Major Post 8: Composition of Movement

Posted on by Sammy Liu

We looked at a lot of Experimental Animators this class:

Jules Engel worked in Fantasia – UPA – Paris –
Founder of the Experimental Animation Program, CalArts.
He was exploring an abstract or a commercial path.

Mary Ellen Bute worked with no camera, she drew directly on the frames of the film – which is tiny. She was one of the first female experimental filmmakers and believed that the general public would appreciate visual art as such, therefore convinced the Radio City Music Hall, NY, to screen her abstract films regularly, in the 1930s.

Her piece called Rhythm In Light (1934) was described as “a pioneer effort of new art form”, something to appreciate and respect. Her style consists of many geometric, 3D objects, as well as light being a major element, using reflections and refraction bounced off the prisms. These two features combined, along with her ‘mathematical system’ performed to create this piece, makes it visually very posh and refined.

In her next piece Escape, she introduces a more narrative production, with an orange triangle being the protagonist.
Other creations = Spook Sport (1939)

Len Lye (Leonard Charies Huia “Len” Lye from New York, was actually the first to use direct film, which stemmed from him being unable to afford a camera. I admire that story as he didn’t let lack of resources stop him from creating, instead it pushed him to think experimentally.

He is another example of a Fine artist transferring interest to being a film maker. This spurred when he moved to London and joined “Seven and Five Society”.

Len Lye’s other works include:
“The Colour Box”
“Rainbow Dance” (1936) – Silhouette performance. Bold, Entertaining, Colourful, Combined live-action
“Colour Cry” (1953)

Lastly, we looked at Norman McLaren from the GPO Film Unit.
Founder of animation in NFB (Canada, 1941 – now), a company that’s sponsoring still. He made Boogie Doodle (1940) – The music is digital and pixilated at the beginning, in fact, later on he inspired pixilation.


Some quotes of his, that stood out to me:
“Problem with making a surreal film is to be constantly improvising”

He talked about how surrealism is like drawing out of the subconscious and how his subconsciousness is a heavy source of artistic inspiration.

From my understanding, he says something along the lines of how surrealism is cutting down the conscious control when creating.
I love that because there’s a massive sense of freedom in being able to do that. We are taught to be planners, organisers which are all valid and needed, yet it’s refreshing to have a balance of being completely and utterly spontaneous – living in spur of the moment. As demonstrated in ‘Boogie Doodle’ (1940) and a bit in ‘Hen Hop’ (1942).


Fun Fact: McLaren stayed in a farm for long period of time when creating ‘Hen Hop’ – I want to do that too.

Blinkity Blank (1955) – McLaren moves into using finer lines and even more varied colours, compared to Hen Hop and Boogie Doodle.

Neighbours (1952) using pixilation technique.
People argued whether this should be counted as a documentary rather than an art piece as it uses a peculiar technique.

Class Notes:
We touched on how many curious artists move from, e.g. a painter or musician, into animation.
Comic -> Animation
Painter -> visual timeline to make a moving visual
Music -> Visual music
Disney -> commercial and experimental side

Abstract/Experimental VS Narrative
What’s the meaning of experimental animation (spirit of exploring, possibly quite bizarre, takes time to understand)

Major Post 8 – Pixilation

Posted on by Julia Reymundo

For this class, we’re also focusing on experimental animation. In addition to Visual Music, we now have another animation technique called Pixilation. One of the featured artists of the lecture was Norman McLaren who became a part of the National Film Board of Canada. Not only did he take part in creating visual music animation but he also experimented with Pixilation. His most notable animation was “Neighbours” (1952) that features two neighbors fighting over a flower in the most exaggerated way. The flower is a three dimentional object and is stop-motion animated as well.

Pixilation is a stop motion technique where instead of objects or puppets, live actors are used as the frame-by-frame subject instead. This would be done by repeatedly posing while a frame is being taken every time the pose slightly changes. This technique is used as a way to blend live actors with animated ones in movies.

An example of this in recent times is a project done by the Swiss artist named, Guillaume Reymond. This is a pixilation video depiction of the video game “Space Invaders.” This was for the “Belluard Bollwerk International” festival. The sound effects are all voice acted which gives it a similar atmosphere of McLaren’s work as well.

Julia Reymundo

Major Post 5: Norman McLaren #2 (Pas de Deux)

Posted on by Sydney McPherson

I believe I have a new favorite animation or visual effects video to add to my list after watching Pas de Deux by Norman McLaren from 1968. I have a background in dance through ballet and other genres, and so seeing the title interested me; its means “dance for two” in French and I often watched other students in my dance classes performing Pas de Deux.

The music choice for the film works well, as it allows the dancer to gradually increase the intensity of her movements. As the film begins, the ‘onion skin’ effect isn’t used immediately, it is not revealed until a kind of exposition could be put in place. The film allows us to become acclimated with the music, dancer, and tone of the overall film before it begins to experiment with its visuals. The dancer then begins to create bigger movements and use more of the space around her.

Regarding the visuals, the film being in black and white is successful. The stark contrast created by the light source they used makes the dancers look graphic, as if they’ve been drawn. It’s clear that Norman McLaren made choices about which moments he would use the ‘onion skin’ effect on and which moments would remain untouched.  This is a work I am considering as a topic for my research paper, as I’m fascinated by it and want to study it more.

Side Note: When I first saw this film I immediately thought about a music video by a band called OK Go. It’s called “WTF?” and uses the same ‘onion skin’ effect with plenty of vibrant colors and patterns to create a unique and jumbled visual.

Sydney McPherson

Major Post 4: Norman McLaren #1 (Spook Sport)

Posted on by Sydney McPherson

I really enjoyed the time spent discussing the work of Norman McLaren. His animations stand out for me from other animators because they are so expressive. I feel like he tries to tell stories and give his animations personality and experiments with his visuals to create interesting work.

Spook Sport is a collaboration between McLaren and Mary Ellen Bute in 1939. It’s great that they had a basic narrative for the film, as many of the abstract and experimental animations we have viewed, have been only about translating music into visuals. They included this basic narrative at the beginning of the film along with a breakdown of which character each shape represented.  We discussed the direct-to-film method and I’m blown away by this. Animation today with our intuitive technology is still challenging and time consuming, so I can only imagine the dedication McLaren and bute put into Spook Sport to create the animations.

 In the film on McLaren’s process, he showed how he used a light behind the film strip on a tall drafting table and drew on each frame one by one. He had no ‘onion skin’ or way of previewing the animation that he was doing and had to stick with whatever marks he made, until he viewed the finished film strip. In the first minutes of Spook Sport, there are several Spooks lined up behind each other and they all begin hopping towards screen left. This movement is executed so smoothly and is perfectly timed to the music. I am not sure how Norman McLaren drew these film frames without a way to track where the characters were in the previous frame; regardless, it’s quite impressive.

Sydney McPherson