Major Post 14: Contemporary artist guests

Posted on by Eunhae Mary Park

During the guest speaker talks on October 29th, we were able to see works of animators using animation as a contemporary art form. Instead of creating narrative films that have a story, like the general view of what animation is, they use animation as a method to show their thoughts, feelings, emotion and even their subconscious manifested through dreams in non-narrative films. Both artists, in the process of creating animation art works use music to enhance the piece and the experience of viewing the piece.  

Zhong Su uses sound that supports the distinct aesthetic of his works. Several of his works are set in a rundown, abandoned city (seen often to be set in Hong Kong), and the audience is led through the city via a camera. The sounds that play during the films strongly support the setting of the world as a creepy and dystopia-like.

Cao Shu uses sounds that push further his films that replicate his dreams. The sounds of the surrounding environment, such as the waves near the ocean, keep the audience aware of the setting. But the sounds that really push the dreams is the narration. Instead of simply voicing the narration, Cao Shu has the narration whispered. The whispers combined with the secondary sounds allow the audience to more fully experience the work as a dream.

Eunhae Mary Park

Major Blog Post 10-Puppet Animation

Posted on by Wendy Kong

I think using puppets in filming is highly related to animism, which usually happens to children, means everything is alive or has a soul, just like Toy Story. However, I cannot figure out would it be a causation, where puppets in animations brought animism to kids, or the other way around, the idea of animism innovated using puppets for filming.

I want to share a little secret here, I still think the stuffed animal I hug every night is alive, he always jumps off my bed when I am knocked out, maybe he doesn’t love my hugs… Anyways, I think using puppets as characters in film is a really good idea, because it can create more variety of characters other than human. Using puppets can also save the money for hiring actors, it is suitable for people want to be a director to start with! In fact, filming puppets has less chance to mess up compare to filming humans or animals. However, puppets don’t look real enough so they have almost been eliminated as the technology develops.

Nowadays, we have animation, computer graphics (CG) to produce a movie, that is why puppets no longer reach the audience’s expectations. As the technology becomes more advanced, I believe animation or CG could be terminated. No matter how advance technology can be, I will never forget or throw away my buddy!

Wendy Kong

Major Blog Post 9- Visual music

Posted on by Wendy Kong

Visualising music is really something new to me, I have never thought of seeing sound, not to mention imagining what sound looks like. It surprises me when I know it started in early 1920s!

I like the “Rhythm in Light” a lot because the visual materials flow with the sound effect, which brings a strong impression to me. Also, I enjoyed the artwork a lot because it comforts me with the structures in the visual material and the music. The visual materials in “Rhythm in Light” are made of many shapes with straight lines, such as rectangles, triangles. They moved like they are in shadow, by moving the light, the shapes enlarged and changed along the music, it seems like they are dancing! Even though the visual materials are mostly made of straight lines, unlike most artists applying curvy lines to fit with music, it turns out really good.

Although this is the first time I learn about visualising music, I think it actually was the basic or the initial step of musicals, movies, animations, linking visual and aural artwork together to produce a greater impact to the audience.

I am sharing this short clip of visual music animation from that I enjoyed. I think is short but cool. It makes me want to do a small visual music project myself!!

Visual Music Animation – Seventeen Years

Wendy Kong

Major Post 13_Japanese Animation

Posted on by Bobbi Ho

I never really gotten invested into watching anime, and that would be my only recollection of Japanese animation. I’ve watched a few anime’s out of boredom, but other than that I never got too invested like my other fellow animators. I did watch a few of the Studio Ghibli films because my family had them on tape, and really liked the storyline behind them. I especially like the cute characters in each of the films. Anime then became a huge social euphoria today to watch anime. All my friends are very invested in anime, purchasing merchandise, going to anime conventions, you don’t have to be an animator to really appreciate the art behind it.

The featured films shown in class today were familiar when it came to recognizing the characters, such as Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy. I’ve seen him plenty of times when I was younger, as figurines or snippets of the show. It was nice to see the variety of animations from japan other than anime, such as Mt. Head (2002) Koji Yamamur or The Demon (1972) Kihachiro Kawamoto. Mt. Head was probably my favorite of the films shown in class because of the unique camera angles that was shown, as well as the storyline in general was really trippy and entertaining. From the start, the audience really doesn’t know where the story will end.

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: Asianimation

Posted on by Sammy Liu

It was super fun looking at less main-stream animations apart from the Western and US, and diving into Chinese animation. I thought it was interesting how many adaptations of the same story exist; like remakes of Godzilla or King Kong, but with “The Journey to the West” and “Nezha”.

Many animations used Chinese Ink as their medium, giving each one a soft, elegant texture. Therefore, it was fitting that calm and slow pacing was used often.

The first artist of the day is Wan Brother, one of the earliest animators in China, who was inspired a lot by the US and has Snow-white/Disney vibes seen in their layout, set-up or background. Again, he worked with ink and used Rotoscoping which was also inspired by the US.

