Major Post 03 – Interaction with Audience from Disney

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

When Professor Jake talked about Fantasia from Disney, I misunderstood as the other one that I love watching which is also made by Disney. I found myself often messed this one up with Fantasia.
The one music video or a show that I am talking about is Mickey’s PhilharMagic. The animation is created for a show in Disneyland. I love this animation when I was a little girl. Even though it is a computer animation, I do still find some old fashion taste from the old animations showed in class. The whole animation is driven by music. A lot of the content in between is basically scenes and songs from the classic animated Disney animated movie but are remade for dramatic effects and interaction with Donald Duck. The consideration of the characters in it will interact with the audience is what makes me remind of the animations showed in class. Remembering there are scenes when the characters were doing something or talking but they were actually talking to us, the audience.
For example, Hell-Bent for Election (1944), directed by Chuck Jones. There is the scene of the short man in suit, he was being frustrated and transformed into Hitler. He then was embarrassed and returned back to himself. This is a symbolic movement of the animation but have you ever think of who is he embarrassed to? Us, the audience because in any animations, we are watching the story goes on in god mode, we know a lot more than the characters in it. If you think about it, from the old animations, the characters sometimes interacted with the audience to create a sense of humor that makes us laugh.

I do not have a proper link to watch it in the best quality because it is a show in Disneyland. No one got the original video, it is best to watch it in person but you have to pay to watch this.
This is the one I think it got the best quality to watch it.
If I remembered it correctly and they still haven’t remove it, this can be watched in Disneyland Hong Kong too.

Major Post 02 – Kubo and The Two Strings

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

In the old days, people made animation frame by frame. They have to draw all the actions one by one on the frames so that they can show them on screen. Nowadays it is much easier to create animation with all the help from software. While it does not seems to be old fashioned anymore, stop motion animation is still being created.
Stop motion animation has been around for centuries because it is one of the first generation of how an animation can be created. Making puppets and props are a extra process of the creation. Not only the one single character puppet has to be made, the expressions of characters, a LOT of props, the environment, a lot more to be considered based on how the story goes, will something break through the story, will someone transform, the process of transformation. In 2D and 3D animation, you can copy and paste on the next scenes, editing from there, saving time but in stop motion, you have to make everything that are needed for the production.

I am here to share my favourite stop motion movie so far – Kubo and The Two Strings. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to watch this movie in the cinema, I watched it from a website, I regret it so much. I love this movie no matter what but the feeling of watching it on the big screen will be epic.

The story is talking about a boy named Kubo. Kubo is a boy who has magical power. Everyday, he will go to the village and tell stories of his father, the almighty samurai, Hanzo with his shamisen(a Japanese instrument) and magical origami figures. He has a mother who has a deteriorating mental state. He was told not to stay out at night for the moon king will find him. However, one day he failed to reach home before the moon rises. He got attacked by a pair of sisters who introduced as his mother’s siblings. His mother saved him and sent him away, left alone to face her sisters.
Kubo woke up with a new ally, Monkey. Not long after he met Beetle with no memory. The three of them have to go on a journey to find the 3 legendary items, Sword Unbreakable, Breastplate and Helmet Invulnerable Impenetrable, in order to defeat the Moon King. Throughout this long journey, Kubo also discovered that Monkey was the reincarnated spirit of his mother and Beetle was his father who got cursed from falling in love with Kubo’s mother. Kubo was protected once again by his parents, his father and mother were killed in the end.
The Moon King appeared in front of Kubo and offered to give him immortality. Kugo refused so he started the epic fight with the Moon King who later transformed into a Moon Beast. In the end, he used the ultimate magic, Love and Memories to defeat the Moon King.

I highly recommend to watch this movie, it is still the best one I have watched so far. I adore the style of designing and the whole concept, they are very unique. The process of production is incredible too!

MP7 | Music in animation: visual music, score and song | Part 2

Posted on by Claude Lau

Taking a sharp left turn away from fine art, I want to discuss how mainstream animation uses music. While experimental film explored the intrinsic qualities of music in abstract ways, mainstream film and animation would use music to the end of creating objective scenery and narrative. The Disney method/style capitalizes on the intrinsic influence music has on an audience, whether it be a musical score or songs with vocals and lyrics. And as a de facto pioneer of all aspects of animation film, Disney’s use of music has become a model for animated films even today.

Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf (Sing Along Songs) - YouTube

Though not the first cartoon to feature music, Steamboat Willie in 1928, was the first Disney cartoon with synchronized sound. Walt Disney then produced the Silly Symphonies series, exploring both visual techniques and exercising the use of animation to music: Skeleton Dance (1929) made use of a musical score, Three Little Pigs (1932) was a musical in which the story was told in song. The Old Mill (1937) was also set to a score, and showed Disney studio’s impressive use of the multiplane camera in immersive scenery coupled with atmospheric music.

But I think the culmination of Walt Disney’s personal conviction of music’s importance to film and animation, was the anthology film Fantasia (1940), a 126 minute behemoth with a concert-like program of 8 musical acts or segments. It was built around a longer Silly Symphony, starring Mickey Mouse as The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and using the symphonic poem 1897 by French composer Paul Dukas, based on the German poem by Goethe.

It was a very daring production, for reasons ranging from its departure of traditional narrative based fairytale features like Snow White, to the production costs that were difficult to make back as Europe had plunged into World War II. For the music in Fantasia, the studio developed the stereo sound system to reproduce the most immersive audio experience, which they aptly named ‘Fantasound’. This makes Fantasia the first commercial film with stereo sound to ever be shown.

screencaps by the blog quixotando
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The first segment, set to an orchestral arrangement of Fugue in D Minor by Bach, changes from live action footage of a strongly lit musical ensemble into abstract scenes of patterns and shapes moving across the screen, highly reminiscent of the abstract visual music filmmakers usually associated with fine art more so than commercial animation. In fact, Walt Disney was inspired by Len Lye, a New Zealand experimental filmmaker, to create this segment, and hired Oskar Fischinger to work on the special effects with one of Disney’s top FX men, the Chinese-American Cy Young. However, Disney rejected Fischinger’s contributions, finding them too abstract. Although no doubt drawing from abstract animation, the segment is visibly more objective; the bows of string instruments, undulating waves, mountains and cathedral windows can be seen. The overall concept remains intact, and some of the visual vocabulary is similar to the works of ‘true’ visual music animators like Fischinger’s Studies. Watch this section of Disney’s homage to visual music below:

As my parents said to me when they showed me this film as a child, ‘Disney was teaching kids how to listen to music’. I think they were right, and, at least in teaching me, Disney succeeded.

References:

Major Post 5: Norman McLaren #2 (Pas de Deux)

Posted on by Sydney McPherson

I believe I have a new favorite animation or visual effects video to add to my list after watching Pas de Deux by Norman McLaren from 1968. I have a background in dance through ballet and other genres, and so seeing the title interested me; its means “dance for two” in French and I often watched other students in my dance classes performing Pas de Deux.

The music choice for the film works well, as it allows the dancer to gradually increase the intensity of her movements. As the film begins, the ‘onion skin’ effect isn’t used immediately, it is not revealed until a kind of exposition could be put in place. The film allows us to become acclimated with the music, dancer, and tone of the overall film before it begins to experiment with its visuals. The dancer then begins to create bigger movements and use more of the space around her.

Regarding the visuals, the film being in black and white is successful. The stark contrast created by the light source they used makes the dancers look graphic, as if they’ve been drawn. It’s clear that Norman McLaren made choices about which moments he would use the ‘onion skin’ effect on and which moments would remain untouched.  This is a work I am considering as a topic for my research paper, as I’m fascinated by it and want to study it more.

Side Note: When I first saw this film I immediately thought about a music video by a band called OK Go. It’s called “WTF?” and uses the same ‘onion skin’ effect with plenty of vibrant colors and patterns to create a unique and jumbled visual.

Sydney McPherson

Major Post 4: Norman McLaren #1 (Spook Sport)

Posted on by Sydney McPherson

I really enjoyed the time spent discussing the work of Norman McLaren. His animations stand out for me from other animators because they are so expressive. I feel like he tries to tell stories and give his animations personality and experiments with his visuals to create interesting work.

