In my free time I've been going through animations on the excellent CafeChurch CD-ROM and thought I'd post a few reactions.As always I'm super-impressed by what these artists have come up with. For those of us for whom animation is a hobby, seeing the work of professionals is always an inspiration and challenge. I applaud any church that pays artists!
The graphic an animation quality of these is uniformly high - stunning graphics and small file sizes. The Cafe Church artists specialise in bold 2D cartoon-style graphics, often with a retro feel (OK maybe thats mainly Rick Bull). Think 1950s and 1960s. There's ample use of corporate and kitsch icons in meaningful ways. ie. for a purpose. Personally, I love the bold colours and shapes as they evoke a bold 'message' and convey a sense of immediacy and urgency. Of course, the down-side is that occasionally the religious imagery itself seems trite - a black cross with a rotating orange starburst behind it. There's a 'flattening' of symbols in this 2D landscape - the cross and the christ seem to compete equally with coca-cola and army tanks. But this in itself raises the question - what is kitsch and what is ultimate? In such a landscape, both problem and possibility are painted starkly.
Many CafeChurch animations have a political focus - the gospel speaking into current issues - war, refugees, poverty, homelessness - and a focus on the gospel and prophetic texts that speak to these. Even the Psalms carry a global conscience. For me this is a welcome contribution to worship!
Quite a number of the animations also present stirring and provocative quotes from contemporary Christians and others - Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Dostoevsky, Tori Amos, U2, CS Lewis, Noam Chomsky.... Both the quotes themselves and the substance of the animations in general reveal a thoughtful genesis for these presentations - born in conversation and community, not seeking to present a closed message but to open the possibility of provocation and response.
I have to say that while i love the content of the quotes, their presentation often irritates me
• often too many words on screen at the one time
• usually in uppercase which makes them harder to read
• rarely on screen for long enough (and i read quite quickly)
• no attempt to use 'inclusive' versions of biblical texts
While I very like presentations that do not make everything simple and obvious, I find that excessive text content is not the best way the achieve this - much better to give a shorter quote that people could read more easily and then ponder. I'd be really interested in discussing this with the animators as they are certainly very gifted visual artists and no doubt have good reasons for their presentation approach.
I've never been to CafeChurch but I suspect that many of these animations are looped in a cafe environment, rather than played once in a sequential 'worship service.' Hence the amount of text may be digestible over time.No doubt there were other elements to complement these as well. On the one hand, I'm glad not to have been given formulas or prescriptions for cafechurch services; on the other hand I would value the opportunity to see/hear some kind of context for their use - a problem we all face in sharing our stuff.
So, for me, the combination of graphics and quotes are a challenging mix of boldness and depth, provocative, though sometimes at the expense of opening interpretation of the text.
There's also urban and beach imagery, satire, coffee, retro fonts, nice silhouettes, anti-corporate angst,
The CDROM has over 150 animations, and about 50 designated as "loops", so you can import these into Flash and use as you wish. The animations don't include sound, but clearly many or all of them had particular sounds/music attached. Some animations identify the related music, so it would be possible to connect them - songs by Peter Gabriel, Tom Waits, Beth Gibbons, U2 - and Glen Powell!
In short, there is so much excellent material here, and the CafeChurch community deserve our gratitude for making it available at such a cheap price.
www.cafechurch.org.au
Craig
