Major Post 10: Stop-Motion

Posted on by Sammy Liu

We shifted from looking at using single lines to using objects, and more 3D/manual based forms of animation (stop-motion). The class screened various influential animators who demonstrated foundational techniques fo future artists to build on.

Artists include:
Arthur Melbourne-Cooper – Matches Appeal (1899)

Ladislaw Starewicz – Soviet animator
Starewicz had a scientific background, and his work stemmed from wanting to document two stag beetles in battle.
His contribution in stop-motion techniques has been inspiring many to continue to develop the possibilities with stop-motion.

Willis O’Brien
O’Brien started the merge of live-action and stop-motion; basically the beginning of VFX.
Very impressively, one of his first works was a adaptation of King Kong, called “Mighty Joe Young” (1949). He named his style of work Dynamation, which kick started off the possibility of all future science-fiction anomalies, greek mythical tales, and superhero action.

George Pal – A Hungarian animator and filmmaker (1939).
He started Puppetoons – which the technique that replaces facial expressions on a puppet. The technique is continued by LAIKA in Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls.
We watched his work, “Jasper And The Haunted House” (1942) which demonstrated a lot of cinematography. He was very aware of lighting, colour, perspective and composition – a step up to quality entertainment.

Professor also mentioned NFB again, a company that sponsored many of these artists. Channel4 in UK is a similar platform that carries on supporting contemporary artist creativity, especially in the commercial/T.V. world.

Sammy Liu

Project03: Pixelation| W.I.P.

Posted on by Sammy Liu

Our creative process/brainstorming

We initially took inspiration from music videos that used pixilation/stop motion, such as OK GO’s ‘End Love’, ‘Last Leaf’, and Bombay Bicycle Club’s ‘Home by Now’. Choosing music was the first step; we wanted something punchy and energetic to match the pixilation style. We decided on Time Voyage by Just A Gent because it both had a punchy beat and title/lyrics that alluded to a story. In fact our storyline was inspired by the title: a sci-fi space journey telling of an alien abduction.

Prop Making
We scripted the making of the props to be part of the film. It was a challenge to figure out the shots while also actually needing to complete the props. We used cardboard, tinfoil and construction paper as the main materials, and ink and sharpies to draw and color.

Filming

We had an extremely ambitious trip – to film on the busy streets of Sham Shui Po. It allowed to overcome our fears and insecurities of doing art/drama in public.
_(:з」∠)_

We got a lot of stares from people in cars and buses that passed by, however, even with those many distractions we carried on persevering as a group; discussing and coming up with solutions to unpredictable problems.

Chandi Marsh
Sydney McPherson
Wendy Kong
Claudia Lau
Sammy Liu
(*¯︶¯*)

Major Post 9 – Hen Hop

Posted on by marissatso

In Class 09, we have learnt the composition of movement and the most impressed are the Hen Hop and Neighbors. Hen Hop is a drawn-on-film animation by Norman McLaren, I like how McLaren draw the animation to be so dynamic that even the title “Hen Hop” in the beginning is like dancing. Also, I am so impressed by the swiftness of the movement and the transformation, transition between two objects, for example the word “O” and “N” are gradually transformed to a dancing object (an egg with legs?).

This animation is music-driven, and it looks like a musical to me when watching a dancing chicken with lively music, I feel so energetic when watching this short. It is also funny to see how the chicken dance in different strange ways, such as with its head off or stretching its leg wide open.

I have heard in class that McLaren had stayed in the farm in around 2 years for studying the movement of chicken, inspired me to understand that the fluency of the movement of one object, even for creating a animated short, need long investigation and research.

Pixelation Post WIP 1

Posted on by victoriacourchesne

Our group was Marissa, Hazel, Lily, Mary, and Victoria.

For the Pixelation project, we spent about good week without having the slightest idea what we should make. We knew that we wanted the film to be outside but had no idea to what the plot should be.

