One of my favorite documentaries in the class was “A for Autism” directed by Tim Webb and how it really shows awareness to people with autism. It’s a really important topic that people should be aware of. It reminded me of an advertisement that I saw recently. Where we are in the point of view of a child with autism going to a shopping mall. It really puts the viewer in the shoes of someone with autism. It features all the symptoms and shows how difficult it is to be in this situation. It is horrible that some people judge children that get overwhelmed in public. In addition, this documentary by Tim Webb was great, because of all the artwork featured by everyone that gets animated by the creator.
It features a clear message that everyone needs to be understanding of. That is what these types of animations try to do. Documentary animations are great and feature all sorts of themes. It is great to be able to create these sorts of animations and it is very interesting.
On the day of class 18, we were shown all kinds of animated documentaries that tackled all sorts of subjects and events. The art style of these animations are much more free. There is no limitations, which is close to a more experimental style of animation. The creators of these animations use stories that are close to their personal life or someone has relayed that information. As documentaries are a documentation of a real life event or an occurance or even just to show awareness for a certain thing.
All of the animations featured in class was wonderful and very interesting. Although, I was more interested in the works of American animator Chris Landreth. His works Ryan (2004) and Subconscious Password (2013) were very unique view points on life. With Ryan, it was about a canadian animator named Ryan Larkin, whose work was Oscar nominated. This focused on the real life struggles Ryan had been going through in his life such as drug abuse, alcoholism and homelessness. The animated film won an Oscar for Animated Short. With Subconscious Password, we look into the inner workings of Landreth’s mind when it comes to trying to remember a friend’s name. It was dealt with as if it were an episode of a game show.
Animated documentaries are a fascinating way to experiemnt and relay a story to a much wider audience. I greatly am fond of the experimental style of animation when it comes to these topics. I’m also very interested in the process and the use of softwares and mediums in order to create a film, and use these mediums to fit the feelings of the artists by going over limitations.
Another great influence to Japanese animation is Satoshi Kon. He was born on October 12, 1963 in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. He was a Japanese film director, animator. screenwriter and manga artist. He was a member of the Japanese Animation Creators Association (JAniCA). He graduated from Musashino Art University with a degree in Graphic Design. Sadly, he passed away on August 24, 2010, at the age of 46, because of pancreatic cancer. Which robbbed cinema of one of the greatest thought-provoking artist. He was also mentioned on the Fond Farewells portion in TIMEs People of The Year 2010. He has made iconic films like Tokyo Godfathers (2003) and Paprika (2006). I will talk about the other films that were not mentioned in the powerpoint.
Satoshi owes the success of Akira (1988) for the start of his career. He first started out as a manga illustrator, but transferred mediums as he wanted to create animated films. Madhouse studios was the main studio that produced his films. His first film was released in 1998, called Perfect Blue. This was a suspense story about a pop idol dealing with a stalker, and the hardships of being an Idol.
Millenium Actress was released on 2001 and it centers around a former actress. With a movie studio being torn down, a TV interviewer and his cameraman meet a former actress and travel through her memories and career.
Satoshi Kon’s films have a universal theme, Distorted Love. In Perfect Blue, the obvious sign of this was from the stalker fan who wanted to cause harm to Mima, the main character, from all the “distress” her career caused him. Another less obvious one, comes from the feelings of the Mima’s agent, Rumi. Rumi was obsessed with the image of Mima the idol that she takes it upon herself to actually become Mima, referring to herself as “The Real Mima.” Millenial Actress’ distorted love is chasing after a lover long gone. Tokyo Godfathers distorted love focuses on a mother who had lost her child, so she desires any child to lover her as a mother.
It is interesting to what was in the mind of Satoshi Kon and how he depicted and explored social stigmas and the human psyche, which showed how complex life is. His work has been gritty and intense and he does not stay away from mature subject matters. His work will always be the middle ground between ‘cartoons’ and reality.
After getting to know a little bit more about the history of Japanese Animation. I just have to mention one of my favorite people in the manga and anime industry.
Kiyoshi Nagai was born September 6, 1945 and goes by the pen name Go Nagai. He is a manga author and has been a great influence to both manga and anime. He effectively pioneered their most representative genres, such as the Super Robot genre, Magical Girl Warrior genre, and the Horror genre. As a child, he was influenced by the work of Gustave Dore (Particularly the Japanese version of the Divine Comedy) and Osamu Tezuka. He dropped out of college because he fell ill and him being aware of his own mortality, he wanted to leave evidence that he lived. So he decided to pursue being a manga artist.
His most notable works are Mazinger Z (1972), Cutie Honey (1973), and Devilman (1972). He is known for intentionally breaking taboos. This caused him and his earlier works trouble with the PTA (Parent-Teacher Association). Most of his TV work have been fairly safe. Him and his work continues to be recognized till this day especially with the newest Devilman reboot releasing on Netflix named Devilman Crybaby.
For this class, Chinese animation was introduced. It featured a lot of beautiful films and I’m glad I got to learn the history of it. There are so many other films I never got to see till now. The films were elegantly animated and it really felt like the culmination of the creativity artists had at that time. I got to do further research so I could fully understand the history of the country’s animation.
The Wan Brothers played a crucial part in the animation industry in China. They would remain one of the most renowned animators. In 1956, the government introduced the Hundred Flowers Campaign which was to “let a hundred flowers bloom in the field of culture.” This caused an influx of all of China’s artistics fields, which included animation. The country’s most unique visual styles were paper-cut animation, folded paper animation, and ink-wash animation.
