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

Major Post 14: Old japanimation

Posted on by Sammy Liu

First Generation of Animators in Japan
Which includes Seitaro Kitayama, Oten Shinokawa, and Jun’ichi Kouchi.
They mostly worked with cut-out, silhouettes due to limited budget and had to work efficiently if they wanted to gain profit. Noburo Ofuji, Jun’ichi’s apprentice was also an influential animator, similarly primarily working with cut-outs.

During the war around 1930s, propaganda films were often featured. Animation was a tool for political controversy, to educate and to spread news about the war. in Momotaro (1918) by Seitaro Kitayama showcased a “war hero” character to encourage and build people’s hope. It was also a first to be shown on TV abroad.

After the war around the 1940s, another rising animator, Kenzo Masaoka, who explored cel-animation production founded Nihon Douga, which is now known as Toei Douga. He made Kumo to Chulip (1943), which was delightful to watch. It had sweet old japanese nursery songs that kept it engaging, and a simple story plot.

Major Post 13: Asianimation

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It was super fun looking at less main-stream animations apart from the Western and US, and diving into Chinese animation. I thought it was interesting how many adaptations of the same story exist; like remakes of Godzilla or King Kong, but with “The Journey to the West” and “Nezha”.

Many animations used Chinese Ink as their medium, giving each one a soft, elegant texture. Therefore, it was fitting that calm and slow pacing was used often.

The first artist of the day is Wan Brother, one of the earliest animators in China, who was inspired a lot by the US and has Snow-white/Disney vibes seen in their layout, set-up or background. Again, he worked with ink and used Rotoscoping which was also inspired by the US.

In 1956, a new movement began called the Hundred Flowers Campaign, which was to lift the restrictions felt imposed upon Chinese intellectuals, to stir up socialism and thus grant greater freedom of thought and speech.
It brought up the opportunity to create something new and original to represent China.
The name of the movement originated from a poem: “Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend” (百花齐放，百家争鸣, Bǎihuā qífàng, bǎijiā zhēngmíng).
 “The policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science”. – Mao Zhedong.
We can definitely admire the initially pure intentions to try and build creative freedom in China, and it’s something that’s worthwhile to remember and be grateful of.
It makes me curious to: if China had carried on developing their style, what would that look like?

Extra class notes:
Te Wei – Founder of Shanghai Arts and Film Studio!
Chinese manhua artist and animator, Developed chinese ink-wash animation
Studied in Changchun, Tadahito Mochinaga
Tadpoles Looking for Their Mama (1960) – Te Wei
Yu Zheugang A Clever Duckling (1960) an origami
A-Da/ Xu Jinqin –
Wan Brother:
Princess Iron Fan (1941)
Uproar in Heaven (1964) mixes in Chinese Opera make up on their characters.
Shanghai Arts and Film Studio, first coloured chinese animation (1956) Why is the Crow Black-coated.

Major Post 12: Czech Animation

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I thoroughly enjoyed watching the Czech Animations – a lot of them uses stop-motion and a variety of different objects, allowing for more experimental and unexpected movements.

Two, out of many, highlights:
Ruka the Hand (1965) by Jiri Trnka had heavy symbolization within its simple story plot. An interesting character – The Hand; represented many things, including the aspect of control. The message is relevant to everyone who has experienced some sort of control or manipulation, therefore, the audience would be able to relate to it.

Jan Švankmajer
Dimensions of Dialogue (1982) – looks at miscommunication, irresponsibility, inability to work together, and disagreements, portrayed in such a visually appealing way. It uses suitable pairings, such as a pencil and a pencil-sharpener or bread and butter, to help understand compatible communication, yet then starts mixing it up pairings (e.g. pencil-sharpener plus bread), giving us a visual image of what miscommunication looks like.
It is such a smart way to convey an issue we all experience, that I feel like people could learn, or at least be aware of their actions, from watching this.

Extra Class Notes:
Hermina Tyrlova – Czech director, animator, writer.
Ferda Mravenec
Jiri Trnka – Master of the wooden puppet style, was previously a famous illustrator.
Fyodor Khitruk – Russian Animator
Ostrov (1973)
Yuri Norshteyn – Russian Animator
Hedgehog in the Fog (1975)
Miyazaki mentioned his works to be one of his fave.

Major Post 11: Different forms of animation

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Light and Shadow

This class we learnt about Alexandre Alexeieff who invented Pinscreen, which is a method that uses a lot of pins with different lengths in protrusion to create light and dark spaces. This technique allows for more flexibility in lighting and three-dimensional space – an aspect that requires more time in Cell Animation.

His works: The Nose (1963)
NFB: Mindscape (Pinscreen too)

Our second artist is Caroline Leaf – one of the earliest animators who used sand to animate. She had a low artistic background but during one of her art classes where her teacher asked them to bring stuff in, she brought in sand. Leaf carried on experimenting with sand and her technique has certainly inspired many more down the generation of artists – for example:

Which is sOO cool and expressive. I think similar to the Pinscreen technique – light and shadow and three dimensional space is something that’s achieved faster too.

