We saw many examples of stop motion animation in class. The one that shocked me most was the one made on the wall of the building. After class, I found a lot of interesting stop-motion movies to watch.
It’s really interesting to use stop-motion animation to make cooking videos, especially when different materials are conceptually substituted for ordinary food used in everyday life. In Julia’s blog post, the producer of stop-motion animation treats the grenade as avocado and the note paper as butter. The ingenious combination of special sound effects and scenes makes people feel like “nothing’s wrong with this” and “these things look delicious”
It’s a video of sushi making with stop motion. The producer even cut the iPhone. I’m really curious about how it can be neatly cut into several segments! It also has a funny plot design, which I really think is a successful stop-motion work.
In class, we learned about trick films and watched many example movies. At the beginning, I thought trick films were just a silent comedy. But with a deeper understanding, I found that trick films emphasized surprising ideas and incredible plots more than jokes or dramatic plots. The absurd sense of humour is my new evaluation of this type of film.
With interest, I found more trick films for Georges Melies after class. Among them, I was most impressed by Le Cauchemar (A Nightmare) 1896. I am embarrassed to admit that this film makes me feel a little scared. This feeling overturned my previous experience. I felt very uncomfortable when I saw the moon suddenly enlarged in the background and a strange face like a human being, just as I was startled by a sudden change in my daily life when I had nightmares. That huge, weird moon really surprised me. However, this kind of surprising weird element makes trick films full of special sense of humor and attraction.
In this post, I am going to investigate the first appearance of Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse was created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks in 1928, first appear in the short Plane Crazy. Plane Crazy was made as a silent film and black and white at first, re-color and voiced later when they remade the film. Although they only used a very little time to animate this short, we can still see multiple characters moving at the same time and dynamic movements of main character – Mickey Mouse, it was more consistent than the previous work Oswalds the rabbit, with dynamic visual packs and camera angle tricks, they used a range of funny perspective angles, such as the scene when Mickey Mouse was flying a plane under the cow. This film can demonstrate how extraordinary fast Ub Iwerks worked and show his original design with a distinct style and an excellent sense of storytelling.
In class, we had watched some visual music clips and he work of Oskar Fischinger were the most interesting to me. It was an amazing experience that I can feel the rhythm going on the screen even without the sound!
Other than that, I was impressed by the accuracy of those geometric shapes he drew—they are so neat and nice ,which look like they were done by machine! His slow motion animations are also perfect. I beg I can’t do something like that even I have the handy modern technology. It is hard to believe that he in fact lived in an era without computer.
When I was watching his video, I couldn’t help think of those old Disney cartoon I had seen in childhood. I can’t recall the extract memory of which episode did I saw something similar before but I am sure I did see this style of visual music performance often in some classic animation! Perhaps the music style was similar too. Therefore, I can totally agree with that Oskar Fischinger is a great artist that influence the animation world a lot!
I guess most of we animation student are big fans of Disney movies.
The studio had created miracles like Cinderella
and classic glory like Beauty and The Beast. Disney is now the biggest boss in
the field, and we all know that they are very sensitive to their copyright (probably
Oswald is one of the reasons). But do
you know that Disney has a dark side? Like, the backstory of the golden classic
animation, The Lion King, is actually involving plagiarism?
If you are a manga fan like me, you must
have heard of the big name Tezuka Osamu, also known as the “godfather of manga”.
When I was very young, I had watched his work on TV show like Astro boy and
Black Jack.
And when I saw Kimba the White Lion, I found it extremely similar to the story of The Lion King. The whole story setting and even some pictures were recalling me the memory about one of my favourite movie, the Disney Lion King. At that time, my mum told me that she had watch Kimba the White Lion in her childhood which also sounded strange to me.
As a young child I didn’t overthink it. I thought maybe lions revenge each other for their home or leadership or father is a common thing in animal fictions. I was a bit shocked but also feel like “I had seen that coming” when I suddenly found that there are so many evidence on the internet can prove that The Lion King has stolen something from Kimba the White Lion. There are too much “coincidence” between the two!
However, Disney has been claiming they knew nothing about Tezuka and prided that the Lion King was original content these years. Sounds like a joke for me as the video told us that Tezuka and Disney studio were in a friendly relationship! I was a bit upset when I found out the truth since I really like the Lion King movie. But that is unfair for Tezuka. Despite knowing that adults are always dark when it comes to money, I still hope Disney can admit their fault someday.
LeAnn and I have revised our creature concept. We thought that the original concept would be easy to manipulate and pose, however, we underestimated the size of the paper binders (pegs) that we used. Because of the size of the pegs, this limited the maximum movement of the puppet. The pegs would collide and it would cause it to get stuck together. As well as lack of resources we couldn’t gather because of unforeseen occurrences. So that it would be easier to animate, we revised the design.
So for the final design of our character, we chose to have it to be worm-like. It would be easier to rig and would have enough space for each peg to move – thus it will have a more fluid movement. This creature haunts and roams the depths of the ocean. The creature’s purpose is unknown but we have yet to see what’s to come.
