Stephen X. Arthur

This compilation of short animated films shows the work that led up to the making of Transfigured. These films and interstitials are studies in making maximal use of Autodesk Animator Pro and morphing software for short 2D animation output to VHS videotape, before embarking on the three-year production of Transfigured, which animated the paintings of Jack Shadbolt, as a high-resolution 35-mm film made in Animator Pro (8-bit color). The originals are all VHS videocassettes with the soundtrack added after recording the animation because .FLC files do not contain synchronized sound. Includes: Presto Agitato #1, The Recess, Area 7, Arch Rivals, Hybrid Vigour and Mountain Pass Variation.

Experimental short film.

This prototype "sketch" demonstrates sequential morphing cycles from realist to abstract, driven by heartbeats to express the artists' drive to grapple with the vast and harsh Western Canadian landscape. It is the second of five experiments supported by a Creative Development Grant in Media Arts to an Individual Artist from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Animates the surreal "biomorphs" created by celebrity zoologist Desmond Morris in his paintings. Morris wrote in The Secret Surrealist: "My greatest desire is to jump through the frame of one of my paintings, like Alice through the looking-glass, and disappear forever into my surreal world." A clip from Hybrid Vigour appeared in the BBC2 Personal Passions Series II - Episode One: Desmond Morris - The Surrealist, 1999. Zoologist Morris is author of The Naked Ape and The Human Zoo, host of many TV specials, art curator, and a world-class surrealist painter since the time of the original Surrealist group. Paintings were redrawn in Animator Pro and transformed, with permission from Morris, from reproductions in the book "The Secret Surrealist."

Experimental short film.

This video is a mini-documentary or news segment made by The Knowledge Network (KNO) interviewing Stephen Arthur on the making of the animated film Transfigured based on transformations of paintings by Jack Shadbolt. It includes an interview with the late Jack Shadbolt. Intended as a “bagger” to air on a live episode of “Studio BC” if time permitted, this television segment was, unfortunately, never aired. Was supposed to air January 8th 1997, released in 2020 by the director.

The landscape in Vision Point seems to dance with an almost dizzying rhythm against an infinitely receding horizon and our relentless forward movement.

Educational film on animation techniques, as told from a Martian telecast by a Martian presenter -- demonstrating ink and paint on cels, stop motion (model, object, plasticine, pixilation), cutouts, and “filmography” (motion graphics).

Experimental short film.

Experimental short film.

Butterflies, totem poles and satellites. Incisive lines and slashes of colour. Images inspired by West Coast Aboriginal art, by nature and by personal experience. Welcome to the world of Canadian painter Jack Shadbolt, and to Transfigured/Transfiguré, Stephen Arthur's brilliant animated homage to his work. Using computer technology, Transfigured/Transfiguré portrays Shadbolt's shamanistic vision by animating a large number of his paintings into a seamless flow of interacting, transforming figures.

Portrays a teen identity crisis in the idiom of the modern satiric grotesque, intended to provoke discussion. It deals with discrimination and the problem of social identity, as seen most strongly among adolescents. Facial features were animated by digital 2D warping. Faces also appear to turn sideways in pseudo-3D.

“It may be important to note that I received a 1978 Canada Council Film Production Grant for an experimental "frame of reference" film, Splitstream, before I went to film school. For this film I invented a means of post-synchronization to create an "impossible" simultaneous viewing of two contrasting points of view: an objective long shot following a character, and a handheld POV of the same character in the same scene—a unique use of horizontal split screen" -SA

A camera speeds across the Trans Canada Highway.