Author: marissatso

Received a book just now by post pack (no idea who mailed it to me, sounds weird :0).

Therefore, in this post, I will kind of introduce what this book is about. This book is named Animated Cartoons, a book about how animations are made, their origin and development. It was from E.G. Lutz, a man who inspired Walt Disney to animate. It was first published in 1920, contains many shortcuts to the process of film animation. In the first chapter, he introduced me a motion picture projector, teaching me how to move one picture to another seamlessly, that the mechanism moves so rapidly which the blur period or darkened screen is not perceptible. I can also see some familiar devices I have seen in Class one or two, such as the thaumatrope, the zootrope and the optical theatre in the first chapter.

Actually, I just flipped the book for a few times and read the first chapter, but I already feel so interested to read more. I may further introduce the book after I finished reading it J. (what a coincidence to receive this book now HAHA)

In this post, I am going to investigate the first appearance of Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse was created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks in 1928, first appear in the short Plane Crazy. Plane Crazy was made as a silent film and black and white at first, re-color and voiced later when they remade the film. Although they only used a very little time to animate this short, we can still see multiple characters moving at the same time and dynamic movements of main character – Mickey Mouse, it was more consistent than the previous work Oswalds the rabbit, with dynamic visual packs and camera angle tricks, they used a range of funny perspective angles, such as the scene when Mickey Mouse was flying a plane under the cow.  This film can demonstrate how extraordinary fast Ub Iwerks worked and show his original design with a distinct style and an excellent sense of storytelling.  

In Class 8, we had gone through what is the United Production of America (UPA) and I was pretty amazed by their unique style and approaches. UPA was founded in 1943 by former Disney animators Steven Bosustow, Zachary Schwartz, and David Hilberman, after participating the Disney animators’ Strike against poor pay and conditions in 1941. UPA began as Industrial Film and Poster Service, breaking through Disney style which everyone was imitating at that time. Take the animation ‘Rooty Toot Toot’ as example, fully shown UPA’s experiment on minimal line drawing, use of movement and colors. The characters are created by flat, angular shapes with a loose connection between the colors and the lines, we can see paints actually spilling out over the borders. This unique figures and unreal use of color and backgrounds this is really a stylish thing done in animation. It is also impressing to use such a lively animation to criticize the judicial system.

This week, we had a study on early age of the Walt Disney Studio. It was interesting to know how the studio and their animators had gone through before and after the success of Mickey. In the animation short ‘Trolley Troubles – Oswald the Lucky Rabbit’, it was an animation film that created in an early age when Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks were still in Universal, I can see that they already had different approaches on camera angles and sounds compared with other animation at that time, there were some funny camera angles to show how dynamic Oswald were and engaged the audiences a lot. These approaches had further enchanted the animated shorts. It was also impressing to see how they continued to animate even facing financial struggles and thought out ways to accomplish their passions. I was glad to see how Walt Disney and his partners created such wonderful characters and films, that had influenced everyone till nowadays.

Marissa Tso

The Adventure of Prince Achmed is an animation I really enjoyed to watch during the class. It was the first animated films that took a period of three years.

The story was based on legends from the One Thousand and One Nights, Lotte Reiniger used silhouettes, which was accomplished by cutouts cardboard. She hand-cut out very detailed and complicated silhouettes in this film, marvellous animated with shapes transformed seamlessly into another beautifully, especially seen in the battle between the Witch and the Magician while they morph into animals. Although black silhouettes offered limited perception, the characters still remained highly distinct by their shape and movement.
How she managed to cut out such delicate silhouettes really impressed me. She was able to take care every decorative design or the architecture behind or the clothes the characters wear, astonish me as I can never cut even there a straight line for me to follow. ;(

Marissa Tso

This week, I studied the origin and forerunner of animation. it is amazing to know how animation was found and developed. Although I planned to take animator as my future career, I do not have a very deep understanding on the history of animation, this lesson did raise my understanding on my future path.
Last lesson on Thursday, we have watched some animation and visual effect clips. I especially liked the works by Winsor McCay. As one of the pioneers of animated films, his works truly inspire me. I like how fluidity and swiftness his works are, and how clean his line works are. Also, from the video shown in our class, he drew without any drafts and marks, this astonish me a lot. I enjoyed to watch Gertie the Dinosaur the most(the mosquito one is too creep :p), the storyline and interaction with Gertie is interesting. This animation inspires me on how to engage audiences with simple lines and limited time. 

Marissa Tso