In my previous post I
discussed the initial start to the project that would become the Take on Me
music video by Michael Patterson. Patterson then took the next steps in
production and went to the Warner Brothers studio. There he me with Jeff
Ayeroff, a famous music video producer. It was Ayeroff’s first idea to create
the main story that eventually would become the story to Take on Me. “’I have
this idea – a comic-book character comes to life and falls in love with a girl.’” Patterson tells the Guardian in an article
that “for 16 weeks all we did was sleep and work on the video, me in the living
room, Candace in the kitchen. We made around 2,000 drawings.” Low and behold
years later on Youtube, Patterson’s decision to make a music video on a whim
produced a legendary 80’s classic that today has 955 million views. In my next
post, I will discuss Michael Patterson’s life and what work he has done since
Take on Me.
Take
on me is one of my favorite music videos of all time. From the rocking 80’s
beats to the stylization of the animation, the music video left a deep impact on
me. I believe it’s part of what led me to animation. In this blog post, I will
discuss the 1985 music video and the behind the scenes work in the studio.
Michael Patterson, who I hope to cover in another post, is the main artist
behind the video. After working on his previous short Commuter, he began
experimenting more and more to with the pencil-sketch style. Patterson’s
initial drive to create a music video in this style was certainly unordinary.
“‘Me and my partner Candace got a call
from our distributor. “This man in Hollywood wants a free copy of Commuter,” he
said. “I told him to go to hell, but if you want to call him, here’s his
number.” I wrote it down on a scrap of paper and put it in my wallet. Ten
months later, we were in LA and running out of money, so I called the number
and the guy said: “Hey, are you interested in doing a music video?’”
Read
more about the creation of Take on Me in my next post!
Despite — or perhaps because — wartime being a time of tension and uncertainty, the American animation industry consolidated its forces towards the Second World War effort. Animation was used as a medium to portray war, to instruct, and to disseminate messages. This is the second of a three part series.
Anti-Nazi Germany propaganda was created to clearly delineate the enemy. Much of these parody the leader of the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler, in the many satirical incarnations of him in animation film.
Der Fuhrer’s Face (1942) propaganda film starring Donald Duck aimed at a younger audience, but was also encouragement for Americans to buy war bonds. I posit that it took inspiration from two of cinema mogul Charlie Chaplin’s films: Modern Times (1936) portrays Chaplin’s Tramp character in an unforgiving industrial production factory, and Donald Duck undergoes a similar sequence of struggling to keep pace with a relentless assembly line. Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) is a dedicated satire of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler.
Blitz Wolf (1942) directed by Tex Avery, made for MGM. It uses Walt Disney’s Three Little Pigs as an analog for guarding against the looming threat of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany’s expansion.
It is interesting to compare the different humor and narrative structures used in Der Fuhrer’s Face and Blitz Wolf, though both were released in the same year for the same cause. They are perhaps characterized by each different studio’s approach to animation. Der Fuhrer uses the same eponymous song, which follows Disney’s vision for music and sound being a driving element of animation. Blitz Wolf is noticeably more slapstick, and uses gags with extreme cartoon physics, as well as more innuendo jokes such as a released German bomb pausing to read the page of an Esquire magazine. Notably, Der Fuhrer won Bliz Wolf at the Academy awards.
Disney’s short film Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi (1943) is, in comparison a much darker and more somber, yet more nuanced view of Nazi Germany. The film shows the gradual indoctrination of Hans, a young German boy growing up under the rule of the Nazi party, who is brainwashed in cheering for Hitler (who is, for good measure, satirized as a barmy knight) and becoming a soldier, and presumably ‘cannon-fodder’, to die a horrible death.
