Major Post 1 : The Origin of Animation

Posted on by lilylai98

In class 2, we watched many rare clips and studied many informations of the animation history, more specifically it is all about the history of film and moving image. Back in the day, people created many animation toys that allows people to perform and enjoy animation by using the material they had , like Phenakistiscope, zeotrope and praxinoscope. I was amazed by how could they invent those things by only using spinning and light to create animation .Compare to the animation these days, we need computer , mintor and lot of electricity to make an animation. I really appreciate the effort they made, it contribute a lot for the present we have.

For the film we watched in class 2, I really like the movie The Trip to The Moon. Actually, that was the second time I watch this movie, the first time I watched this film is in summer break. I was fascinated by the moon of the poster. It looks very odd but interesting for me. Although , this movie doesn’t have sound, you can only guess what is happening in the movie.However , it gives the audience much room for imagination. 

Lily Lai

Major Post 05- Cutout Animation

Posted on by Jiawen Tan

Cutout animation uses paper-cut to represent the plot. Use paper to cut or carve objects and background props, paint colors and assemble joints. When shooting, according to the needs of the plot, the activities of the characters and scenery are decomposed into several different postures step by step, which are placed on the glass, manipulated by the human, and then the joints are pulled in turn. The movable images are taken by the method of progressive photography, and are formed by continuous projection.

Chinese paper cutting is an ancient art form passed on from generation to generation. Therefore, Chinese paper cutting animation combines traditional paper-cut skills to create exquisite scenes.

The Fox and the Hunter (1978) is a Chinese cutout animation. The film tells the story of a cunning fox who uses legends to disguise himself as a monster to scare young hunters into losing their guns and fleeing for their lives. Old hunters see through the fox’s tricks and kill them. At the beginning of the creation, the designer failed many times when he designed the fox, because he loved the fox very much, so that the fox that was supposed to be cunning and treacherous became more and more lovely. The director said he wanted to hug it. So the designer drew more than twenty pictures before they passed. But the wolf’s shape is a success, because the designer hates the wolf deeply. This worries me a lot about the cutout animation project we are going to do. I think Janelle will certainly be unable to make up her mind about the final design of animal characters.

Major Post 04- French Animation

Posted on by Jiawen Tan

French animation has its own style, unlike the animation in the United States, Japan and other regions (mostly commercial), French animation usually has connotative storyline, and philosophical thinking. French animation has always been dominated by short films with fresh or profound connotations. Its unique character style, color style and overall sense of artistic form can leave a deep impression on the audience.

Unlike Disney animation, French animation is stylized, which reflects the individual style of artists combined with local traditional culture.

In French animation, there are more absurd plots, more exaggeration in the style, artistic form and expression techniques of the picture, and more exaggeration in the character modeling. The overall style of the film uses a large area of white, black, monochrome or homochrome, usually using color psychology to foil the development of events.

Skizein (2008) shown in class is a typical French animated short film.

For animated short films, simple and contradictory stories are particularly important. In just a few minutes, we need not only simple and easy to understand, but also a strong explosive point. Proper design of some turning point, suspense, or trigger some resonance, will succeed in attracting the attention of the audience.

Major Post 03- The Idea

Posted on by Jiawen Tan

The movie The Idea (1932), which lasted for nearly half an hour, was hard to understand when it first watched. The film is made up of multi-layer transparent films, and the effects of halo and smoke are produced by the use of soap bubbles and glass panels. Although the picture is slightly blurred, it retains the graphic style of the printmaking while bringing special effects of light and shadow to the film. In addition, the short film is considered to be the earliest use of electronic instruments in the history of film. The music, Arthur Honegger, uses Ondes Martenot, invented in 1928, the earliest electronic organ.

A beautiful and naked woman was created in the starlight. She symbolizes a new thought. The creator sent her to the public. But feudal thought could not accept such purity and nature, and tried to judge and disguise the woman. The woman who fled the trial met a bosom man and she gradually has many supporters. Because of that, the man was sentenced to death. However, women were soon publicized, and high-ranking people used the army in the face of increasingly taller and bigger woman, under the ineffectiveness of coercion and lure. In the sound of gunfire, many supporters were killed. Among the sad crowd, women are transformed into light, shining above the stars.

The production of the film refers to the Die Abenteur des Prinzen Achmed created by German silhouette artists in 1926.

Major post 07: Usage of animation

Posted on by hazelyin

At the beginning of animation history, animation seems to be a simple little entertainment for people to watch before a live-action movie in the theater. As time progresses, continuous development, animations become more and more popular with the creations of characters like Felix the Cat or Betty Boop. We can see that people started target the market on children and I thought most of the animation at that time were just for fun and crazy performance.

