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Good Job everyone with finishing fun and interesting pixilation films! All of them were entertaining and different from the last project. It was also nice to work and see other groups work with new people, getting a larger diversity within each group. It was especially amusing to see Professor Jake in one of the projects as a wanted man/alien? Our group had actually thought to mention the Professor as a blooper ending scene, but we had ran out of momentum and energy to even add that while shooting our last shot. It was a bigger coincidence when our project was very similar to another groups project, although both post productions were very different in editing and audio choice. The concepts were very similar, but nonetheless, different films.

The featured films shown today were (in my opinion) a little slow, at a pace that replicated the traditional Japanese Geisha dances or any traditional Japanese performance. It shows a huge development gap from the historical Japanese animations to the modern-day well known animes. Popular animes nowadays are fast paced and action packed. The featured films are more in resemblance to the Studio Ghibli films, when it comes to story telling and ambiance.

I was absent for class 14 and had to review the class slides on my own time. Watching the different films made from Chinese Animators showed a huge difference between their works and works from the featured artists from previous classes. Based on observations of the films, you can see that the characters are drawn with round, organic lines. A lot of the characters are also inspired by animals and or are based on fictional/spiritual stories. There is a basis of royalty and societal hierarchy within the films that drives the story line of a lot their animations. I really like the different mediums that were shown in the slides, showing the experimental sides of Chinese animations. There was a variety of techniques using ink, origami, rotoscope, to even cut out animation.

Since learning about stop motion animation and actually working on stop motion animation projects, i see stop motion animations quite often. From social media influencers that I follow to ads. It never stuck out to me how often stop motion is used for projects outside of films like Caroline and Chicken Run (my automatic thought to “stopmotion”).

In Class 09, we have learnt the composition of movement and the most impressed are the Hen Hop and Neighbors. Hen Hop is a drawn-on-film animation by Norman McLaren, I like how McLaren draw the animation to be so dynamic that even the title “Hen Hop” in the beginning is like dancing. Also, I am so impressed by the swiftness of the movement and the transformation, transition between two objects, for example the word “O” and “N” are gradually transformed to a dancing object (an egg with legs?).

This animation is music-driven, and it looks like a musical to me when watching a dancing chicken with lively music, I feel so energetic when watching this short. It is also funny to see how the chicken dance in different strange ways, such as with its head off or stretching its leg wide open.

I have heard in class that McLaren had stayed in the farm in around 2 years for studying the movement of chicken, inspired me to understand that the fluency of the movement of one object, even for creating a animated short, need long investigation and research.

Puppetoon animation is a kind of replacement animation, a kind of stop-motion animation itself. The puppets are created in conventional stop-motion with moving parts that are repositioned between frames to create the illusion of motion when the frames are played in a fast sequence. The puppets are rigid and static pieces in puppetoon animation; each is typically used in a single frame and then change to another near-duplicated puppet for the next frame. it can provide a bigger flexibility and a sense of natural on the characters’ facial expression. It sounds like a really tough work though! I know that Laika studio is still using puppetoon method to make their film and that sounds a crazy workload and you need tons of patience.

Laika had made the most terrifying movie in my childhood, which is also a puppetoon film. I watched it in the cinema when I was around 8 years old and I still remember that was an early May (right before my birthday). I literally cry out in the cinema. YES, the movie name is Coraline. If you love horror, it is my top recommendation. Definitely not for an innocent 8-year-old little girl who was looking forward for a fun cartoon in the dark cinema. I still blame my mum about that.

Now I am grown up and I really appreciate and respect people who can make a gorgeous stop-motion animation! Their skill are just marvellous! But I still freaking hate that horror animation. Like, NOPE, I WILL NEVER TOUCH ANY PUPPET WITH BUTTON EYES .

The featured artists such as Hermina Trylova and Jan Svankmajer, use an interesting combination of stop motion and live action. In a way, exemplifying pixel animation. There is a nice transition and interaction between the puppet toys used in Hermina Trylova and Frantisek Sadek’s Vzpoura hracek (Revolt of the Toys). The storyline was kind of cute in a playful childish way. Where as in Jan Svankmajer’s Dimension’s of Dialogue (1982) and Food (1992) were extremely uncomfortable. It was a live action film while using the media of clay as a factor to the stop motion aspect. The surrealist artist really lives by his reputation ” Famous for his distinctive stop-motion technique, and ability to create surreal, nightmarish, and somehow funny pictures”

I also see a repeating pattern of the use of bugs in animations such as Ferda Mravenec (Ferda the Ant) (Hermina Tyrlova, 1944； 1941 filmed) from one of the featured artists presented in class, as well as previous classes in films such as The Cameraman’s Revenge (1912) Ladislaw Starewicz. I don’t like bugs at all, and watching these reminds me of The Bugs Life from Disney Studios.