Reason and Emotion (1943), also produced by Disney, draws the analogy of reason and emotion being two entities inside each person’s mind (perhaps a precursor concept to the 2015 film Inside Out, but I digress), in order to illustrate what the film calls the ‘Nazi German brain’ where emotion has been manipulated by Hitler to take the helm. It also encourages the audience not to be victims of fear-mongering. Although a somewhat outdated portrayal of how the human mind works, it is a valiant attempt at making American audiences understand why Hitler’s doctrine is so affective in Germany.
Despite — or perhaps because — wartime being a time of tension and uncertainty, the American animation industry consolidated its forces towards the Second World War effort. Animation was used as a medium to portray war, to instruct, and to disseminate messages. This is the first part of a three-part series.
Although Peace on Earth (1939) was not a film made for the war effort, it was released two months after WWII started in Europe, and its portrayal of war I find interesting and important enough to include as a forward to animations that are more strictly propaganda in nature.
It is an anti-war, pacifist film produced by by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer company. It was presumably made during the collapse of international relations between the Allied and Axis Powers in the late 30’s, but definitely before the United States joined WWII.
Peace takes place in a hypothetical post-apocalyptic earth, where humans have wiped each other out while waging war, and woodland animals have taken over and are now re-telling the stories of humans’ wars. The film seems to be cautioning against war with the hindsight of WWI, which was the largest scale war known to humankind at its end in 1918, and was even then called ‘the war to end all wars’. It certainly depicts war as brutal: the battlefield sequences are very realistic and well made, in stark contrast to the joyful cartoon animals.
Interestingly this film was remade after WWII with a different scenario, and even more brutal war scenes showing more technically advanced weapons than Peace on Earth, in light of the many innovations in weaponry in the actual war, including the nuclear bomb.
The rest of the series will dive into the many types of animation made during the war effort.
In class 19, we watched a couple video of the early years of computer animations. Ever since the computer was invented,digital animation has developed a great thing that affect the whole movie industry . The filmmakers started add animation and visual effects in the movie to show their imagination world. And the computer animation technique reduced a lot of work for traditional animation. Plus the 3D animation these days are becoming more and more realistic . And there is less 2D animation release in recent years. It seems like digital animation have taken over the whole animation industry.
However, I think traditional 2D animation cannot be replaced by digital animation. Especially the hand-drawing visual style irreparable, hand-drawing can be have more vitality and change than digital animation. Additionally, the hand-drawing has more human nature compared to digital animation. When you are watching traditional animation,you can see the brushstrokes and line weight of the artist and that is the thing digital animation can’t show.
Nevertheless ,technology is advancing everyday, maybe one day AI can really really animator. I don’t know,but we’ll see¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The Tell-tale Heart (1953) produced by UPA is an amazing work of psychological horror using animation that, in my view, perhaps consolidated cinematic methods of the horror genre and pioneered them in animation. The strong presence of the ‘camera’, its jittering and hovering movement, and its use to show the ‘point-of-view’ of the character is very immersive and effectively unsettling. UPA’s highly graphic style coupled with the strong light/dark contrast, culminate in a very innovative use of positive and negative space that might not be possible with a more realistic approach.
UPA’s John Hubley is the animator who stands out most to me, for his direction of Rooty Toot Toot (1951). From its adult mystery story and jazzy number to the visual style that is somehow as geometric and slapstick as it is sensual and human, it was delightful to watch and very memorable. Hubley was fired from UPA due to the Communist witch hunt of the 50s, but he continued innovating in animation, what seems to me towards a film-art or even fine-art direction. Together with his wife Faith, he made films such as Moonbird (1959) and The Hole (1962) which are narratively less linear, perhaps due to the improv/spontaneous element of the dialogue, which drives the story. While still using geometric shapes and minimal lines for character animation as in UPA’s style, what stood out to me was the highly artistic, almost painterly look of the textures, and the use of a multi-plane technique that created spatial depth.