And then we watched The Idea (1932), a French animated film talking about censorship. The artist used a poetic way to convey serious social themes. It isn’t hilarious at all, you can even say it has a strong tragic vibe. Without actual history knowledge base, I wasn’t enjoy it very much during class  cause I didn’t understand the message what’s happening behind the screen. But I believe it is a great animation that remind other animators at that time that animation can be an art form for people to express their opinions and feelings. Not only can animation be a great entertainment, but it can also be a tool to push us rethinking about ourselves. That’s why we can always feel connected and empowered from the universal themes of animations nowadays.

Hazel Wong

Major Post 02- Stop Motion

Posted on by Jiawen Tan

We saw many examples of stop motion animation in class. The one that shocked me most was the one made on the wall of the building. After class, I found a lot of interesting stop-motion movies to watch.

It’s really interesting to use stop-motion animation to make cooking videos, especially when different materials are conceptually substituted for ordinary food used in everyday life. In Julia’s blog post, the producer of stop-motion animation treats the grenade as avocado and the note paper as butter. The ingenious combination of special sound effects and scenes makes people feel like “nothing’s wrong with this” and “these things look delicious”

It’s a video of sushi making with stop motion. The producer even cut the iPhone. I’m really curious about how it can be neatly cut into several segments! It also has a funny plot design, which I really think is a successful stop-motion work.

Major Post 01- Trick Films

Posted on by Jiawen Tan

In class, we learned about trick films and watched many example movies. At the beginning, I thought trick films were just a silent comedy. But with a deeper understanding, I found that trick films emphasized surprising ideas and incredible plots more than jokes or dramatic plots. The absurd sense of humour is my new evaluation of this type of film.

With interest, I found more trick films for Georges Melies after class. Among them, I was most impressed by Le Cauchemar (A Nightmare) 1896. I am embarrassed to admit that this film makes me feel a little scared. This feeling overturned my previous experience. I felt very uncomfortable when I saw the moon suddenly enlarged in the background and a strange face like a human being, just as I was startled by a sudden change in my daily life when I had nightmares. That huge, weird moon really surprised me. However, this kind of surprising weird element makes trick films full of special sense of humor and attraction.

Major Post 5 – Mickey

Posted on by marissatso

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.  

major post 06:Oskar Fischinger

Posted on by hazelyin

In class, we had watched some visual music clips and he work of Oskar Fischinger were the most interesting to me. It was an amazing experience that I can feel the rhythm going on the screen even without the sound!

Other than that, I was impressed by the accuracy of those geometric shapes he drew—they are so neat and nice ,which look like they were done by machine! His slow motion animations are also perfect. I beg I can’t do something like that even I have the handy modern technology. It is hard to believe that he in fact lived in an era without computer.

When I was watching his video, I couldn’t help think of those old Disney cartoon I had seen in childhood. I can’t recall the extract memory of which episode did I saw something similar before but I am sure I did see this style of visual music performance often in some classic animation! Perhaps the music style was similar too. Therefore, I can totally agree with that Oskar Fischinger is a great artist that influence the animation world a lot!

Still from Allegretto (1936-1943)

Hazel Wong

major post 05: Disney plagiarism ?

Posted on by hazelyin

I guess most of we animation student are big fans of Disney movies.

The studio had created miracles like Cinderella and classic glory like Beauty and The Beast. Disney is now the biggest boss in the field, and we all know that they are very sensitive to their copyright (probably Oswald is one of the reasons).  But do you know that Disney has a dark side? Like, the backstory of the golden classic animation, The Lion King, is actually involving plagiarism?

Watch this vedio you will see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfJvKIDS9n8&t=128s

If you are a manga fan like me, you must have heard of the big name Tezuka Osamu, also known as the “godfather of manga”. When I was very young, I had watched his work on TV show like Astro boy and Black Jack.

And when I saw Kimba the White Lion, I found it extremely similar to the story of The Lion King. The whole story setting and even some pictures were recalling me the memory about one of my favourite movie, the Disney Lion King. At that time, my mum told me that she had watch Kimba the White Lion in her childhood which also sounded strange to me.

As a young child I didn’t overthink it. I thought maybe lions revenge each other for their home or leadership or father is a common thing in animal fictions. I was a bit shocked but also feel like “I had seen that coming” when I suddenly found that there are so many evidence on the internet can prove that The Lion King has stolen something from Kimba the White Lion. There are too much “coincidence” between the two!

However, Disney has been claiming they knew nothing about Tezuka and prided that the Lion King was original content these years. Sounds like a joke for me as the video told us that Tezuka and Disney studio were in a friendly relationship! I was a bit upset when I found out the truth since I really like the Lion King movie. But that is unfair for Tezuka. Despite knowing that adults are always dark when it comes to money, I still hope Disney can admit their fault someday.

Hazel Wong