Author: hazelyin

In class, we had watched some visual music clips and he work of Oskar Fischinger were the most interesting to me. It was an amazing experience that I can feel the rhythm going on the screen even without the sound!

Other than that, I was impressed by the accuracy of those geometric shapes he drew—they are so neat and nice ,which look like they were done by machine! His slow motion animations are also perfect. I beg I can’t do something like that even I have the handy modern technology. It is hard to believe that he in fact lived in an era without computer.

When I was watching his video, I couldn’t help think of those old Disney cartoon I had seen in childhood. I can’t recall the extract memory of which episode did I saw something similar before but I am sure I did see this style of visual music performance often in some classic animation! Perhaps the music style was similar too. Therefore, I can totally agree with that Oskar Fischinger is a great artist that influence the animation world a lot!

Hazel Wong

I guess most of we animation student are big fans of Disney movies.

The studio had created miracles like Cinderella and classic glory like Beauty and The Beast. Disney is now the biggest boss in the field, and we all know that they are very sensitive to their copyright (probably Oswald is one of the reasons).  But do you know that Disney has a dark side? Like, the backstory of the golden classic animation, The Lion King, is actually involving plagiarism?

Watch this vedio you will see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfJvKIDS9n8&t=128s

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If you are a manga fan like me, you must have heard of the big name Tezuka Osamu, also known as the “godfather of manga”. When I was very young, I had watched his work on TV show like Astro boy and Black Jack.

And when I saw Kimba the White Lion, I found it extremely similar to the story of The Lion King. The whole story setting and even some pictures were recalling me the memory about one of my favourite movie, the Disney Lion King. At that time, my mum told me that she had watch Kimba the White Lion in her childhood which also sounded strange to me.

As a young child I didn’t overthink it. I thought maybe lions revenge each other for their home or leadership or father is a common thing in animal fictions. I was a bit shocked but also feel like “I had seen that coming” when I suddenly found that there are so many evidence on the internet can prove that The Lion King has stolen something from Kimba the White Lion. There are too much “coincidence” between the two!

However, Disney has been claiming they knew nothing about Tezuka and prided that the Lion King was original content these years. Sounds like a joke for me as the video told us that Tezuka and Disney studio were in a friendly relationship! I was a bit upset when I found out the truth since I really like the Lion King movie. But that is unfair for Tezuka. Despite knowing that adults are always dark when it comes to money, I still hope Disney can admit their fault someday.

Hazel Wong

As an Asian who hasn’t studied animation field for a long time yet, the name Ub Iwerks doesn’t ring a bell in my mind during class. I guess I hadn’t heard that name often in my life. When we talk about old Disney animation and Mickey Mouse, people only think of Walt Disney directly. I didn’t know that there was another “father” of Mickey Mouse out there! But I found that I am really into the work he worked with Walt Disney, including Steamboat Willie and The Skeleton Dance. They are creative and entertaining even for young adult like me.

Why he didn’t gain his reputation and what’s more about his life? I did some little  research and found out that he actually backed to Disney studio and mainly working on developing special visual effects after the failure of his own company. However, he wasn’t noticed by people as the creator of our beloved Mickey Mouse until Walt Disney died. And he died very soon after having back the frame! It seems to be a bit sad as an artist that no one remember him as a wonderful creator of a popular character during life time. Fortunately at least people praised him before death. I started wonder that what if he didn’t “break up” with Walt Disney at the very first place? I guess there will be some more interesting cartoon in the world and the name Ub Iwerks will be more common to hear!

Hazel Wong

This week, we watched some short films from Walt Disney and Warner Bros which are the most familiar names to me in the animation field. I had watched so many Disney films in my life, including those animation featured movies and short cartoon episode. I used to watch them so often that I can even memorize the Cantonese version dialogues and songs in them when I was young.

Here comes an interesting childhood story: when I was a kid, there was a period of time I was so addicted to one of the animation complications about Minnie Mouse. I watched it again and again with my elder sister every weekend. However, my sis is sick with that episode and she couldn’t stand for it anymore since she had watched with me for so many times! Finally, my sis destroyed that VCD when I was not home. I was so heartbroken when she told me the VCD is mystically gone. What an evil sister!!! And she still hates Minnie when I got to middle school.

Steamboat Willie was one of the film I often watched in childhood. The action of Mickey and animals in this short are so smart, hilarious and creative. Every music in it are just classic and left me a really strong impression! Although I haven’t re-watched it for many years, I can still recall the melody and some performance of Mickey before the video play. People in the old time have many crazy ideas on character performance, which is innovative to everyone .

Hazel Wong

We had watched a lot of animations during classes and I think The Adventures of Prince Achmed is one of the most entertaining film. Although it is longer than an hour and it doesn’t have any voice acting or colourful image, I still enjoyed and liked it very much. Somehow I felt the story plot is a combination of different folk tale, such as Aladdin from Middle East and Cowherd and Weaving Girl from China, and this must be an innovative creation at that time. Besides, it was glad to know that such marvellous narrative art was made by a female creator, Lotte Reiniger. As far as I know, women usually would not be such important role in their workplace and their social status was lower than men at that time. However, here we came a great female director! And her animation is a very first full-length animation which is so interesting and beautiful! I reckon that Lotte Reiniger is a strong evidence of the existence of many nameless female animators who were contributing the industry at that time. Love and respect her!

It was the first week of our animation history class. Before the classes, I am not familiar with animation history. All I known was phenakistiscop and little something about early Disney.

I think the one who invent Theatre Optique is very intelligence and brave. He was doing something extremely new and difficult at that time which is involved both artistic and scientific aspect. He is definitely a hardworking and patient genius. I was a bit shocked to see him spent so much time and enthusiastic to develop skills and technology, something so bold, which was never tried before. He is definitely one of the greatest man in human history! Without him, we probably will not have so many great movies in our world.

For the early animation we had watch, I found that soundtrack, picture resolution and dialogues are really important. Honestly I couldn’t enjoy those film without these element I mentioned. But I think “Gertie the Dinosaur” is a great one! Gertie is pretty cute, the performance and the conversations are very entertaining.

By the way it was difficult to memorise so many foreigner’s name but I will try to do it more.

Since it is hard for me to pick an all-time favourite artist, I would like to introduce you guys one of my current favourite followed on Instagram called “Little Thunder”. The user name on IG is ”littlethunder”.

She is a popular local illustrator and she often does 2D animation or comic. Sometime you can see her work in commercial advertisement  and crossover functions. For example, she cooperated with an coffee bar and roll out a beautiful design of bottle coffee last year.

She mainly work with water color and ink with her amazing skills. I feel like that her style is kind of like a mixture of Japanese manga style and some traditional Chinese element which is very unique, elegant and gorgeous. Her life drawings always perfectly capture the beauty of female. Sexy but not filthy.

I admire her a lot and consider her as one of the best artist in Hong Kong. She has just published her own comic and art books in Japan and Taiwan. Since she is born and raised in Hong Kong, which is also known as a cultural desert, it must be a hardship to develop such a big achievement. I hope I can polish my skills and succeed just like her in the future.