The last artist that I will mention here is William Kentridge, a South African Artist, famous for his prints.
We had noticed in class, how most experimental animators have Fine Art backgrounds, and Kentridge is another example of that transition in professions.
His piece, Felix in Exile (1994) expresses social issues in his country, South Africa, and explores the physical and mental struggle of those times.
A rather uncanny source of his inspiration for his creations comes from using “other people’s pain as rare material” – Kentridge.
This stood out to me because at my first impression it sounded rather inappropriate and possibly insensitive, yet actually, with further thought, with appropriation perhaps the artists can portray it in a way that could be healing, or at the least, acknowledged.

In this video, he talks about how he uses charcoal because “you can change charcoal as quickly as your mind changes” pulling in the idea of spontaneity again; a mind-set similar to our previous artist, Norman McClaren.

Class notes:
William Kentridge
Felix in Exile (1994)
History of the Main complaint (1997)
Eyewash (1959) – Rober Breer
Fuji (1974)
Jake’s Professor – COMMUTER – Matt Patterson
George Dunning – Yellow Submarine (1968) designed by Hienz Edelman
Also Founder of TVC in London.
Paul Driessen –
The End of World in Four Season – multiple frames (like a comic book style) moving at the same time.
The Killing of an Egg (1977)
Frederic Back – Cel overlays. Colouring pencils on frosted cells.
Frederick Back – Crac (1981)

Major Post 10: Stop-Motion

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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

Major Post 9: Subconsciousness and Consciousness

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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.

Major Post 8: Composition of Movement

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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 7: UPA

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UPA – United Productions of America (1943)
Founded by Zack Schwarts, David Hilberman, and Stephen Bosustow

UPA is rather design and style orientated, compared to Disney’s more realistic style. After their start up; which was focused on industrial and World War 2 films, they eventually made many original characters, stories, and short films starting from around 1956 and won commercial success.

I really loved UPA’s Brotherhood (1946) , it shared a lot of awareness for issues of equality. A favourite quote from that video was along the lines of needing to ‘practice’ that brotherhood as well as just ‘knowing’.

UPA’s design-driven visuals to spread information, influences many now. Their heavy use of shapes led to more abstract works, which continued to be used everywhere today – mostly within informative subjects.
Below is one of my favourite projects, in which animation is used to explain facts in a way where it’s much easier to absorb.

Even in styles, UPA and the video above, has similarities: the lack of outline and heavy silhouette orientated mind-set allows information to be the focal point, rather than detailed, realistic visuals.

Class notes:
Outline used in specific areas (E,g, John Hubley’s Robin Hood – no outline for BG but has outline for characters to make the stand out).
John and Faith Hubley – after being fired by UPA in 1952, they did not give up and started Storyboard Production in commercials.
Edgar Allen Poe – creepy “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Major Post 6: Golden Age

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The Golden Age of Animation loosely began after the release of Steamboat Willie (1928) by Disney. It was also the beginning of many animators experimenting with easier or more time-efficient ways of creating moving pictures.
Other ambitious animators rose, like Harman and Ising, who tried creating their own studio because of Disney’s perseverance. Many great animators gathered together during this time and encouraged each other to continue to build their curiosity and talent towards different animation and cinematography styles.

Many memorable characters emerged from this period, including Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, Daffy Duck, Popeye, Betty Boop, Woody Woodpecker, Mighty Mouse, Mr. Magoo, Tom and Jerry, Droopy and a popular adaptation of Superman, among many others that haven’t survived along the way. Feature length animation also began during this period, most notably with Walt Disney‘s first films: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi.
Source:https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfAnimation

One of the highlights for me during screening in class, was Red Hot Riding Hood (1943) by Tex Avery, who demonstrated unique choices in voice and performance when directing Red Hot Riding Hood (1943). He was apparently one of the first animator to use smear – dry brush motion for a blurred effect. Reason for use is to portray extremely fast movement, a technique they’d explored to draw more exciting, stylized in-betweens.

Hans Fischerkoesen, who was employed by Hitler was forced to make cartoons to compete against Disney, eventually earning the nickname “Germany’s Walt Disney”. It demonstrates how Hitler was determined to use even the entertainment industry to gain favour among his country. I feel like passive power gain like that are still happening in the form of, what we now call, “Soft Power”. An example of this soft power is seen in J-pop, anime, and in the more recent years K-Pop, where one country’s culture can earn particular favour within other countries.

Class Notes:
Ub Iwerks – Pat Power Studios, worked on most of the works for Disney so ppl highly valued him. Thought Disney would fail. BUT didn’t?!?!?! infact, Ub iwerks didn’t really work out/gain audience attention.
Jack Frost – Techicolour?
Trolley Troubles – Oswald the lucky Rabbit (1927)
Style developed by Harman Ising (who tried to open their own studio, but was fired)
Chuck Jones: Duck Amuck – often breaking fourth wall and explores interaction with the animator.
Bosko: HughHarman – Black Caricature
Contract wuth MGM for developing new series for Bosko

Sammy Liu