Major Post 16 – Animated Music Video

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

Same as my post 15, we learned about how animation was discovered and evolved. We really have to appreciate how animation has evolved and improved into from 18th century until now.

In the market nowadays, 2D animations are uncommon because as the technology is more developed, creating 3D CGI is more profitable and time-saving than 2D CGI animations, which it is required a large group of people to draw frame after frame. I talked about a special shader pack for 3D software is developed before, toon shader, which is inspired by cel-shading from 2D cartoon. One click with some setting adjustments, a shot can be done quicker than 2D animation. However, that doesn’t mean 2D CGI has been completely abandoned, it usually used as filled the shot with a background or post production ( special effects, lighting adjustment etc. ). Therefore, 2D animations are uncommon to see in the industry now.

Out of nowhere, Riot Games released an animated music video for promotion of in-game skin, GIANTS sung by True Damage ( A made up CGI characters group ), voiced by Becky G, Keke Palmer, SOYEON, DUCKWRTH and Thutmose. It is a media mixed with 3D environment and 2D character animations. It is an animation completely opposite of what the industry usually are, 2D main animations with classic cel-shading with 3D mesh and environment.

Major Post 16 – Japanese Animation 2

Posted on by marissatso

In class 16, we investigated more Japanese animation and I am also interested in watching so much. The most memorable piece watched in class is the Astro Boy, which is created by a really talented animator, Osamu Tezuka, worked in Toei and found the Mushi Production.  The animation style in Astro Boy was no longer imitating the American style, but more like inventing a new style of his own. The characters and ideas of the story in so attractive and interested me to watch more after the first episode. I enjoyed watching a lot. We also watched a lot different Japanese animators’ work in the class and Yoji Kuri work was really out of the blue. The story of his animation was so unique and weird, letting me to be so bewildered after watching and wanted to know the reason behind in his story. The style of his animation is plain and like Red Bull animation (HAHAHA).

Marissa

Major Post 15 – Japanese Animation

Posted on by marissatso

Japanese animation now is a really popular type of animation over the world and this make me so much interested in the history of the animation. Surprisingly, Japanese animation is not widely popular and seen before wartime, Japanese animation was becoming more popular in the wartime which Momotaro was an icon of war at that time. Throughout the animation watched in class 15, I mostly enjoyed the Momotaro, diving sailor. The style of animation at that time was mostly imitating the American animation style, while American animation at the time already becoming so popular around the world. The song in diving sailor was so attractive and interested others to watch, the characters in the animation, mostly animals moved fluently and beautifully drawn. Although it is just a minute animated film, I can feel the meaning behind the animation as a propaganda short. Momotaro series watched in class were mostly interesting and attractive.

Marissa

Blog Post 14 – Chinese Animation

Posted on by marissatso

In class 14, we have gone through the animation history in China. Most of the animation in China shown in class are based on the fairytale story, mainly the story, Journey to the West, which is about four creatures(???) going to the West for the buddha. However, my most appreciated one will be ink wash animation, as ink was is not allowing any mistakes, animators need a lot concentration when making the ink wash animation. Tadpoles looking for their mama is an ink wash animation created by Te Wei. When I was small, I had already been listening or watching this story( Probably not this one though J ), when I watched the original one in the class, I can feel the hard work of Te Wei on doing ink wash animation and the animals in the story are so cute to look at. I enjoyed watching it a lot.

Marissa Tso

Major Post 15 – Kimetsu No Yaiba / Demon Slayer

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

Our class mainly focused animation from before but can we also appreciate how animation/anime from Japan has become now?

I think the best anime made recently is Kimetsu No Yaiba/Demon Slayer. In a world full of Oni or demons, bloodthirsty monsters that looked somewhat like a human with supernatural power, a family is attacked by demons and only two members survive, Tanjiro and his sister Nezuko, who is turning into a demon slowly. Tanjiro sets out to become a demon slayer to avenge his family and hopefully to find a cure for his sister. Not only the story plot is extremely exciting, the animation in this anime is very smooth and the amount of effects and element animations are insanely good.

Animating water is a very complex. In 3D animation production, water or liquid is always a challenge towards the studio even to professionals.

Tanjiro is a demon slayer so he will get quests for him to complete, slaying demons. He met Zenitsu Agatsuma and Inosuke Hashibira during quests and they became a team and friends. One time they have to go into the mountains to fight one of the strongest 12 demons under Muzan’s lead. Zenitsu and Inosuke were wounded and couldn’t battle anymore, left with Tanjiro and Nezuko to finish their job and save them from danger. All the episodes of the anime are well-made but that final fight scene in the mountain was jawing, all the camera angle, the actions and elements

animation.

This is my favourite part.

Major Blog Post 16 – John Lasseter

Posted on by Wendy Kong

John Lasseter is an American animator, film director, producer and former chief creative officer of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is a legend in animation industry. In this lesson, we learned that Toy Story (1995) directed by John Lasseter was the first entirely computer-animated feature film.

Lasseter began his career as animator in Disney, but he was fired because he wanted to promote computer animation in the past. He joined Lucasfilm an he worked on CGI animation there. Lucasfilm became Pixar after it was sold by Steve Jobs in1986. Therefore, he been through all of Pixar’s films and projects. He became the executive producer of Pixar after he directed many of the well known CGI animation including Toy Story (1995), A Bug’s Life (1998) and Cars (2006). He was the executive producers for Walt Disney Animation Studio after Pixar was sold to Disney. He is one of the most successful filmmakers of all time because produced famous films that have grossed more than $19 billion USD, such as Toy Story 3 (2010), Frozen (2013), Zootopia (2016), Finding Dory (2016) and Incredibles 2 (2018).

