Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Nobody cares about the railroads anymore

El tren santafesino from Cristian Llamosas on Vimeo.

Mi español isn't strong enough to tell you exactly what's being said in the narration here. The stop motion animation is gorgeous, though. Animated white paper or cardboard? Something like that. minimalism (of form, not function) in action.

2 comments:

susan said...

You don't really need to understand what's being said to enjoy this beautifully made low key video. My guess about the materials used is that it's likely card stock or bristol board, or both considering the complexity of some of the elements - like the train with its wheels and pistons. Nice find.

I'm sure you know trains were invented in England and there used to be about 30,000 miles of tracks and hundreds of stations. I was lucky to be able to ride on a few that are now gone largely because of the Beeching Cuts.

Unfortunately, train travel in North America isn't anything like it was in the past. When we travelled from Montreal to Vancouver years ago we went by first class on the Canadian National (huge discount on our belongings coming with us) - a five day journey. We would have preferred taking a train from NS to here but the cost nowadays made it impossible.

Ben said...

It does look like it could be Bristol board, which you're familiar with as a watercolor painter, I'm sure. It's not something that you expect to see in animation, but it works quite beautifully in this instance.

I always imagine Great Britain being more connected by train than we are. They probably still are. I hadn't heard of the Beeching cuts. Probably something that was inevitable to happen, but it's sad that some charming stations, it sounds like, were consigned to oblivion.

In the US passenger rail service was in a way a byproduct of merchandise being moved by train. When most producers switched over to moving by truck trains started being defunded. A coast to coast trip through Canada does sound like it would be neat.