Major Post 15: Jumping and Arthur

Posted on by Sydney McPherson
Figure 1: Jumping by Osamu Tezuka

Jumping by Japanese animator Osamu Tezuka is really interesting because the main character is never shown. The only hint at the character is at the very end, when they leave Hell and land back on the street. Here we kind of hear a “sigh” that sounds like maybe it’s a little girl who has been jumping around. Also it would make sense if it was a child because with all the jumping they do, they must have a lot of energy!

Figure 2: Jumping by Osamu Tezuka

The use of perspective is so precise in the animation. The use of a horizon line and vanishing point is evident in each section of Jumping. In the opening scene, the we see that the streetlights all vanish to the same point in one-point perspective (fig. 1). Also, when the character has jumped above the city, the buildings seem to use 3-point perspective to look down on them (fig. 2).

Figure 3: Arthur by Marc Brown

The style of the drawings in Jumping reminded me of an animated show I used to watch as a child called Arthur. The show used a similar style of hatching marks to show shadows and the colors feel like they were drawn in with a marker, as there is streaking in the colors (fig. 3). Arthur also has a clear use of perspective to create the backgrounds.

Arthur https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXgmzGjUKXE

Jumping https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1pThwh2Ves

Sydney McPherson

Major Post 15: Annie May

Posted on by Sammy Liu

Today’s highlight is Osamu Tezuka – “The God of Manga” who created Astroy Boy and Black Jack. Tezuka sees animation and manga as a form of art to convey messages, and without holding back he is open to explore serious and mature themes in his animation – a noticeable difference between Western and Asian Animation.
Following the timeline, 1960s Japanese animation was the rising of the television era. It was a large contributing factor for mass animation, and was distributed out towards different countries.
In 1970s, sports-orientated production became the new hype. After the sports-frenzy, cinematic elements became a prominent factor. They sought to convince audiences how relatable the main character actually is, creating some sort of emotional connection, which attracts many viewers.

In 1973, Tezuka Production was founded. Most of his animations reflected his values which includes; peace, love for nature and social participation.
He questions the function of story-telling in an animation, seen especially in Jumping (1984) which portrays a a rather uncanny theme, despite its fun and outgoing impression. We see everything in the unknown character’s point of view – with no sign or clue of who this character is, until at the very end, we hear a relieved sigh that slightly reveals a part of the character, (I feel like its the audience themselves as they echo their sigh).

Another big influencer was The Animator’s Club in the 1960s, founded by the first three generation of japanese independent animation artist: Yoji Kuri, Ryohei Yanagihara and Hiroshi Manabe. They explored styles and found inspiration in “Saul Bass” and Norman McClaren films.
Yoji Kuri was very experimental in surreal composition, and distracting audio in his works. He conveyed mature-themes through animation – for example “AI”(1965); exploring the relationship between men and women, and more specifically, women’s desire for men and subtly suggests the manipulation of women over men. This theme was repeated in his work “Human Zoo”, in which his funky characters (male and female in a cage) portrayed consistently how men was the animal – the female was the zoo tamer.

Moving back to a more linear storytelling format, we looked at Tadahito Mochinaga and Kihachiro Kawamoto, who were both Japanese pioneers of puppet-animation, . Michinaga had also large influence in Chinese Animation – he had good friendship with the Chinese animators, as he worked in Xinjing, China in 1945.
We also briefly looked at large influencers like Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira [1989]) and Hayao Miyazaki, and Satoshi Kon who continues to inspire many young future generations.

Osamu Tesuka: Jumping (1987)
Broken don film
Yoji Kuri: Ironic storytelling – AOS (1964), AI (1965)
TadahitoMochinaga
Kihachiro Kawamoto: coffee break
Katsuhiro Otomo: Akira, Memories (1995)
Hayao Miyazaki
Satoshi Kon
Koji Yama – Mt.Head