We love all of the films that he produced, he is truly a legend. Sadly, he will leave Disney and Pixar after he is under sexual harassment in workplace. His last Disney film will be Frozen 2 which will be released in next week! Who is ready for it??!!!

Wendy Kong

Major Post 14 – True meaning of Spirited away?

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

Spirited Away is another Ghibli Studio film directed by Hayao Miyazaki once again that I like.
The story is about the girl Chihiro followed her parents to move to a new home but strayed into another world by accident. Both parents became pigs because of greed, eating the food from restaurants that are not opened yet. Chihiro has to experience various tests and dangers, with the help of Bailong to survive in this dimension of Yaokai and rescue her parents.

I thought I understood the film but I might be not. I read an article about the hidden meanings and symbols about Spirited Away, I was blew away from what I have read.

The movie is about a girl wandered into an unknown fantasy world, she has to find a way to escape. However the article said, it wasn’t the girl wandered into the unknown world, she was sent into this weird fantasy place by her parents. The hot spring hotel was actually depicting a hooker house. The young girl was sold away by her parents to be a young female hooker. This is why the parents became pigs, not only because of greed to “free products” but greed to money, abandoning their children, sending her to an “unknown fantasy world”.

In the film, most of the workers of the hot spring hotel are female and the customers came to the hotel are creatures wearing wealthy, royal uniforms or they could be called “gods”. This is a depiction of the old times of Japan when war happened, a lot of peasants were extremely poor, selling their children away to work, war or services was a common thing to do.

One of the most shocking part to me is when the scene, a river god was polluted by garbage so Chihiro had to clean him up, that was her first job to do in the hotel too. I thought it was talking about pollution we did to river but instead…that part was talking about a young hooker’s first service to her first customer…I won’t say in details, if you understand what that means then you understand, if you don’t, it is ok, you don’t have to, really.

I cannot unseen what I have read from that article, no matter if it is true or coincidence. I can’t watch this film Spirited Away with a pure soul anymore.

Major Post 15: Jumping and Arthur

Posted on by Sydney McPherson
Figure 1: Jumping by Osamu Tezuka

Jumping by Japanese animator Osamu Tezuka is really interesting because the main character is never shown. The only hint at the character is at the very end, when they leave Hell and land back on the street. Here we kind of hear a “sigh” that sounds like maybe it’s a little girl who has been jumping around. Also it would make sense if it was a child because with all the jumping they do, they must have a lot of energy!

Figure 2: Jumping by Osamu Tezuka

The use of perspective is so precise in the animation. The use of a horizon line and vanishing point is evident in each section of Jumping. In the opening scene, the we see that the streetlights all vanish to the same point in one-point perspective (fig. 1). Also, when the character has jumped above the city, the buildings seem to use 3-point perspective to look down on them (fig. 2).

Figure 3: Arthur by Marc Brown

The style of the drawings in Jumping reminded me of an animated show I used to watch as a child called Arthur. The show used a similar style of hatching marks to show shadows and the colors feel like they were drawn in with a marker, as there is streaking in the colors (fig. 3). Arthur also has a clear use of perspective to create the backgrounds.

Arthur https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXgmzGjUKXE

Jumping https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1pThwh2Ves

Sydney McPherson

Blog Post 13 – Talk

Posted on by marissatso

In previous lesson, we listened to 3 talks, two from China and one from Hong Kong. I enjoyed the one from Hong Kong the most. Through that talk, I gained knowledge on the history of Hong Kong animation, knowing the golden age of Hong Kong animation and some talented Hong Kong animators. Through this talk, I liked the animation Disposition by Mak Siu Fung. I learnt and so impressed that the 15 minutes long animation was made by his own, in around 2 years’ time. The whole movement of the character and also animals are so fluent and realistic, the music and sound effect are adopted properly and the meaning behind made me fall into deep thinking on the disposition of human and the relationship between hunter and prey.

Other two presenters from China presented really fantastic 3D animating skills, however I think the story of the animation is one too bloody and one too boring. However, I still enjoyed their skills on rendering.

Marissa Tso

Major Post 14- A Da and UPA

Posted on by Sydney McPherson
Figure 1: Super Soap by A Da

In class we talked about Chinese animator A Da, who created funny and ironic narratives in his animations. He created Super Soap in 1986. The animation features characters that have thin black outlines and bright colors on their clothes. They are all placed on a simplistic, gray background and the buildings and environment are very minimal too (fig. 1). It is interesting to see A Da use the flat color style as the topic for Super Soap as all the characters no long want to be bright and unique once they see that the soap can make their clothes white. It is kind of a comment on how in society, people will follow the bandwagon when there is a new trend and then move onto the next trend, like at the end, when the man creates “Super Color”.

Figure 2: Rooty Toot Toot by UPA

A Da was inspired by the simplistic designs that UPA used in its animations. A good example of this is Rooty Toot Toot. UPA used the same thin black outlines and bright colors for its characters and used a simple brown background (fig. 2). The environment is drawn only with lines and tends to blend into the background.

Another small thing I noticed in A Da’s work was the use of the same character in two different animations. In Super Soap and The New Doorbell, a little girl wearing a pink pinafore appears! (fig. 3 and 4)

  • Figure 3: Super Soap by A Da
  • Figure 4: The New Doorbell by A Da

Super Soap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4-N8aBYY7g

The New Doorbell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ4TF6JLrx0

Rooty Toot Toot https://vimeo.com/121033862

Sydney McPherson