#jon appel

Dream World

The Story of Frank (rough cut)

This film was my undergraduate senior thesis project.  It is an adaptation of a longer short story that I wrote in 2010.

The Library Cartoons

These drawings were made for the front of Teatown Lake Reservation's Summer Camp tee shirts.  Four years and counting!

Eastern Box Turtle - 2011

Pileated Woodpecker - 2012

Black Rat Snake - 2013

Beaver - 2014

Teatown Lake Reservation is a nonprofit, environmental organization with an 875-acre nature preserve and education center located in the Lower Hudson Valley. Teatown Lake Reservation’s mission is to conserve open space and to educate and involve the regional community in order to sustain the diversity of wildlife, plants and habitats for future generations. We are devoted to conserving biodiversity, teaching ecology and promoting nature-friendly living.

"We Got it Made" by Plume Giant -- Official Music Video

I created the animation for this happy music video by my friends' band Plume Giant.

*Awards*

-Best Music Video - 2013 Garden State Film Festival

The Digital World...  ...is an animated film that explores the aesthetic differences between animation drawn on paper and animation drawn digitally on a screen.  This short film has two characters, one of which is drawn directly into the computer using a pressure-sensitive tablet and the other of which is drawn on paper and then photographed.  My goal was for their aesthetic differences to coalesce with the content of the film, which explores the digital vs. physical worlds. This is Jane, the character from the physical world.  She is drawn on paper. This is Mark, from the digital world.  He is drawn digitally.

After spending the summer animating, I have a large stack of paper, full of hundreds of drawings of Jane.  Mark did not leave a trace.

While considering this film, I thought about applying the age old architectural principle, ‘form follows function,’ to the Internet. I got stuck because, for its users, there is no physical form of the Internet.  An exploration of the physical forms of the web reveals screens, warehouses of servers, cables, and tubes, which says absolutely nothing of its functions or of a user's experience.

The development of digital technology marks a new age in our style of living and social interaction.  We can sit at a desk, or on a couch, and can go places.  We are so connected that we no longer need to move to meet or to learn.  The computer has become a vehicle for more than ideas, information, and messages; it transports us away from the place we are sitting and into this ‘digital world’ of media, social spaces, marketplaces, news sources, and everything else.  It is a very recent development and is revolutionary in so many areas of life, not the least of which is aesthetic.  As our screen-time increases, the digital scenery of our own design replaces the world around us.  The Internet is so self-contained that massive companies such as Google and Facebook can have a very significant presence in all of our lives but no physical presence in the real world.