Then the idea came: a fighting game film!

The idea was perfect and easy to execute because it required only the 2/5 people to act while everyone else could helping film it. We also were debating on if the film should be outside or inside SCAD, but SCAD having SCAD day be on the day we needed to shoot helped our decision. We chose to film the park just across the street. This ended up being the perfect place to film because there was little foot traffic and we had the SCAD building in the background. The fleshing out of the concept really came when Mary drew storyboards for the project. On the day of the shooting we referred back to the storyboards quite frequently for planning out the shots.

Major Post 09: Puppetoon and Laika in childhood

Posted on by hazelyin

Puppetoon animation is a kind of replacement animation, a kind of stop-motion animation itself. The puppets are created in conventional stop-motion with moving parts that are repositioned between frames to create the illusion of motion when the frames are played in a fast sequence. The puppets are rigid and static pieces in puppetoon animation; each is typically used in a single frame and then change to another near-duplicated puppet for the next frame. it can provide a bigger flexibility and a sense of natural on the characters’ facial expression. It sounds like a really tough work though! I know that Laika studio is still using puppetoon method to make their film and that sounds a crazy workload and you need tons of patience.

Laika had made the most terrifying movie in my childhood, which is also a puppetoon film. I watched it in the cinema when I was around 8 years old and I still remember that was an early May (right before my birthday). I literally cry out in the cinema. YES, the movie name is Coraline. If you love horror, it is my top recommendation. Definitely not for an innocent 8-year-old little girl who was looking forward for a fun cartoon in the dark cinema. I still blame my mum about that.

Now I am grown up and I really appreciate and respect people who can make a gorgeous stop-motion animation! Their skill are just marvellous! But I still freaking hate that horror animation. Like, NOPE, I WILL NEVER TOUCH ANY PUPPET WITH BUTTON EYES .

Major Post 9: Storytelling in “The Cameraman’s Revenge”

Posted on by Sydney McPherson

Ladislaw Starewicz is noted as the creator of the first stop motion puppet animation in 1910. Two years later, he created “The Cameraman’s Revenge”. I’ll be focusing on some of the storytelling techniques used in the film.

I read a small bit about Starewicz and I found that he does in fact use real insects in this animation and others. That added a challenge to creating the stopmotion, as Starewicz had to create puppeting skeletons and rigs to control the insects. This was successful, as the characters can stand upright and walk while staying balanced.

I noticed that in each scene, the camera is always flat and static. There are no closeups or medium shots; rather the camera stays pushed back, using full body shots to capture the insects and different environments. This stationary camera creates a unique cinematic feel compared to other animations I’ve seen that use dynamic cameras. The camera use makes it easier to focus on what actions are taking place, as I’m not focused on the aesthetics and visuals as much.

As is common in older films, text is used to tell the main story points, such as introducing Mr. and Mrs. Beetle or explaining that the grasshopper is the camera man. Because the camera is static and Starewicz’s puppets don’t have facial expressions, the text becomes vital in explaining to us what is happening when the animation isn’t clear enough.

I realized that films that don’t use dialogue require more from the viewer. Because there is no dialogue, the viewer cannot look away from the screen without missing what’s taking place in the story. They must watch the characters intently to understand to storyline. Films like “The Cameraman’s Revenge” usually feature a continuous soundtrack in the background that’s used to catch the viewer’s attention. The soundtrack is only one component of this, as the rest relies on solid storytelling, which this film exemplifies. It uses the text screens as mentioned before, establishing shots when cutting to new locations, a static camera to ensure all actions are clearly seen, and of course, solid stop motion animation.

Sydney McPherson

Project 3-WIP 1- Pre-Production

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

For the pixilation project we now are working as a group of four instead of a group of three. My group members now include Julia, Bobbi, and Cameron. Originally, our concept was going to be a rendition of a scene from a fighting game like Street Fighter. We had planned for it to be shot outside by the Gold Coast bridge and we would have a moving camera. However, our schedules didn’t line up well enough to allow us to shoot the production in the day light also the logistics were getting to complicated and would require us purchasing equipment that we would only use for this project. Also, when our schedules did line up it left very little time for Julia and Cameron to edit.

