Is it better to be a vegetarian or a bicyclist? Are fresh vegetables more harmful than frozen meat? If a chicken eats broccoli, and then I eat the chicken, have I eaten chicken and broccoli or just chicken?
Some felt that bio-digesting cow manure makes red meat climate friendly. Others thought bio-digesting cow manure was absurd and gross. One felt that algae could save us all. Another thought the electric car could beat a hundred vegans in a race to the farmers market.
Some don’t believe in greenhouse gases; some do believe, but still can’t help buying avocados out of season from South America. They’re just too tasty.
Everyone of us has a distinct and personal story that informs our choices about what food we eat. I think those quirky personal stories are wonderful and important. If anyone reading this has a story about why you love food, or where you imagine it comes from, or how you secretly love fresh strawberries in the middle of winter even though it makes you feel guilty for days… please post it here.
I’ll start by posting a video about eggs. When I imagine cheap eggs, the ones in the grocery store from who-knows-where, this is what I see.
A gallon of gasoline burns. 20 pounds of CO2 are released into the atmosphere. I hardly notice.
The engine purrs; the heater blows; the dash glows green; and the orange arm of the fuel gauge droops a little; but the most I feel is a mild pang of annoyance. Gas is more expensive than it used to be.
I drive as though asleep in bed. I step on the gas. I daydream. I wake at my destination. It is a miracle of transportation, the automobile. It’s a miracle I survive the trip. I fill the tank up, whistling mindlessly. I close the cap and forget that under the hood, between the piston and cylinder walls there are countless gasoline explosions taking place. Over and over and over again explosions. 5,000 times a minute. In half an hour: 150,000 explosions: 20 pounds of co2.
Twenty pounds of something invisible, tasteless and odorless. It floats so it must be light, yet it weighs twenty pounds so it’s heavy somehow. It threatens the planet, but on a macro scale so large only the gods have the perspective to see it clearly.
I’m told that I am to blame for a great deal of the CO2 problem. Tons and tons of it are because of me. I’d like to change, but I’m not sure how, and anyway I’ve got to get to work. So I screw on the gas cap and crumple my receipt. I turn the key and go.
This video is an attempt to make myself more mindful of the trip.
I recently received some requests from BlenderNation to write a little about how to animate a bumblebee. Toward this goal I can’t help but think about the unpredictability of planning a project under deadline and the importance of keyframing by hand.
First, the planning. I could lie and talk about what an ideal planner I am. I could draw up fake storyboards and draft a fake script to make it look as though I intended every choice of this project from the start as though some twist of genius granted me direct connection to a god-like inspiration. But it doesn’t work that way, not on any project that I’ve known.
In several previous “Behind the Scenes” posts I have released my animation production files for download with the hope that someone might be able to learn and benefit from them. They serve little purpose sitting in a drawer on my external hard drive. It seems only natural to give them away, for those animations would not have been possible if others hadn’t given me the tools to produce them. This is the spirit of openness.
In this current video I benefited again from this spirit of openness. The sound track that fills the second half of the piece is built from sound files that generous and talented people have given away under a creative commons license. This video would not have been possible without these sounds.
Financially I saved money because I was able to finish the video in a shorter time. Environmentally I conserved energy by not traveling out myself to record trains and motorcycles and jackhammers pounding away. And lastly I found a deep joy to think that we (the strangers who recorded these sounds and I) were able to work on a project together. What a feeling of abundance!
This time around the best thing I can think to give back to the community of artists flowing across the internet is my thanks.
This project began with a script about plants, which turned into a storyboard of pencil sketches, plants, flowers, seeds of all kinds swelling and dropping from their branches. These sketches evolved into a collection of 3d models, and rigs and everything seemed to be going according to plan.
Then a bee flew into the room and landed near my desk. It’s wings slowed from a blur to rest on its back. When the little guy looked up at me everything changed. I threw out the script and the storyboard. I shut down my animation software and started over with pencil and paper to tell the story of the bee.
Voting for this month’s projects began yesterday and closes on the 15th, so vote today!
![Brighter Planet [logo]](http://brighterplanet.com/images/logo.png?1250114384 "Brighter Planet"){kind=logo}