Spook Sport is a collaboration between McLaren and Mary Ellen Bute in 1939. It’s great that they had a basic narrative for the film, as many of the abstract and experimental animations we have viewed, have been only about translating music into visuals. They included this basic narrative at the beginning of the film along with a breakdown of which character each shape represented.  We discussed the direct-to-film method and I’m blown away by this. Animation today with our intuitive technology is still challenging and time consuming, so I can only imagine the dedication McLaren and bute put into Spook Sport to create the animations.

 In the film on McLaren’s process, he showed how he used a light behind the film strip on a tall drafting table and drew on each frame one by one. He had no ‘onion skin’ or way of previewing the animation that he was doing and had to stick with whatever marks he made, until he viewed the finished film strip. In the first minutes of Spook Sport, there are several Spooks lined up behind each other and they all begin hopping towards screen left. This movement is executed so smoothly and is perfectly timed to the music. I am not sure how Norman McLaren drew these film frames without a way to track where the characters were in the previous frame; regardless, it’s quite impressive.

Sydney McPherson

MP6 | Music in animation: visual music, score and song | Part 1

Posted on by Claude Lau

In Class 5 we delved into the strain of animation known as ‘visual music’, which made me begin to think about music’s relationship with animation. To do that, it turns out we must first look at music’s relationship with art in general.

A handful of visual artists and designers were the visual and conceptual forefathers (foreparents?) of the group of animators working in visual music. French painter Leopold Survage was the first to suggest the idea of merging cinema and abstract imagery, and his series Rythmes colorés (1913) was concieved with the intention of being animated. Sadly, he did not have the funding to put this project into action, and so did not become the first pioneer of visual music. That privilege perhaps goes to Swiss Dadaist Viking Eggeling, who sought to create a vocabulary of shapes and symbol to be usd in visual abstraction as with the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, which he demonstrates in works like the 1924 film Diagonal-Symphonie. The term ‘visual music’ was in fact used to describe Kandinsky’s paintings. Kandinsky began as a figurative painter but rejected depicting objective visual “reality” and became a staple of the abstract painting tradition. Thus the rejection of figurative forms in animation was the abstract, or ‘absolute’ animation. Another important influence of the visual music aesthetic was the Bauhaus school of design in Germany, which saw modernist design and concepts like color theory consolidated under a systematic method.

Called the ‘Father of Visual Music’, Oskar Fischinger’s filmography explores the ways of creating moving design around music. Though a narrow niche it may seem, he explored many techniques to achieve his artistic goal throughout his prolific career: progressive cross sections of wax/clay building on Ruttman’s wax slicing method as in Wax Experiments (1922), drawn/painted animations like in his commercially successful series The Studies in the late 20’s and 30’s, documenting the gradual progress of a semi-abstract painting in Motion Painting (1947) and even stop motion as in Composition in Blue (1935) and the Muratti Privat commercial in 1935.

Another visual music artist whose works were discussed in another class but are undoubtedly the continuation of the visual music tradition, is the inimitable Scottish-Canandian filmmaker Norman McLaren. His works done with the method of drawing directly on film, such as Boogie Doodie (1940) or Hen Hop (1942) have a charming simplicity and rawness that matches the rhythm of the music very well. McLaren’s styles of work are very highly varied, also including stop motion (La Merle, 1958), progress of chalk drawings like a sort of Motion Painting, and using the ‘pixilation’ method, or animation using the body, such as in the Oscar-winning short Neighbors (1952).

Visual music continues to be an active art form in the 21st Century, though undoubtedly somewhat overshadowed by mainstream ‘visualization’ of music with music videos, let alone animation. I was very much captured by the 2008 short AANAATT, created by Hong Kong based new media artist Max Hattler. He describes it on his page as ‘the ever-shifting shape of Analogue Futurism’, which seems quite apt. While similar to Fischinger’s Composition in Blue, in that it is abstract stop motion animation set to tone-defining music, the resulting visuals are highly different. Where Composition is whimsical and pure, AANAAT seems alien and otherworldly.

References

Major Post 6: Golden Age

Posted on by Sammy Liu

The Golden Age of Animation loosely began after the release of Steamboat Willie (1928) by Disney. It was also the beginning of many animators experimenting with easier or more time-efficient ways of creating moving pictures.
Other ambitious animators rose, like Harman and Ising, who tried creating their own studio because of Disney’s perseverance. Many great animators gathered together during this time and encouraged each other to continue to build their curiosity and talent towards different animation and cinematography styles.