All that taken into account, we decided to change up our idea a little bit. We decided to keep the idea of a fight but scale it down to a type of food fight. The concept is now Bobbi and I fighting for the last Bao. We have planned some fun scenes and left room for Julia and Cameron to edit in some really fun moments. We drew inspiration from the Kung Fu Panda training scene, that I will link below.

LeAnn, Julia, Bobbi, Cameron

Major Post 11: The Pied Piper

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

Yesterday we learned about Czech animation. This style emerged around the 1920s and its “Golden Era” arrived between the 1950s and the 1980s. There were many amazing Czech animators that have made very political and surreal pieces that make your skin crawl. The main medium of this type of animation being the use of wooden dolls, Claymation, puppets, and cutouts. 3D animation is seldom used since there is not enough finances to implement it and there is a deficient of trained 3D animators.

Some of the most outstanding animators from this era include: Jiri Trnka, Karel Zeman, and my personal favorite Jan Svankmajer. But since I have already discussed Jan Skankmajer’s work I plan on talking about Jiri Barta and his Czech Horror Film Krysa (The Pied Piper). It was inspired by German legends. Jiri uses his film as a metaphor to discuss the decay of society as we have fixated on material things. His character and environment design helps create a very easy and uncanny feeling to the movie.  Below I have included the a link to the film itself.

LeAnn Schmitt

https://vimeo.com/257047826

 

Major Post10 – Czech Animation

Posted on by Bobbi Ho

The featured artists such as Hermina Trylova and Jan Svankmajer, use an interesting combination of stop motion and live action. In a way, exemplifying pixel animation. There is a nice transition and interaction between the puppet toys used in Hermina Trylova and Frantisek Sadek’s Vzpoura hracek (Revolt of the Toys). The storyline was kind of cute in a playful childish way. Where as in Jan Svankmajer’s Dimension’s of Dialogue (1982) and Food (1992) were extremely uncomfortable. It was a live action film while using the media of clay as a factor to the stop motion aspect. The surrealist artist really lives by his reputation ” Famous for his distinctive stop-motion technique, and ability to create surreal, nightmarish, and somehow funny pictures”

I also see a repeating pattern of the use of bugs in animations such as Ferda Mravenec (Ferda the Ant) (Hermina Tyrlova, 1944； 1941 filmed) from one of the featured artists presented in class, as well as previous classes in films such as The Cameraman’s Revenge (1912) Ladislaw Starewicz. I don’t like bugs at all, and watching these reminds me of The Bugs Life from Disney Studios.

Major Post 9: Subconsciousness and Consciousness

Posted on by Sammy Liu

We watched Norman McClaren’s Documentary and it brought up a lot of noteworthy, inspiring nuggets and food for thought. He is an experimental filmmaker who was largely inspired by Scottish weather in its gentle changes in lighting, and nature, which he said was made by the ‘Original Creator’ – a statement which I found touching and intimate.

Like many artists, McClaren was a deep, soul-digging person who believed that Abstract Film frees you from constrictions of logic. He described animation as something which “rejoiced that it was drawn by just a line and that it could move”, and that abstract films were like watching thoughts.
He says he wouldn’t know what was gonna happen in 10 mins from now

“Subconscious plays a very important role.”
His thoughts included ideas such as how our Subconscious probably has the whole thing [scene] already, but it’s Consciousness’s job to put it into the real world yet, it could be contaminated by conscious’s logic, doubts or worries.
McClaren’s thoughts reminded me of how animators, or humans in general live in a space where they have the ability to control and yet, have so many other aspects that are out-of-control too. It seems like animation is a format where we can play around with those aspects.