Side Quest 2: 18th Annual Animation Show of Shows

I just attended the 18th Annual Animation Show of Shows, hosted by Ron Diamond. Unlike previous years, this event wasn't taking place at the theater on campus, but instead was at the Camera 3 in downtown San Jose, which was fortunately in walking distance from the school, and unfortunately the last side quest for extra credits that is local.

The choice of animated shorts this time were very outside of the norm. They were, in fact, more artistic, intellectual, and open to interpretation, and so they were more fascinating than they were entertaining. Simply put, they were very "avant garde", and so their creativity were very experimental. Some of them were also quite sexual, which included full nudity of stop-motion and 3D characters. But if you're the type who has a lot of appreciation of fine art, such as Cubism and the sort, you might find a lot of these quite fascinating. Especially since one of the short films, called Boyg, quite literally looks like a motion graphics work of Cubism in my opinion.

But it's fair to warn anybody considering attending that the content has a lot of adult themes and imagery and not quite for the faint of heart. I don't want to offend and criticize the films that were put into a lot of time and effort to be produced by students and chosen by Mr. Diamond, but considering how highly experimental and risqué a number of the films were, I'm sure it's understandable if someone as simple-minded as myself would finish watching some of the films wondering what did they just watch.

But if people who are not offended by adult content, visuals and themes, and have a better understanding and appreciation of fine art than I do, I would still encourage them to give a showing a try, and they just might understand the ideas and artistry behind the short films more than I did.