The films that featured each of those technique were Piggy Eats Watermelon (1958), A Clever Duckling (1960), and The Buffalo Boy’s Flute (1963) respectively. Te Wei was the one who developed the Chinese Ink-wash animation and helped create one of the said films above. The Wan Brothers would come back and release their film Uproar in Heaven (1964) which was based on the novel Journey to the West. This film was full of vibrant colors and fluid animation. It was highly praised just for it.
The art of metaphor and the animations that was shown during that class was very interesting. Aside from the intriguing storylines, it is accompanied by really beautiful animations that help convey the story a lot more. Although the styles may be different, this kind of reminded me of the musician Jack Stauber.
Jack Stauber is an American Avant-Pop musician and visual artist. His works feature animation, live action, and makes use of obsolete media. He does most of the vocals and voice acting for all of his media. His most notable albums include Pop Food (2017), HiLo (2018), and Micropop (2019). He also goes by Jack Stauber’s Micropop.
He creates shorts and music videos and he has an iconic style of design for characters and its overall feel. He specializes in 2D & 3D animation and claymation. His main medium for 2D animation is MS Paint. He would feature all of these techniques into his music videos. Each video feels like a distortion of reality. Everything feels experimental. There is no concrete message from these works, it really is how you interprate it.
It was cool seeing another unique technique to create animation. I was really interested in the Pinscreen and the films that were created using it. This was invented by Alexandre Alexeieff. It is a small metal frame that holds thousands of movable pins in small tubes. Each pin that sticks out casts a shadow. When these pins are placed strategically, it creates an image.
This technique is not used that much nowadays, but I would guess that the modern equivalent to it would be pixel animation. Here is a music video for the song “White Flag” by Delta Heavy. I noticed it had a very similar motion comparing it to the works of alexander Alexeieff. Though they are different in style, the thought and execution is simalar. Especially with everything feeling “dotted” or “linear.”
This style was popularized by the rise of video games from the 80s. The earliest video games would be pixelated due to the processor only being able to output a limited number of colors at once. Nowadays we are now able to process a lot of colors due to the advancement in technology. Which allows current pixellated video games and animations like the music video above to be created.
It was great to see the small beginnings of stop-motion animation using puppets. Earliest forms of it realeased around 1899 and it continued to developed even further as time passed. Not only was it used purely for animation, this technique would also be featured in live action films as well. Most notable films that made use of this was The Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933). Nowadays, there are companies who specialize in this type of animation production. Two of the more popular studios are Aardman Animations and Laika Animation Studios.
Aardman Animations was founded in 1972 and is most well-known for their animated shorts featuring the adventures of Wallace and Gromit. Some of their most notable films are Chicken Run (2000), Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), and Flushed Away (2006). They are also known for the children’s cartoon series Shaun the Sheep (2007). During their earlier years they formed a partnership with Dreamworks Animation. They helped them create the films listed above, however, after the box-office reception of Flushed Away Dreamwork’s decided to end their partnership. This was despite the film receiving a nomination for the BAFTA award for Best Animated Film.
Laika Studios was founded back in 2005 and they specialize in feature films, commercial content for all media, music videos, and short films. Their most notable films include Coraline (2009), Paranorman (2012), The Boxtrolls (2014), Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), and Missing Link (2019). Their films have received nominations and awards from different ceremonies. They’re known to show their meticulous process to the public. Seeing their process and then the final outcome must be very fulfilling for them.
It’s great to see the development of this technique throughout the years and I hope that it continues on and evolves even further.
For this class, we’re also focusing on experimental animation. In addition to Visual Music, we now have another animation technique called Pixilation. One of the featured artists of the lecture was Norman McLaren who became a part of the National Film Board of Canada. Not only did he take part in creating visual music animation but he also experimented with Pixilation. His most notable animation was “Neighbours” (1952) that features two neighbors fighting over a flower in the most exaggerated way. The flower is a three dimentional object and is stop-motion animated as well.
Pixilation is a stop motion technique where instead of objects or puppets, live actors are used as the frame-by-frame subject instead. This would be done by repeatedly posing while a frame is being taken every time the pose slightly changes. This technique is used as a way to blend live actors with animated ones in movies.
An example of this in recent times is a project done by the Swiss artist named, Guillaume Reymond. This is a pixilation video depiction of the video game “Space Invaders.” This was for the “Belluard Bollwerk International” festival. The sound effects are all voice acted which gives it a similar atmosphere of McLaren’s work as well.
For this class, it was focused on the UPA (United Productions of America), which was founded by Zach Schwarts, David Hilberman, and Stephen Bosustow in 1943 as the Industrial Film and Poster Service. The style of UPA films were to keep it simple in order to save money as this was during the animators strike. So backgrounds would feature no line art, only silhouettes.
There were a lot of war films that were mentioned in this class. Such as “Looney Tunes: Point Rationing of Foods” (US Gov. Film) (1943) and “Hell-Bent for Election” (1944) both directed by Chuck Jones for the United States government. I would also like to talk about this certain war film that was only shown to soldiers of the US Army. This animation that was also directed by Chuck Jones which was all about a gooft soldier named and titled “Private SNAFU.” SNAFU would stand for “Situation Normal: All Fouled Up.”
Take note that this is a product from its time, so it does have plenty of stereotypes and racism. Especialy in regards for Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. These were created for US Soldiers, it was also exclusively shown to them, so all the references and imagery are very adult themed. However, the purpose of these films were to inform and educate the soldiers during WWII. Reading wasn’t a requirement to join the military so many were illiterate. This would be the easiest way to teach the military. A fun fact is that Dr. Seuss even wrote for this series. The video above is the episode that he wrote. This was also voiced by Mel Blanc who was best known for his role as Bugs Bunny.
ANIM223 - HISTORY OF ANIMATION - FALL 2019 