
A few weeks back I posted about Nina Paley's masterpiece Sita Sings the Blues, which is free to watch on her site. Being the good creative commons kind of sport that Paley is, she just recently made available the original Flash files for the movie at Internet Archive. So if you're a budding animation artist and want to know how she accomplished a certain effect, here is your chance to examine in detail the inner workings of the Flash scripts.
From her blog:
All the Flash authoring (.fla) files I used to make Sita Sings the Blues have just been posted on archive.org, under a Creative Commons Share Alike license. Want to know how I got a certain animated effect in Sita Sings the Blues? Open up the .fla files and find out. Want to remix from the source? Now you can. Want to make a Sita Sings the Blues video game using all the assets? Go for it. (But I strongly suggest you negotiate my endorsement if you want to actually market the end product...Yes, I know bad bad people can also use the .fla files for dastardly deeds (the dreaded hypothetical “Nazi Porn Version” that always comes up at Q&A’s). Bad bad people can use our shared Language and Technology for evil too, but I’m not going to constipate culture out of fear of imaginary worst-case scenarios. I’m confident much more good will come from this than bad, and that’s motivation enough for me. It’s Free Culture, baby. If programmers can tinker with the Free Software’s source code, artists can tinker with Sita Sings the Blues‘ source files.
Nazi porn version?

If you haven't had the chance to catch Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues you can check it out on her website for free. Paley has been a strong advocate of free distribution. On her site she offers it in 3 resolutions, two of which are "broadcast" quality. Her use of 2 dimensional computer graphics is nothing short of splendid. Bright, vivid and humorous Sita dazzles.
Sita is a Hindu goddess, the leading lady of India’s epic the Ramayana and a dutiful wife who follows her husband Rama on a 14 year exile to a forest, only to be kidnapped by an evil king from Sri Lanka. Despite remaining faithful to her husband, Sita is put through many tests. Nina (the filmmaker Nina Paley herself) is an artist who finds parallels in Sita’s life when her husband – in India on a work project - decides to break up their marriage and dump her via email. Three hilarious Indonesian shadow puppets with Indian accents – linking the popularity of the Ramayana from India all the way to the Far East - narrate both the ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the epic.
In her first feature length film, Paley juxtaposes multiple narrative and visual styles to create a highly entertaining yet moving vision of the Ramayana. Musical numbers choreographed to the 1920's jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw feature a cast of hundreds: flying monkeys, evil monsters, gods, goddesses, warriors, sages, and winged eyeballs. A tale of truth, justice and a woman’s cry for equal treatment. Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as "The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told."
Watch it here.
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