In 1956, a new movement began called the Hundred Flowers Campaign, which was to lift the restrictions felt imposed upon Chinese intellectuals, to stir up socialism and thus grant greater freedom of thought and speech.
It brought up the opportunity to create something new and original to represent China.
The name of the movement originated from a poem: “Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend” (百花齐放，百家争鸣, Bǎihuā qífàng, bǎijiā zhēngmíng).
 “The policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science”. – Mao Zhedong.
We can definitely admire the initially pure intentions to try and build creative freedom in China, and it’s something that’s worthwhile to remember and be grateful of.
It makes me curious to: if China had carried on developing their style, what would that look like?

Extra class notes:
Te Wei – Founder of Shanghai Arts and Film Studio!
Chinese manhua artist and animator, Developed chinese ink-wash animation
Studied in Changchun, Tadahito Mochinaga
Tadpoles Looking for Their Mama (1960) – Te Wei
Yu Zheugang A Clever Duckling (1960) an origami
A-Da/ Xu Jinqin –
Wan Brother:
Princess Iron Fan (1941)
Uproar in Heaven (1964) mixes in Chinese Opera make up on their characters.
Shanghai Arts and Film Studio, first coloured chinese animation (1956) Why is the Crow Black-coated.

Major Post 12: Czech Animation

Posted on by Sammy Liu

I thoroughly enjoyed watching the Czech Animations – a lot of them uses stop-motion and a variety of different objects, allowing for more experimental and unexpected movements.

Two, out of many, highlights:
Ruka the Hand (1965) by Jiri Trnka had heavy symbolization within its simple story plot. An interesting character – The Hand; represented many things, including the aspect of control. The message is relevant to everyone who has experienced some sort of control or manipulation, therefore, the audience would be able to relate to it.

Jan Švankmajer
Dimensions of Dialogue (1982) – looks at miscommunication, irresponsibility, inability to work together, and disagreements, portrayed in such a visually appealing way. It uses suitable pairings, such as a pencil and a pencil-sharpener or bread and butter, to help understand compatible communication, yet then starts mixing it up pairings (e.g. pencil-sharpener plus bread), giving us a visual image of what miscommunication looks like.
It is such a smart way to convey an issue we all experience, that I feel like people could learn, or at least be aware of their actions, from watching this.

Extra Class Notes:
Hermina Tyrlova – Czech director, animator, writer.
Ferda Mravenec
Jiri Trnka – Master of the wooden puppet style, was previously a famous illustrator.
Fyodor Khitruk – Russian Animator
Ostrov (1973)
Yuri Norshteyn – Russian Animator
Hedgehog in the Fog (1975)
Miyazaki mentioned his works to be one of his fave.

Major Post 11: Different forms of animation

Posted on by Sammy Liu

Light and Shadow

This class we learnt about Alexandre Alexeieff who invented Pinscreen, which is a method that uses a lot of pins with different lengths in protrusion to create light and dark spaces. This technique allows for more flexibility in lighting and three-dimensional space – an aspect that requires more time in Cell Animation.

His works: The Nose (1963)
NFB: Mindscape (Pinscreen too)

Our second artist is Caroline Leaf – one of the earliest animators who used sand to animate. She had a low artistic background but during one of her art classes where her teacher asked them to bring stuff in, she brought in sand. Leaf carried on experimenting with sand and her technique has certainly inspired many more down the generation of artists – for example:

Which is sOO cool and expressive. I think similar to the Pinscreen technique – light and shadow and three dimensional space is something that’s achieved faster too.

The last artist that I will mention here is William Kentridge, a South African Artist, famous for his prints.
We had noticed in class, how most experimental animators have Fine Art backgrounds, and Kentridge is another example of that transition in professions.
His piece, Felix in Exile (1994) expresses social issues in his country, South Africa, and explores the physical and mental struggle of those times.
A rather uncanny source of his inspiration for his creations comes from using “other people’s pain as rare material” – Kentridge.
This stood out to me because at my first impression it sounded rather inappropriate and possibly insensitive, yet actually, with further thought, with appropriation perhaps the artists can portray it in a way that could be healing, or at the least, acknowledged.

In this video, he talks about how he uses charcoal because “you can change charcoal as quickly as your mind changes” pulling in the idea of spontaneity again; a mind-set similar to our previous artist, Norman McClaren.

Class notes:
William Kentridge
Felix in Exile (1994)
History of the Main complaint (1997)
Eyewash (1959) – Rober Breer
Fuji (1974)
Jake’s Professor – COMMUTER – Matt Patterson
George Dunning – Yellow Submarine (1968) designed by Hienz Edelman
Also Founder of TVC in London.
Paul Driessen –
The End of World in Four Season – multiple frames (like a comic book style) moving at the same time.
The Killing of an Egg (1977)
Frederic Back – Cel overlays. Colouring pencils on frosted cells.
Frederick Back – Crac (1981)

Major Post 13 – Go Nagai

Posted on by Julia Reymundo

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.

Major Post 12 – Chinese Animation

Posted on by Julia Reymundo

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.

Julia Reymundo