A new way of seeing ‘Starry Night’
Seattle-based artist and animator Gina Miller manages to bring a new dimension to a very well-known painting on her website Nanogirl and blog Maxanimation with a video re-recreation of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” using 2D and 3D components and set gloriously to a Tchaikovsky waltz.
Gina calls it a “work-in-process animation”, a gradual assembly and then dissection of the painting. She has links for downloads in different video formats and to the YouTube post.
“I really feel like I know it intimately, where every house is, every bush, almost as if it is now a physical place in my memory,” Gina writes. “I’ve put the painting back on the wall, and when I look at it now, I feel like I’ve truly been there. As a child I read about Van Gogh in books at the local library and the impressionism brushstrokes seemed to be creating a motion effect, quite a fitting project for a future animator.”
Even more intriguing is her “Talking Mona Lisa”, right down to a demure blush in the cheeks. It’s another of many graphics and videos viewable at either of the two sites by a very talented (and busy!) upcoming artist worth watching. Settle in for a Nanogirl Film Festival.
“I use animation programs to create my work, and Photoshop,” she tells me. “Although the ‘Starry Night’ animation was much more organic in nature, excluding the houses I actually painted all of the parts inside of Photoshop.
“I very much enjoyed working on ‘Starry Night’ as it came full circle with my childhood interest in the work. There is an extra sense of energy when you are creating and connecting with not only some one else’s work that you have admired, but also with your own sense of nostalgia. This made it a much more meaningful and pleasurable experience.
“I also felt sort of like an archaeologist in the sense that I felt such exploration and discovery, because I had to really examine the work from a different perspective, take it apart, reproduce the parts, and put it back together again. I got to know it so well that I almost felt like I became a part of the painting in this way!”
