You may have been traveling…

in a hot-air balloon…

over the South Eastern Pacific at the mercy of every whim of the elements…

and haven’t seen land,

(or more importantly)

an internet port,

for days…

If that’s the case, you might have missed a great little gem that popped onto the intertube cyber-waves a couple days ago. We care an awful lot about our hot-air ballooning friends, so we’re posting it here too. Said gem is the wonderful new animation of Danielson’s “Idiot Boksen” by animator-extraordinaire, Tom Eaton . It was created as part of the Season of Danielson, which culminates November 4, 2008 (December 1 in the U.K.), in the release of Trying Hartz, the Danielson retrospective of all things pre-Ships:

(click on the heart of your choice to pre-order!)

So click on the cartoon, enjoy, and be sure to check out the very hip commentary from Tom Eaton about the making of…

Idiot Boksen from Sounds Familyre on Vimeo.

“It was tough to pick a song from Trying Hartz… some of my favorite Danielson tunes are from the very early days, and it would have been a great opportunity to animate to one of those tracks. But I’d also always loved “Idiot Boksen,” and it lent itself really well to a short cartoon, what with its punchy beat, literal lyrics, & relatively short length (always a nice thing for an animator!) so I chose that one.

I also agree with the song’s anti-TV theme. Dan & I talked about growing up without television as a big part of our lives, which I think is a good thing. So in the video, the opposite of watching tv is engaging with your friends and going outside. I also wanted to add the element of focus group testing, which is such a big part of kids television these days, as a framing device.

(Just for the record, although I believe TV rots your brain, internet video is perfectly ok.)”