s super intensive, slapstick psychedelia with a hardly noticeable plot line to follow – something about a band on an endless crazy tour. Zappa fans love it, to judge from imdb message boards, while the rest render it “unwatchable”; still no one claims to understand it.
200 motels features The Mothers Of Invention (Zappa himself plays a side role as a musician in the band), animation by Charles Swenson, Kieth Moon in drag as a Nun, and Ringo Star as Larry The Dwarf, who pretends to be Frank Zappa.
A little girl finds the whole world inside a leaf in this animation by Angela Steffen, who also worked on Love & Theft.
Official website.
Felix the Cat has a crazy little trip after going to sleep with a full belly. The video is cued to start near the trip sequence, so if you want to see the whole cartoon, skip to the beginning.
Strata cut is an animation technique invented by David Daniels. He explains:
“Stratacut is the revealed technique in a way but what you are really doing is sculpting time. You are creating these blobby-spaghetti extrusions with a lot of distortions in them. You are calculating how they will be revealed in time. The potential energy that has been sculpted into them is revealed as kinetic energy once it is cut apart. So I tried to figure out all the possible geometric principals on which the twisting of the shapes would yield the ideal result; the blinking eyes, rotating faces, walking, etc.”
the whole interview in “The Art Of the Title Sequence” is highly recommended.
The next clip is from his cult student film “Buzz Box”, I think it’s brilliant, but might freak you out:
The Blackheart Gang are a South African trio of artists. They are professionals earning their living making TV commercials, but in their free time they work on art projects of their own. Daily Psychedelic Video has already featured a Friskies commercial designed by the visual artists of the Gang.
The Vimeo channel has a making-of and many other impressive clips and commercials.
Much like psychedelics, grafitti artists remind us that everything around us can come to life.
The Daily Psychedelic Video 