Animated Gif of an Ivory Anatomical Manikin Undergoing Auto Dissection

I found this wonderful ivory anatomical manikin imagination on the blog of the Special Collections, Archives, and Rare Books at the University of Missouri Libraries via the wonderful Tumblr account of Paula A. Ruiz, who kindly answered my recent call for imagery related to the Anatomical Venus.

More on the piece, sourced from the blog, below;  you can read the whole piece, and see more images, by clicking here.

... This object is an ivory anatomical manikin that belongs to the collection of the J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library here at the University of Missouri. It is probably German, dates from the eighteenth century, and is about 11 inches long...

Ivory manikins such as this one may have been used as educational tools by male doctors.  It’s not clear who was the intended audience for the objects. Were they used to demonstrate basic anatomy to medical students? Or laypeople? Or were they simply luxury objects, curiosities to be kept in a doctor’s study?

Most of the ivory anatomical manikins still extant today are pregnant females. The artist of this figure even connected the fetus to the womb with a small piece of thread to represent the umbilical cord.  Whether or not the imagination was something the original owner of this figure considered, we do not know.

Anatomical Flap Book GIF Animations, from 1901 Anatomical Textbook

As posted by Maria Popova on the Brainpickings Website; more here.

Human Anatomy, Jan Švankmajer, “Historia Naturae,” 1967

A gif animation of some human anatomy from Jan Švankmajer's “Historia Naturae” (1967), as found on the Wunderkammer blog. You can watch this delightful film in its entirety by clicking here.

Amazing Animated Gifs of a Circa 1920s Coney Island, from "Speedy," 1928

Animated gifs created from he nighttime Coney Island sequence featured the 1928 Harold Lloyd vehicle Speedy. You can watch the clip from which it is is drawn by clicking here.

Synopisis of the film, from IMDB:

Speedy (1928)
"Speedy" loses his job as a soda-jerk, then spends the day with his girl at Coney Island. He then becomes a cab driver and delivers Babe Ruth to Yankee Stadium, where he stays to see the game. When the railroad tries to run the last horse-drawn trolley (operated by his girl's grandfather) out of business, "Speedy" organizes the neighborhood oldtimers to thwart their scheme. Written by Herman Seifer

Found here.

Macabre

Not sure where what the provenance is for this animated gif, but I kind of love it. Click on image to see larger version.

Via The Neo Shaman Tumblr.

Animated Gif from Metropoplis, 1927

Animated Gif from Metropoplis, 1927; Click on image to see larger, more impressive version.

Via Who Killed Bambi.

Wege Zu Kraft und Schönheit - Ein Film über moderne Körperkultur (The Way to Strength and Beauty), Gif Animation, 21st Century

Nice gif animation based on the 1925 film Wege Zu Kraft und Schönheit - Ein Film über moderne Körperkultur (The Way to Strength and Beauty), a film on modern body culture by Nicholas Kaufmann and Wilhelm Prager, as featured in this recent MA post.

Found on Elettrogenica who reblogged it from druggysleep.

Click on the image to see a larger and more detailed image.

"Betty Boop's Snow White," The Fleischer Brothers Starring Cab Calloway, 1933

"Betty Boop's Snow White" (1933) is undoubtedly Fleischer's masterpiece as lapse, particularily its final sequence in an underworld--both an Orphean journey (i.e. the myth of Orpheus), and an Orphic journey (a silly dance of death set to music.)...the evil queen turns Koko the Clown into a shapeshifting ghost, while her mirror keeps sprouting hands; and a blackface to tell her who is the fairest of them all. At the same time, Koko as ghost is rotoscoped from a clip of Cab Calloway...

Koko sings "St. James Infirmary," while turning into a twenty dollar gold piece, then into a "shot of that booze." At the same time, to illustrate the line of "crap shootin' pallbearers," the walls behind him is lined with murals of skulls and cows together, gambling. That bears scrutiny, usually requires a few viewings: it is intentionally traced like the wall of a Coney Island Mystery Cave Ride. It is also traced out of a collective imaginary (at least the collective of animators). The skulls of African Americans reenact the greasy underworld of back-alley saloon life in Harlem. But not Harlem as blacks knew it--this is Harlem as the white male Fleischer animators saw it....
--The Vatican to Vegas: A History of Special Effects, Norman Klein, 2004

You can find out more about this wonderful book--which contains countless gems such as this--by clicking here. Thanks to my good friend Ben for introducing me to this book, which has been captivating me for the past few weeks.

Oxberry Pegs Presents: Animators Are God? Series, "The Clay Animation of Jimmy Picker," Saturday May 29th, Observatory

This Saturday night, animator GF Newland and School of Visual Art professor Trilby Schreiber will be launching "Oxberry Pegs Presents: Animators Are God?", a new series at Observatory that seeks to investigate the human drive to animate--to give life or the illusion of life--in the broadest of senses. The series will be extremely wide-ranging in its focus, spanning "from Winsor McKay to Ren and Stimpy, the Golem to video games, phantasmagoria to animatronics, Pygmalian to puppet theatre, automata to Avator," and will include performances, screenings, lectures, presentations, and workshops.

Confirmed participants thus far include Kevin Brownie of Beavis and Butthead, Bob Camp of Ren and Stimpy, Jonny Clockworks of the Cosmic Bicycle Theatre, John Dillworth creator of Courage the Cowardly Dog, animator Bill Plymton, Mike Zohn of Obscura Antiques and Oddities on the History of Automata, and Joanna Ebenstein of this blog on The Golem; To find out more about this series and see a full list of participants confirmed thus far, click here.

