The video above chronicles former MLB pitcher Dock Ellis as he pitches a no hitter on LSD. The video is able to hypothetically recreate what Dock Ellis was experiencing pitching through psychedelic animation and exaggeration. In the beginning of the video when Ellis takes LSD, the screen turns red and while his eyes get bigger and smaller, also random colors and images appear. The animators are trying to show what he might have been experiencing. The animation itself follows Dock Ellis’s tale closely,and it also adds humor to it. The animation short itself is very simple, with hardly any motion of characters, rather it has movement in specific body parts, like eyes, arms, or legs.
The animation succeeds in telling his story for the fact that his story itself is a wacky story, so the animators have good material to work with, and it leads the animated short to be very wacky and random. The animators did a good job with facial expressions, when Dock Ellis is on the mound, through his eyes you can tell that he is under the influence of something, and that he looks very fatigued. The animated short also makes great use of colors, it is in black and white itself, but it uses colors to make a point, and to add humor and exaggeration to something. An example of this can be shown when Dock Ellis tags the base, and the screen turns to black, and yellow fireworks fill up the air spelling out “Touchdown”.
Commented on Kartherine Danoy’s blog and James Davis’s blog.
