ANIM223 – HISTORY OF ANIMATION – FALL 2019

In China, we can see how the relationship between art and the government can either drive or bring a stop to the growth of art as an industry. There are both positive and negative aspects of this type of relationship. When observing this relationship, we can see that the value of animation in China grew exponentially while supported and funded by the government. Animators are able to create worlds and animation styles because they are funded and don’t have to worry about their budget, while “traditional” aesthetic are more valued for its patriotic or propagandist nature to emphasize importance of traditional values.

But there is clear limitation in government having a close relationship with a whole artistic industry. When government stopped funding the arts during the cultural revolution in 1966, animation also came to a halt. Even after the cultural revolution, industries became too reliant on the government as limitations on what artists can create exist. Although there has been a growth of original works by Chinese animation studios in more recent years, we cannot deny that the setback in the industry in the past blocked what could have been a larger part of animation history.

Eunhae Mary Park

Puppet animation, in the Czech Republic in particular, presents an interesting use of puppet animation to convey a message and theme, particularly on social issues. Animators used the interaction of puppet and real-life actors for metaphors and representations on what is and what can be.

These ideas are especially prevalent in Jan Svankmajer’s Dimensions of Dialogue (1982). He presented in his work a representation of bad, negative communication using unique visuals of puppet and stop motion animation that leaves the audience feeling unwell and even unhappy. The visuals largely reflect the message of exploitation in the interaction of people.

Svankmajer presents the message of how societal systems allow for people in power to exploit people without power. These people without power are unknowingly played into the system and are taken advantage of. In certain ways, a cycle of self-destruction.

I was interested in Svankmajer’s world building. Instead of a more generic plotline with a resolution, he sets up world and specific set of laws in the world – common in Dimensions of Dialogue – laws which include a repeated pattern such as faces eating each other, the cycle of labor, or the cycle of exploitation of the poor. The audience observes those laws taking place in that world and see the effects of those laws revealing the true nature of the society presented. And in those effects and true nature is the meaning of the work.

Eunhae Mary Park

While the commercial market for narrative animation developed largely, especially with cartoons, abstract animation has always been a constant over time. Abstract drawing animation allows for animators to tell stories while expanding possibilities of 2-D animation. They do this by creating different mediums of 2-D animation or push existing materials to new level or use those materials in a new method.

Pinscreen animation, a newly introduced form of 2-D animation, pushed animation to create a new highly realistic black and white, chiaroscuro aesthetic. Sand animation was also a new form of animation to push how animation could be created. Paint on glass animation already existed for special effects on animation that used a multi-plane. Animators used this method for a specific aesthetic and used it in largely abstract methods. With these new animation techniques, animators also reimagined rotoscoping techniques to use not only to copy people’s movements, but also use to copy dynamic camera movements and make rotoscope animation more interesting to watch.

These new types of animation have similarities: straight-ahead animation. While pose-to-pose animation requires the animator to be able to revisit frames that have been established and even revise them to be able to draw in-betweens. But, straight-ahead animation means that actions are more fluid allowing for a smoother transition of thoughts as often seen in abstract animation.

Eunhae Mary Park

Good Job everyone with finishing fun and interesting pixilation films! All of them were entertaining and different from the last project. It was also nice to work and see other groups work with new people, getting a larger diversity within each group. It was especially amusing to see Professor Jake in one of the projects as a wanted man/alien? Our group had actually thought to mention the Professor as a blooper ending scene, but we had ran out of momentum and energy to even add that while shooting our last shot. It was a bigger coincidence when our project was very similar to another groups project, although both post productions were very different in editing and audio choice. The concepts were very similar, but nonetheless, different films.

The featured films shown today were (in my opinion) a little slow, at a pace that replicated the traditional Japanese Geisha dances or any traditional Japanese performance. It shows a huge development gap from the historical Japanese animations to the modern-day well known animes. Popular animes nowadays are fast paced and action packed. The featured films are more in resemblance to the Studio Ghibli films, when it comes to story telling and ambiance.

I was absent for class 14 and had to review the class slides on my own time. Watching the different films made from Chinese Animators showed a huge difference between their works and works from the featured artists from previous classes. Based on observations of the films, you can see that the characters are drawn with round, organic lines. A lot of the characters are also inspired by animals and or are based on fictional/spiritual stories. There is a basis of royalty and societal hierarchy within the films that drives the story line of a lot their animations. I really like the different mediums that were shown in the slides, showing the experimental sides of Chinese animations. There was a variety of techniques using ink, origami, rotoscope, to even cut out animation.

Since learning about stop motion animation and actually working on stop motion animation projects, i see stop motion animations quite often. From social media influencers that I follow to ads. It never stuck out to me how often stop motion is used for projects outside of films like Caroline and Chicken Run (my automatic thought to “stopmotion”).