The series will launch this Saturday night at 8:00 with "The Clay Animation of Jimmy Picker," in which clay animator and bon vivant Jimmy Picker--whose oeuvre includes the clay animation sequences from cult-classic 80s film Better Off Dead and the 1983 academy-award winning short Sundae in New York--will discuss his work and screen his latest project.

Full details for the event follow. More on the series here. Hope to see you there!

The Clay Animation of Jimmy Picker
Screening and conversation with Academy Award winning animator Jimmy Picker
Date: Saturday, May 29th, 2010
Time: 8:00 P.M. Admission: $5
Day one of the Oxberry Pegs Presents Series

This Saturday, May 29th, Oxberry Pegs presents the first night of our Animators are God? Series, featuring the clay animation of Jimmy Picker. Nestled in the bustling Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, is Motion Picker Studios, where Jimmy Picker has been making hand-made films for nearly 30 years. He’s received several Academy award nominations along the way, and won the Oscar in 1983 for “Sundae in New York”, a musical animated short, with characters modeled on iconic New Yorkers, and staring a plasticine Ed Koch. Upon receiving the famed golden statuette, Picker remarked, “Now no one can say I’m a bum!” And how, Mr. Picker!

So, come to Observatory this Saturday and meet Jimmy Picker in person. Hear him talk about the art of clay animation, see his award winning shorts, and gawk as his lesser known cult-favorite clips, like those dancing hamburgers from the film Better Off Dead starring John Cusack. He will also screen his latest work, the “Age of Ignorance,” a clothing-optional creation story!

To find out more about the "Oxberry Pegs Presents: Animators Are God?" series, and to see a full list of participants scheduled thus far, click here. If you would like to recommend a participant, or are interested in participating yourself, email gfnewland@gmail.com. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Image: "Yasutaro Mitsui poses with his own steel humanoid, Tokyo, Japan, in 1932."Via Retroliciousdesigns

"The Anatomy of the Horse," Gif Animation

Animated gif by Mark Weaver (thank you, Suzanne! See comments...) who I have featured on this blog not so long ago (see recent post here).

From Twitpic via Wunderkammer blog. Please click on image to see larger version.

Wege Zu Kraft und Schönheit (The Way of Strength and Beauty), Film Stills, 1925

Above are some fantastic film stills from a German film called Wege Zu Kraft und Schönheit - Ein Film über moderne Körperkultur (The Way to Strength and Beauty), a film on modern body culture by Nicholas Kaufmann and Wilhelm Prager from 1925.

Found on the wonderful Elettrogenica blog, which captioned the images as follows: top 2: "beware the corset!" and bottom 2: "about breathing." Click here to see original post.

Fritz Kahn "Der Mensch als Industriepalast" (Man as Industrial Palace) Animation and Installation

I just received an email from Henning Lederer--an animator and digital artist--in which he detailed an art installation he recently produced based on Fritz Kahn's "Der Mensch als Industriepalast" (Man as Industrial Palace) poster of 1927. Above is a clip of one of the animations he created for the installation, as well as view of the installation. Here is what Lederer had to say about the project:

The intertwining of science, culture, art and technology
From the moment on that I got to know Kahn’s poster “Man as Industrial Palace” in 2006, I had the idea to animate this complex and strange way of explaining the functions of a body. I wanted to continue Fritz Kahn’s act of replacing a biological with a technological structure by transferring this depiction with the help of motion graphics and animation. In addition to the moving images, as a framework, I had the idea to create a cabinet for this work including a mixture of old and new technology. This new version of the “Industrial Palace“ is an interactive installation for the audience to interact with - and by this to explore the different cycles of this human machinery.

This project was produced within the MA Digital Arts Course at the Norwich University College of Arts. It took me about 6 months to complete all the different parts including the interaction and interactive device, the spatial solution, research and theory, and of course the animation.

Right now, I am back in Germany. On the one hand, I am trying to publish the two main MA projects and make people aware of them, on the other hand, I will continue working as a freelancer starting in Germany but with the main aim to give it a try in London.

Thanks, Henning, for sending this along!

You can find out more about Henning's project by clicking here. You can see more of his work by clicking here. Click here to see the wonderful poster that inspired it all.

Another Phenakistoscope Gif Animation

Another phenakistoscope gif anamation, found on Wikipedia. Click here to see more.

Caption reads: 

CREATOR Muybridge, Eadweard, 1830-1904, artist.
TITLE The zoopraxiscope* - a couple waltzing (No. 35., title from item.)
SUMMARY Images on a disc which when spun gives the illusion of a couple dancing.
MEDIUM 1 print : lithograph, color.
CREATED/PUBLISHED c1893 (14699Y U.S. Copyright Office). Copyright by Eadweard Muybridge (expired).
SUBJECTS Dance--1890-1900; Locomotion--1890-1900; Optical illusions--1890-1900.
FORMAT Optical toys 1890-1900; Lithographs Color 1890-1900.

Exhibited at "Moving Pictures : The Un-easy Relationship between American Art and Early Film" at the Williams College of Art, MA, and other venues, 2005-2007.

"Petrification," an Anatomical Animation

The above is a still from an animation by Romain Verger called Petrification. The hands, he explains, come from "La Semaine Médicale," a french medical revue, circa 1900.

You can view the animation here. You can see more of his work on his website; His blog is also well worth a visit.

Running Skeleton Gif

From the website of designer Mark Weaver, found under the "Make Something Cool Every Day" header.

Found via E-L-I-S-E.

"The Skeleton Dance," Disney Silly Symphonies, 1929

Find out more about this animation here.