FLASHBack: Week 83 - Vertically Continuous Image
For this installment of FLASHBack, we're going to look at a Flash Animation from Andrew Kepple, also known as TmsT (Too Much Spare Time), whom we last covered back around Valentines' Day for his Flash of Neil “Lemon Demon” Cicierega's song Geeks In Love. This week's "animation", if you could call it that, is called Vertically Continuous Image, and is a collaborative effort by posters to the IMHOSTFU Forums. The rules of the project were simple: an image was posted, and then someone else had to post an image of the same width drawn in such a way that the top of the new image had to blend seamlessly with the bottom of the previous. The bottom of the last image in the chain also had to blend seamlessly with the top of the original image. Kepple then animated the series of images scrolling by and posted it to Albino Blacksheep on 21 February 2005. (This was not the first time that Kepple had done this type of Flash, an earlier collaboration called Vertical Scroll had also been posted to Albino Blacksheep, with image contributions from ABS Forum Members, however this earlier work was far inferior as it lacked the crucial continuous loop that gave Flashes of the era the repetition power to attain meme status and go viral.)
By themselves, the crudely drawn images, likely a product of MS Paint, weren't particularly compelling, but Andrew's choice of soundtrack is what earns Vertically Continuous Image its status as a Classic of Flash Animation. As we've seen with many Weird Al Flash Animations, accordion music pairs well with Flash for a humorous effect; Kepple himself had learned this with his parody Flash, Badger Badger Polka. So for Vertically Continuous Image, he turned to a remix by DJ Nono titled Just Lose the Accordion, which mashes up Eminem's Just Lose It with Lawrence Welk regular Myron Floren's Clarinet Polka off his Disco Polka album. As a result, Andrew's Flash is one of the funniest uses of Just Lose It from the early web.
The other top contender for funniest use of Eminem's Just Lose It wasn't an animation, but Flash's video playback usage was most certainly involved in distributing it at some point in its viral cycle, so I'm going to include it here. In late 2004 or early 2005 (I've found links as early as 17 January 2005), University of Texas at Austin student Anthony Le got a bunch of friends and family together to film their own "Asian Style" music video for Just Lose It. Much of the video was filmed at a Wal*Mart, with additional footage shot in parks and a shopping mall. For a bunch of college students in their spare time, the video has some excellent choreography, especially Anthony's recreations of the King of Pop's signature moves like the moonwalk.
Next week on FLASHBack: another musical interlude.