Major Post 4: Absolute Animation

Posted on by lilylai98

In class 5, we watched many animation created by different shape and line in class. They are very abstract and hard to understand. However, compare to the animation we watched in previous classes , they have sound and music. The movement of the shape and line were following the rhythm and the beat of the background music , it feels like the creator show the music and what we can hear into visual art. It is very different from the general animation and cartoon we watch.

Those animations opened my eyes, it shows that animation can be more than just storytelling. The simple movement of the shapes and line with different color use can express emotion and something invisible. Additionally, it also remain us the basic of visual elements colors, line, pattern and shape are already the best and simple things to express our idea in visual way.

At the beginning, I have no idea why those creator would make those nonsense shape animations and started wondering that it is because I am not born in that age so i didn’t understand those animations. However, after I keep  watching those animation, I realised that actually those animations are very similar to the motion graphic these days, and they are widely used in many music video and advertisement. It make everything more vivid and interesting.

Major post 3: Cut out animation

Posted on by lilylai98

During class 4, we watched a couple of animation which used cut-out technique to create all the the movements . Most of the story and the visual style are exotic, each of them show different story from different regions.

Especially the animation Lotte Reiniger and Prince Achmed (1926) it is full of Middle East style, it depicted several famous folk tales of Middle East country and all of the characters and props are performed  by silhouette. it reminds me Chinese shadow play which is an old way of storytelling and entertainment. It is good to know how people use different form of storytelling in past . Cutout is a really simple way to create animation and telling story.Watching old animation always reminds us (especially animation students) the importance of “less is more” this concept. In Lotte Reiniger and Prince Achmed (1926) , the audience can only see the silhouette of the characters, without seeing their facial expression and many colour to decorate the scene, we still can understand the emotion of the characters and the changes of the environments.

Lily Lai

Major Post 2 : Early Cartoon

Posted on by lilylai98

In class 3, we watched Felix the Cat and many cartoons from the early years. Although all the animations are simple and some of them don’t even have sound ,the contents are very funny and engaging as the cartoons these days. 
My favorite animation I watched in class 3 is Dancing On The Moon(1935). I love the way they combined music and the animation together. Plus, I love the visual style in this cartoon. The designs of characters are very simple ,however you won’t get bored as their body language and facial expression are exaggerated. I really like the idea that although the story dosen’t have a hugh background setting, you can start watch in from any episode.
It was very fun to watch animations from early years and understanding how people create animation back in the day.They are full of Academic value for us to learning the animation history. 

Lily Lai

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.

WIP _ CutOut Animation Project 2

Posted on by Bobbi Ho

Our idea for the cut out animation was already thought of right when the project was assigned. It was a small idea, which was then confirmed by both Cameron and I as something cute and manageable. I first came up with a short storyboard that lead to a short GIF of what we would be doing. The next thing was to buy the materials. We didn’t need that much materials so we were able to buy colored post its, which we could use for other things. It was a better solution than buying the large sheets of paper that we wouldn’t use again. Using the post it, minimized our frames, which became a problem later on with the sizing of the bee. After cutting out all the frames, we shot each one together, using Cameron’s living room table. The size of our cutouts was the perfect size to shoot using the glass table.

Bobbi Ho

Cameron Gordon

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

Cut out animation WIP 2

Posted on by victoriacourchesne

Work in Progress Post- Project 2 : Production. Posted by Victoria Courchesne,

Team: Eunhae Mary Park & Victoria Courchesne

For the cutout animation project, our production process required us to have a homemade set up. We made sure to plan a whole day just for the creation of the assets, which in all took 7 hours to make. Then on the day of filming we set up the “set”, taping down the edges of both the frame and the camera so the shots would be consistent.

Overall, the hardest part was animating the astronaut. The original plan was to put pins in his body as joints, but the pins were too big and so we went without bindings of any kind. This turned out to be rather difficult since every piece then had to be carefully grabbed with tweezers and moved slightly over. If you’ve every played the american game operation, just imagine that but 1000 times more intense. If we were to do another cut out animation, we would create a much larger puppet with pin joints to animate.

We decided to use a ironing board as a camera tripod and hovered it over the table upon which the cut outs were laid.

For animating the silhouettes, we looked to Lotte Reiniger in how she animated the silhouettes in “The Adventures of Prince Achmed”.

In conclusion, we learned from the process of creating a cut out animation and was able to appreciate the grand efforts  Lotte Reiniger went through in the creation of “The Adventures of Prince Achmed”. It is impossible to imagine the difficulty she undertook with the materials available to her at the time, but it also allows us to appreciate her film even more.