Major Post 16: Zbigniew Rybczynski

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

 

I was intrigued by both Zbigniew’s work as well as his complex and vowel sparse name. Often times in his experimental animated films he would perform the roles of director, cameraman, screenwriter, and set designer all at once. Zbigniew’s career started right after his graduation from his art high school in Warsaw where he snagged a job at the oldest production studio in Poland, Studio Miniatar Filmoych. After creating his Oscar winning production, Tango he opened up his own studio and started using a computer-integrated system called High Definition. Zbigniew Rybczynski is often claimed as the contemporary George Melies. An animator we learned about earlier who was known for his trick films and famous works such as A Trip to the Moon.

A common theme of his work is all based around his idea that human perception of the world is limited and it is better for people to find new points of view in order to understand more. This is evident in his piece Tango due to the bending and altering of the viewers ideas of time and space.

Below I will link another one of his works below:

Major Post: 15 A is for Autism

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

In class we began watching animated documentaries and the one that stuck out to me the most was A is for Autism. The film has won multiple awards and is meant to give viewers a glimpse into the world of autism. While, I knew the narration and drawings were contributed by autistic people I didn’t know that the music as well as the animations were all contributed by autistic people as well. This piece that Tim Webb, the director, not only gave people a glimpse into the world of autism but it all allowed people with autism to have their own voice. I think it is very interesting how well this piece was made and how much thought and effort was put into making such a progressive and eye-opening film. I would hope that more animated documentaries come out in the future since it seems like one of the best medium to tell a story that will capture an audience’s attention. I have linked the documentary below again in case you would like to re-watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxt3FBVq8Jg

 

Major Post 14: Tadahito Mochiaga

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

 

Today in class we discussed Japanese animation. However, between the discussion of the amazing 2d animation of Hayao Miyazaki and Tezuka Osamu Professor Zhang mentioned one man that I had never heard of before. That man was Tadahito Mochiaga. It found him very interesting since in my preliminary research for this post I found that he holds the unique pleasure of being one of the only artists to have worked in both the Chinese and Japanese animation industry.

Tadahito Mochiaga  pioneered Japanese stop motion animation and is best known for working with MOM Productions. This Japan based studio was regularly outsourced by American directors, like Arthur Rankin Jr., to do the animations for their various films and commercials. He was an animation supervision on one of my favorite holiday stop motion movies “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” as well as a very interesting film called Mad Monster Party?. I will link the trailer below. The animation in it seems much more seamless and life like compared to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”.

LeAnn Schmitt

Major Post 13: Tezuka Osamu

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

This class we continued to learn about the history of Japanese animation and the origins of some of the common tropes of the genre. One man I wanted to focus on is Tezuka Osamu, who is often referred to as the Father, God, and Emperor of both manga and anime. Outside of his groundbreaking works such as Tetsuwan ATOM (Astro Boy) Hi no Tori (Phoenix), and my personal favorite Black Jack. I will link the Black Jack movie below since it is a very interesting premise with very unique characters.

However, outside of the fact his work literally leads to the creation of the world of anime we know today he was a very fascinating man. He decided to purse a medical degree after almost losing both of his arms to an infection as a teenager. He was admitted to the medical school of Osaka University at the age of 17 due to the shortage of doctors in Japan at the time.  Despite being qualified to practice medicine and successfully defended his doctoral thesis in 1961, Tezuka was more inclined to the art work.

LeAnn Schmitt

 

 

Major Post 12: Seitaro Kitayama

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

Today we began our two part lecture where we learn about about Japanese Animation Around 1914, American and European comic books got introduced to Japan. This brief introduction influenced the birth of the first professional Japanese animation film being made in 1917. The Japanese anime style originated with a simple and heavily stylized drawing.

There were many masters that influenced the creation of the type of anime we know today. One master I specifically want to focus on would be Seitaro Kitayama. He was one of the early Japanese animation masters. His work was ground breaking since it was the first technical examples of commercial production anime. His movie, Momotaro, was the first internationally acclaimed cartoon that was based after a folk tale.

Yoshiro Irie, a Japanese National Film Researcher hailed him as one of the fathers of anime. Several other movies he has been accredited with include, but are not limited to, Battle of a Monkey and A Crab and Urashima Taro. Since most of his, as well as many other original works from this time, are missing I will link the short clip of Urashima Taro.

LeAnn Schmitt

 

 

Project 3-WIP 1- Pre-Production

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

For the pixilation project we now are working as a group of four instead of a group of three. My group members now include Julia, Bobbi, and Cameron. Originally, our concept was going to be a rendition of a scene from a fighting game like Street Fighter. We had planned for it to be shot outside by the Gold Coast bridge and we would have a moving camera. However, our schedules didn’t line up well enough to allow us to shoot the production in the day light also the logistics were getting to complicated and would require us purchasing equipment that we would only use for this project. Also, when our schedules did line up it left very little time for Julia and Cameron to edit.