Many memorable characters emerged from this period, including Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, Daffy Duck, Popeye, Betty Boop, Woody Woodpecker, Mighty Mouse, Mr. Magoo, Tom and Jerry, Droopy and a popular adaptation of Superman, among many others that haven’t survived along the way. Feature length animation also began during this period, most notably with Walt Disney‘s first films: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi.
Source:https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfAnimation

One of the highlights for me during screening in class, was Red Hot Riding Hood (1943) by Tex Avery, who demonstrated unique choices in voice and performance when directing Red Hot Riding Hood (1943). He was apparently one of the first animator to use smear – dry brush motion for a blurred effect. Reason for use is to portray extremely fast movement, a technique they’d explored to draw more exciting, stylized in-betweens.

Hans Fischerkoesen, who was employed by Hitler was forced to make cartoons to compete against Disney, eventually earning the nickname “Germany’s Walt Disney”. It demonstrates how Hitler was determined to use even the entertainment industry to gain favour among his country. I feel like passive power gain like that are still happening in the form of, what we now call, “Soft Power”. An example of this soft power is seen in J-pop, anime, and in the more recent years K-Pop, where one country’s culture can earn particular favour within other countries.

Class Notes:
Ub Iwerks – Pat Power Studios, worked on most of the works for Disney so ppl highly valued him. Thought Disney would fail. BUT didn’t?!?!?! infact, Ub iwerks didn’t really work out/gain audience attention.
Jack Frost – Techicolour?
Trolley Troubles – Oswald the lucky Rabbit (1927)
Style developed by Harman Ising (who tried to open their own studio, but was fired)
Chuck Jones: Duck Amuck – often breaking fourth wall and explores interaction with the animator.
Bosko: HughHarman – Black Caricature
Contract wuth MGM for developing new series for Bosko

Sammy Liu


Major Post 05 – Movement and Pixels

Posted on by Bobbi Ho

A lot of the experimental artists such as Marry Ellen Brute, Len Lye, and Norman Mclaren, created films that resembled music videos. Following the beat of the rhythm gave the abstract pieces of their films, a narrative story, just as the professor had stated at the beginning of the class. Although they were intended as abstract pieces, the audience is able to follow along with what is happening throughout the scene.

My favorite film shown in class, was Rainbow Dance (1936) by Len Lye. The music was very funky, and the animation matched it perfectly with the different dance moves, and colors flying across the screen. It is a big contrast from his first animated experimental black and white film, Tusalava (1929). Which had no color and only used abstract, germ-like figures. In all honestly, made me very uncomfortable to watch.

Class 09 went over the next project, Pixels. When first hearing about the project, I had assumed it was going to be creating works in pixel form, as in cube by cube. My first thought was of those artists who use post-its to create large pixel art. Watching Norman Mclaren’s Neighbors (1952), really confused me. It wasn’t till the end of the film, when I found out that it was a form of pixel animation. The video itself, made me dumbfounded with the ending, it was very unexpected. Seeing more examples of other projects, made me see that Pixel art, is no different from the other project assignments we had done in the past. The only difference is that people are apart of the animation.

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

 

 

Major Post 8: Visual Music and Editing

Posted on by Eunhae Mary Park

The experimental films of Mary Ellen Bute, Len Lye, and Norman McLaren in the 1930s can be seen to be the direct successor of visual music in the 1920s. However, instead of one form of abstract animation ending and another ending, both forms, by different artists continue hand in hand, as seen from both Oskar Fischinger and Norman McLaren’s continuous work through the 1930s and into the 1940s. The genre of visual music on a different medium shows how there are still several other ways to display music in a non-conventional matter.

Norman McLaren takes visual music a step further by creating a story in the visuals, changing his work from pure visual music, to a narrative pushed by music. His fast paced editing, which can especially be seen in his work Hen Hop (1942), and continuous jump cuts as seen in Blinky Blink (1955) are editing styles that can be seen in today’s editing techniques. Personally, it is a technique that I enjoy not only watching, but would also like to try using in my own work.

Eunhae Mary Park