Aside from the creature, we also have foreground and background elements that will move throughout the animation. We’re currently still working on the animation. Here is a behind the scenes look at LeAnn creating more elements for the animation.
As an Asian who
hasn’t studied animation field for a long time yet, the name Ub Iwerks doesn’t
ring a bell in my mind during class. I guess I hadn’t heard that name often in
my life. When we talk about old Disney animation and Mickey Mouse, people only
think of Walt Disney directly. I didn’t know that there was another “father” of
Mickey Mouse out there! But I found that I am really into the work he worked
with Walt Disney, including Steamboat Willie and The Skeleton Dance.
They are creative and entertaining even for young adult like me.
Why he didn’t gain his reputation and what’s more about his life? I did some little research and found out that he actually backed to Disney studio and mainly working on developing special visual effects after the failure of his own company. However, he wasn’t noticed by people as the creator of our beloved Mickey Mouse until Walt Disney died. And he died very soon after having back the frame! It seems to be a bit sad as an artist that no one remember him as a wonderful creator of a popular character during life time. Fortunately at least people praised him before death. I started wonder that what if he didn’t “break up” with Walt Disney at the very first place? I guess there will be some more interesting cartoon in the world and the name Ub Iwerks will be more common to hear!
In this class, we studied the life of Walt Disney, who was an animator, storyteller, film maker and entrepreneur. Disney’s interest in drawing grew when he was a child. He started as an illustrator for commercials in Kansas City where he met his best friend Ub Iwerks. They both had a passion for making their original animation. After a few times of failures, Disney began producing Alice’s Wonderland, combing live-action with animation in Laugh-O-Gram Studio. From there, we can see that Disney has a passion to work on fairytales and classical stories. Alice’s Wonderland was a big success so Disney invited his friend Iwerks to Los Angels.
Good days didn’t last long for them. After they created another successful character called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in 1927, it was stolen by their producer Charles Mintz. I felt very sad for Disney and Iwerks as their creativity was stolen. At the same time, I also respect their spirit of not giving up.
To replace Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, they created Micky Mouse together. An employee said that “Ub designed Mickey’s physical appearance, but Walt gave him his soul.” Plane Crazy (1928) was the first appearance of Micky Mouse. Even though it was a silent film, I found it so interesting as it had tones of dynamic shots. Steamboat Willie (1928) which we might see it at the beginning of some of Disney’s famous animation, was the first Disney cartoon with sound and music. I love how the characters were moving with the beat perfectly. It soon became the most popular animation of its day.
I’m sharing another old Mickey Mouse cartoon called Giantland (1933). Enjoy!! ^o^
We looked at a few cut out animations in for this class. Out of all the animations we watched, The Idea (1932) by Berthold Bartosch impressed me the most. The Idea (1932) is the first poetic and tragic work in animation which shared an anti-capitalist idea. Berthold Bartosch used several layers of rice paper to create a mysterious effect and a sense of depth for the whole film. At the same time, he also used lather spread on the glass plates and lit from behind to create a halo, smoke effect. I am impressed by how he used different experimental techniques to enhance the mood of the animation. I can’t imagine how he pulled this 25 minutes film all out by paper cutting.
I also love the story of The Idea a lot. The naked woman was hinting the idea of anti-capitalist. She terrified authorities as she heads out into the street without clothes on. A man was executed because he stood up for her. At last, she sparks a workers ‘ revolution caused by the violent suppression by big business. The meaningful story matched with the visual style and music of the animation which I think is very unique and successful for cutout animations at that time. I enjoyed watching it a lot.
For our second project, Chandi and I wanted to be a little
more ambitious. Before we met up to brainstorm an idea, I started doodling a
character to practice the cutout technique. I made some quick sketches of a
girl in a dress and I drew out each body part separately. Then I cut out the
dress, legs, arms, head, and so on. Soon I realized I might need more poses for
her legs, so I drew a couple bent legs and one of her standing on her toes.
The coffee table in my dorm has a glass top, so I used my
phone and an app called Stop Motion Studio to shoot a quick test animation. The
character isn’t connected at the joints yet, but I was still able to learn a
bit about the technique we’ll need.
I went out and bought some fasteners that we can use for the joints on our actual characters and they’re quite big, so I know we can scale up our characters and backgrounds a bit. I also bought some scissors, so I don’t have to keep borrowing my roommate’s!
Chandi and I came up with a fun idea about a girl who is
performing on the street for tips. She will trip and fall into a sewer that has
toxic waste in it. She’ll then emerge as a mutated monster will glowing yellow
eyes. As a monster she will now force all the people watching to dance for her.
We might add an ending where someone comes and gives her an antidote, but for
now the plan is to just have the camera pedestal towards the sky and it fade to
black.
ANIM223 - HISTORY OF ANIMATION - FALL 2019 