All that taken into account, we decided to change up our idea a little bit. We decided to keep the idea of a fight but scale it down to a type of food fight. The concept is now Bobbi and I fighting for the last Bao. We have planned some fun scenes and left room for Julia and Cameron to edit in some really fun moments. We drew inspiration from the Kung Fu Panda training scene, that I will link below.

LeAnn, Julia, Bobbi, Cameron

Major Post 11: The Pied Piper

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

Yesterday we learned about Czech animation. This style emerged around the 1920s and its “Golden Era” arrived between the 1950s and the 1980s. There were many amazing Czech animators that have made very political and surreal pieces that make your skin crawl. The main medium of this type of animation being the use of wooden dolls, Claymation, puppets, and cutouts. 3D animation is seldom used since there is not enough finances to implement it and there is a deficient of trained 3D animators.

Some of the most outstanding animators from this era include: Jiri Trnka, Karel Zeman, and my personal favorite Jan Svankmajer. But since I have already discussed Jan Skankmajer’s work I plan on talking about Jiri Barta and his Czech Horror Film Krysa (The Pied Piper). It was inspired by German legends. Jiri uses his film as a metaphor to discuss the decay of society as we have fixated on material things. His character and environment design helps create a very easy and uncanny feeling to the movie.  Below I have included the a link to the film itself.

LeAnn Schmitt

https://vimeo.com/257047826

 

Major Post 10: Aleksandr Petrov

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

A few days ago, we learned about a few more very “hands on” techniques of animation. The one that caught my attention the most was the glass pane animations done by the legend, Frederick Back. His work is famously dubbed “paintings in motion”. He was able to flawlessly render very detailed and lively worlds in a very time consuming and difficult medium.

Inspired by his animation, I looked up more animators who used this technique and I came across Aleksandr Petrov. He is a Russian animator and director that uses oil paints on glass sheets. Characteristics of his work include his Romantic Realism painting style as well as incorporating imagery to show his characters inner thoughts and dreams. Two instances of these metaphor scenes include the fisherman and the marlin swimming together through the sky and sea from his Academy Award Winning short, The Old Man and The Sea and the illusion to illness in his other short My Love, is shown by the main character being buried under snow on a dark night. I have linked a video that shows some excerpts from the animations previously mentioned.

LeAnn Schmitt

Major Post 9: Isle of Dogs

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

Today in class we learned about puppet animations and the uncanny valley is has carved into the animation world. Many amazing companies such as Laika (the creators of Box Trolls and Paranorman) and Tim Burton’s Studios (creators of Nightmare Before Christmas and the Corpse Bride) have made leaps and bounds in this type of animation.

In class we saw many beautiful and heavy animations that were produced outside of the two companies mentioned before. One that stuck with me was Barry Purves, Screen Play. This piece reminded me a lot of Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs. Not only because of the Japanese setting and theme but its dark, creative storytelling, and unsettling style. Upon further research into the creation of Isle of Dogs, I found out that 1,000 individual puppets were made for the production with an even split between 500 dogs and 500 humans. The human puppets were made of resin to achieve a warmer translucent skin (this technique was later used in Laika’s Paranorman). The rougher animation style was accomplished by shooting the whole film on twos.

I got the pleasure to see a handful of these puppets and some of the sets when they were on display in the museum on the Savannah Campus and I can say that I was blown away. It was so surreal to see these lively characters sitting still. It was almost as if I was waiting for them to spring to life. Linked below is a video of how the puppets were made.

LeAnn Schmitt

Major Post 8: Ok Go!

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

Today in class we learned about pixelation animation. Initially, I thought pixelation would deal with pixel art or the incorporation of digital animation with real life acting (i.e. Who Framed Rodger Rabbit.) However, I was wrong in my assumption. Pixelation animation is actually a type of stop motion but instead of puppets or objects it is done with people.

The moment Professor Zhang mentioned many bands had incorporated this technique into their music videos one band instantly came to mind, Ok Go. They are a pop-rock band that originated out of Chicago Illinois. They are best known for having insanely complicated ymusic videos. Some examples of the wild things they have done for their videos include synchronized walking across treadmills, building warehouse sized Rube Goldberg Machines, and being subjected to zero gravity.

So of course, I wasn’t surprised to find out they have also done pixelation. One of their first videos using this technique is End Love. This video is about 9 years old and is rather rough but you can see in the way the band members slide around the screen without moving their feed and also pop in and out of existence that they are using the technique. This is the first video linked below.

A couple years after this video was released you see them use this technique once again for a small segment about Primary colors on Sesame Street and they have improved immensely.

LeAnn Schmitt