Animating in the digital age was a really interesting time. I grew up in an era where independent animation from the internet wasn’t always the highest quality but ti was produced almost 100% independently. All you needed back in the mid 2000s to become a web animator was flash and a drawing tablet. YouTube used to be a space where animators could make a decent living but with changes to the algorithm in the early 2010s animation in large isn’t uploaded as frequently as it used to be. That being said its still a place where you can find plenty to watch and with lots of variety. The internet is and will most likely stay a free space where animators can produce a decent wage for themselves despite my comments about Youtube’s awful practices. I say all this to say in alot of ways we haven’t really left the animation digital age. With a whole new decade on the horizon it’ll be exciting to see how much farther animation will go at this point.
blog post 15
Wang Film productions or as its also known as Cuckoo’s Nest is one of the most prolific and oldest Taiwanese-American animation studios. The company is based in Xindian, Taipei and Los Angeles. The company was formed by James Wang in 1998 as an overseas facility for the animation company Hannah-Barbera. The company started with 50 employees but quickly became 300. In their first year they produced 17 episodes for Hannah-Barbera. They have contracts with Disney, Universal and Nickelodeon. They’re known for much of their overseas work working on shows like Nelvara’s Care Bear series, Garfield and Friends, and the first season of Rugrats. They’ve also worked on the original 1988 Tron.
blog post 14
Osamu Tezuka is a very influential figure in the world of anime. which such revered classics under his belt such as astroboy, dororo and kimba the white lion. The 2009 adaptation of astroboy was actually produced in Hong Kong. dororo the story of a boy whos body part were sold by his father to demons when he was a baby has to use the prothetic parts that were crafted for him by his adoptive father recieved a 2018 anime. Osamu was known to be a good penpal with walt disney. In some ways one could say that Disney had a pretty sizeable influence on old anime. Anime Heidi the girl from the Alps all have a very whimsical childlike energy. Osamu Tezuka’s Kimba the Lion was a big inspiration for the lion king. There’s so many story comparisons many people alledge that Disney just straight up stole Osamu’s idea right from under him. It’s funny that at first Disney was influencing the East but it seems like in more recent times the roles have shifted.
blog post 13
Te Wei was an animator who specialized in ink wash animation in China. some of his most notable works include titles such as The Proud General, Where is Mama? and The cowboys flute. Ink wash animation is a technique unique to China. Influenced by Qi Baishi, it combines traditional inking techniques and modern animation techniques. Around the 1990s ink-wash went out of style due to the extensive amount of time and money that it cost to produce. That’s really a shame because animation like The cowboy’s flute is beautiful. The way that the bull and the boy interact is incredible. The boys movement are daintier, more loose and free flowing while the bull has tons of weight and exaggerated movements. Especially when the bull is stuck in the mud towards the middle. The music was really good too.
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Jiri Trnka is a Czech illustrator, puppetmaker, filmaker and animator. He specializes in handcrafter puppet making and his craftsmanship is pretty remarkable. His short Ruka (the hand) is both is surreal as it is thought provoking. The shorts main conflict is between our protagonist who is an unnamed character within his house and a giant hand that appears from a box in his home. The conflict escalates with the hand imposing himself on the protagonist in his own home. It ends with the hand putting him in a cage. The metaphor might be a cautionary tale on people being forced to live a certain way because of their governments. Just like in the animation everything seemed fine but in the end freedom was lost. The metaphor may seem heavy handed but it’s execution of the message it was sending was heard loud and clear.
major post 11
Drawing animation is very interesting because its works as multiple things. It lends itself more to traditional cinema featuring live action segments. It acts as a sort of meta narrative where the progress of the animation is incorporated into the film. Pioneers of this in particular style are Claire Parker and Alexander Alaxief. Claire Parker was an MIT graduate. The drawing animation method involves the usage of an invention called the pinscreen which involves the movement of 240000 vertically lying pins. It functions similarly to the zoetrope but its most notable difference would be that reassemble pieces of images using things later on known as pixels. In some ways it could be considered as the first precursor to digital animation.
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Arthur melbourne cooper has an impressive repetuar of content. producing a total of over three hundred films between the years 1869 and 1915. His most impressive animation is Dreams of Toy land. It’s a very surreal animation done with stop motion animated puppets. For 1908 to have so many moving parts to ones animated feature is very time consuming, and must be even more time consuming when you realize it came out in 1908. I enjoy the mixing of live action and animation. It works especially in this animation because the only thing that’s animated is the dream sequence. The moment to moment action is very sporadic but always feels intentional.
Blog post 9
I find it very intriguing how Mary Ellen Bute is able to so smoothly blend alternative animation and music. Shapes flow, swoop around, change disappear kinda just like waves crashing. It’s even more impressive how alternative animation still follows the animation principles even though at first glance it may not seem very substantive. Even pose to pose is followed because it’s not a persons movements that we observe when Synchromy no 4 its the movement of shapes according to the music cues. Syncing animation up with music is no easy feat especially when it’s done by hand back in 1938. Creators like Mary are very important because they layed the groundwork for alternative animation. They showed some of the first examples of animation being a medium where anything can happen.
Blog Post 8
UPA aren’t just an animation company, they also liscence a bunch of tokusatsu godzilla movies and some other older live action properties. One of the primary thing that they put out were informational videos. They had all sorts of videos like military instruction, general education and politics. I feel like it’s one of the driving forces behind the amount of educational animated programs in the western animation industry. The difference between all the ones from the UPA and all the programs from the current day and the difference is that it was made for adults. I think cartoons that were well made and not ugly/offensive cartoons aimed at adults is a rare thing nowadays but back then that was normal. There used to be such a higher standard for adult aimed animated media. Despite the Hayes Code it didn’t stop the UPA from educating grown people. I think that’s wonderful.
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Tex Avery’s wolf cartoon is very influential for being one of the best animated short of all time. One of the best things about the short is that it features an incredible amount of detail. One of the places I noticed the immense amount of detail was in the characters animated in the short itself. It’s wonderful how their personalities are very obvious based on how they interact with one another. The wolf animates the best to me with bulging eyes, banging loud on the table, whistling, his heart beating out of his chest. Animation like that, extremes like that is good animation because it transcends language because no matter what language you speak you can understand the wolf’s motivation and his desires. The movement Itself tells the entire character’s motivation. He’s amazing at expressing emotion so much so it doesn’t seem like dialogue is needed at all.
ANIM223 - HISTORY OF ANIMATION - FALL 2019 