major post

Lotte Reiniger and Berthold Bartosch are two of the most representative figures in cutout animation. The two, who were friends and colleagues, used cutout animation to present films with two very different themes and moods showing the diversity of ideas that cutout animation, and therefore animation by extension, can portray.

Reiniger’s film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), the first full length feature animation that remains intact in its full version, displays how expressive and elaborate cutout animation can be in portraying characters and their movements and emotions while maintaining a full narrative. By limiting dialogue to only the important interactions revealing information crucial to the story, the audience is able to focus more on the visual aspect of the film and the expressions of the characters that push the story forward.

On the other hand, Bartosch’s The Idea (1932) pushes the dialogue of metaphors and ideas set in motifs further. Bartosch uses his experience from working with visual effects on The Adventures of Prince Achmed to even further develop the different special effects used to portray smoke, fog, and light to reflect the intensity of the film in which Idea portrayed as a woman oppressed by capitalism in individuals and in society. Bartosch also uses a very specific aesthetic with blocky figures and diverse line weight to reflect the woodcut prints of the novel-without-words The Idea (1924) by Frans Masereel, on which the film was based upon.

Eunhae Mary Park

It was the first week of our animation history class. Before the classes, I am not familiar with animation history. All I known was phenakistiscop and little something about early Disney.

I think the one who invent Theatre Optique is very intelligence and brave. He was doing something extremely new and difficult at that time which is involved both artistic and scientific aspect. He is definitely a hardworking and patient genius. I was a bit shocked to see him spent so much time and enthusiastic to develop skills and technology, something so bold, which was never tried before. He is definitely one of the greatest man in human history! Without him, we probably will not have so many great movies in our world.

For the early animation we had watch, I found that soundtrack, picture resolution and dialogues are really important. Honestly I couldn’t enjoy those film without these element I mentioned. But I think “Gertie the Dinosaur” is a great one! Gertie is pretty cute, the performance and the conversations are very entertaining.

By the way it was difficult to memorise so many foreigner’s name but I will try to do it more.

The techniques developed in the early 1900’s with the birth of the commercialization of cartoons puts into perspective how time and labor consuming the animation industry really was (and still is). The first ‘cartoons’, or performances, by animators (such as by Winsor McCay and even Max and Dave Fleischer’s Koko the Clown) can be seen to largely be drawn by one person as the content of the animation is not as much story as it is simply entertainment for the audience.

As the need for animation evolved, however, from performances to cartoon with more storylines and plots derived mainly from comics, the production line can also be seen to have evolved. The production line evolved from an individual to labor system to accommodate for the large and sudden demand for regular cartoons series and therefore a rise in need for more efficiency in the production process. This evolution, I think, is also because of the large technological advancements that occurred with color film and materials and technology used during production process itself such as rotographing.

Eunhae Mary Park

The view of animation as a medium for film took longer than one might expect. This was unexpected to me because animation can be seen to actually be the fundamentals of film; capturing movement, or giving an image the illusion of movement, by taking a series of photographs with the subject moving slightly between each photograph.

The transition of the use of animation in film from trick shots into moving drawings occurred, I believe, is because of appropriation. This is because no artist at the time simply came up with the concept of drawing a character and making it move, but often times copied other artists’ work and changed it to make it their own by incorporating their own ideas into an existing. This is the primary reason for more than one ‘Haunted House’ films (James Stuart Blackton’s film being built on top of other films of a similar story) and several performances of different artists interacting with their own moving pictures (such as Emile Cohl and Winsor McCay). Because these artists made constant changes to different animating techniques that already existed or was, for them, recently discovered, the form of animation evolved very quickly during the late 19th century up to World War I.

Eunhae Mary Park

As future animators, we have to appreciate and thank the inventors of the Phenakistoscope, Zootrope, and the Praxinoscope. The idea of hand drawing frame by frame actions to create a moving picture was evolutionary. With the advancement of technology and what we now know about animation, cannot be compared to the first animators who had to discover different techniques to create such experimental media. Learning about the different animation techniques such as the stop trick, the lightning sketches, or the substitution trick was interesting. Although I personally didn’t find it as interesting as watching the short films about animated cartoons, I still appreciated the patience it would’ve taken for the actors and the artist themselves to create such a time consuming, precise entertainment. It had never occurred to me, before learning about these animated techniques, how they originally came to be.

Taking my first animation class, I can fully appreciate the concept of using pegs and cels. It makes animating a lot easier and manageable. The process of hand drawing each frame is time consuming and the use of pegs and cels, helped ease the process a little bit, although it was still time consuming.

This week, I studied the origin and forerunner of animation. it is amazing to know how animation was found and developed. Although I planned to take animator as my future career, I do not have a very deep understanding on the history of animation, this lesson did raise my understanding on my future path.
Last lesson on Thursday, we have watched some animation and visual effect clips. I especially liked the works by Winsor McCay. As one of the pioneers of animated films, his works truly inspire me. I like how fluidity and swiftness his works are, and how clean his line works are. Also, from the video shown in our class, he drew without any drafts and marks, this astonish me a lot. I enjoyed to watch Gertie the Dinosaur the most(the mosquito one is too creep :p), the storyline and interaction with Gertie is interesting. This animation inspires me on how to engage audiences with simple lines and limited time. 

Marissa Tso