By Francisco Delatorre
Hoogerbrugge.com is a beautiful gallery of intriguing flash animations
that the author describes as being inspired by his "dreams, expectations,
conflicts, experiences, hopes, defeats, fears, demons, questions,
laughter, and lust." His gallery consists of nearly 80 short
interactive animations that are so interesting, delightful, and disturbing
that you can't help but look at each of them. They all feature a main
character, presumably himself (after all, he does refer to
this as an ongoing self-portrait), whose surreal adventures are driven
by little more than a click or a mouseover.
The aesthetic of each of the pieces is fantastic. The character himself
is a comic-book-like black-and-white sketch, and the backgrounds of
his scenes are often quite simple with one or two colors to accent
him. This allows the user to focus more on figuring out what he is
supposed to do to make the little man do the outrageous things he
does (look! he hit his head!). Indeed, a great deal of the interest
lies in the challenge of figuring out where to click and how to make
it work, and guessing what the outcome will be. This makes the eventual
outcome more delightful, either because it fulfilled those expectations,
or because it pleasantly surprised you. The artist is a sick, sick,
man, so everything he does to his little character produces a girlish
squeal of guilty, disgusted glee.
In the end, though, what does the site serve? Nothing at all. It is
little more than a personal web site; an online art gallery complete
with links to his friends' home pages. This isn't exactly digital
filmmaking; it's interactive art. There's a main character, but there's
no story here, other than the overarching self-portrait. This is a
glimpse into the author's twisted mind, but it doesn't represent the
emerging practice of digital cinema any more than my own web site
does. But that's not what's important here. What matters is finding
out that if you click this side of his head, another head appears!
I can make a spiral of heads! I can make him convulse! He beats himself
up! This is fun!