UPA could be further discussed as an influence on animation at large. It would be interesting to investigate how it prompted other major animation studios such as Warner Bros. and Disney to experiment further in animation. UPA’s use of limited animation and flat shapes certainly had a widespread influence: Zagreb Films in Croatia (such as in the 1961 film Ersatz) adheres to these design principles, and Chinese animator A-Da’s work (Three Monks 1980 and Super Soap 1986) demonstrate them in a uniquely Chinese context and setting.
UPA (United Productions of America) was arguably a manifestation of discontent with Disney’s realistic animation style and harsh hierarchal and industrial production methods. The five-week strike at Disney in 1941 lead many staff members to leave the studio, and UPA was formally founded in 1934, originally called Industrial Film and Poster Service. As the year and name suggests, the studio initially found employment working on wartime films.
Focusing on the artistic implications (rather than the socio-economic, which is equally interesting) of UPA, I want to think of UPA as facilitating expansion and experimentation in animation, perhaps distinguished because it is separate from Disney. Where Disney unleashes meticulous detail to convince the audience of its believability, UPA draws large flat shapes, swathes of color in essence.
During its time as ‘IFPS’ it produced many shorts for the government. Hell-Bent for Election (1944)’s train sequence still amazes me as very unique and stylish in design. Brotherhood of Man (1945) demonstrated the graphic shapes, flat colors and line-less style that distinguished UPA from Disney and other mainstream animation houses.
As a person who raises upin Hong Kong ,Hong Kong local animation are also an important part of my childhood memories . Although those animation films are not well-known internationally and the quality is not good as Hollywood animations, those characters and the stories from Hong Kong animations connects most of the Hong Kong people from different generation.
McDull is one of the famous animation character in Hong Kong. I still remember when I was young I have a serval book of McDull and the memory of going to the cinema to watch McDull ,Prince de la Bun (2004)after school(kindergarten). Never forget those stories ,songs and the crazy dialogue . It is funny that when I was young I watched McDull movies as a comedy, but when after a grown up a little I realised that the story actually is more emotional and there are more messages the creator wants to express in the movie.
One of my favorite documentaries in the class was “A for Autism” directed by Tim Webb and how it really shows awareness to people with autism. It’s a really important topic that people should be aware of. It reminded me of an advertisement that I saw recently. Where we are in the point of view of a child with autism going to a shopping mall. It really puts the viewer in the shoes of someone with autism. It features all the symptoms and shows how difficult it is to be in this situation. It is horrible that some people judge children that get overwhelmed in public. In addition, this documentary by Tim Webb was great, because of all the artwork featured by everyone that gets animated by the creator.
It features a clear message that everyone needs to be understanding of. That is what these types of animations try to do. Documentary animations are great and feature all sorts of themes. It is great to be able to create these sorts of animations and it is very interesting.
Last class, we talked briefly about an early visual effects technique called “front projection”. I found this interesting because I wondered how filmmakers would be able to project the images without the actors being in the way of the screen. I realized how it works after watching the Shanks FX video shown in class and another video I found.
Front Screen Projection by Shanks FX
Front projection is used to act as a backdrop for filmmaking. In the video by Shanks FX, most of the examples were using the projector with moving images. One of the examples that used this technique was a film called Oblivion. I was so excited to see this because I remember first watching this film years ago and seeing the behind the scenes footage. In the movie, several scenes are made to appear as though we’re many feet in the air. The filmmakers used a large open space and their projection screen wrapped all around the four walls, the corners curving gently to not disturb the image. In the center, they had their set pieces and props, such as a home with large glass windows and a futuristic helicopter.
Front Projection in Oblivion
The footage they used was of the movement of clouds with the sunrise and sunset, taken from a volcano in Maui called Haleakala. This was a great application of the front projection technique because building a set near a volcano and hauling filming equipment out there wouldn’t have been realistic. The filmmakers of Oblivion were able to achieve a seamless and believable environment for the film using front projection. I would like to give the technique a try as well, possibly in a future project!
ANIM223 - HISTORY OF ANIMATION - FALL 2019 
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