To start off our idea, we looked at some of our favourite concepts and vibes. We decided to dive right in with a Deep Ocean concept, the protagonist being a girl with some typical Disney scenery and ‘magical girls’ vibes like in Bee and PuppyCat.
We used platforms like Pinterest and Instagram as well as They Drew as They Pleased – Volume Four Concept Art Book for inspiration and to create our desired mood-board for our scenery and character.
Having found a relaxed setting in a lush cafe near SCAD (:9) We brainstormed for our own possible scenes, actions, storyboard and character designs, accompanied by a sick spot of hot choco.
This is our very first rough sketch of a potential storyboard: Where it starts off with our protagonist’s point of view > cutting into a scene where she is sinking into the DEEP.
In our earlier classes, we started to look at animation’s use beyond entertainment.
Donald duck, the fuhrer’s face The animation was made to express anger or mocking, and many other emotions. It reminded me of HK’s current situation, where some artists also expressed their feelings, reasoning and information through animation.
Reason and emotion – Bill Roberts I loved this animation as it was unexpectedly educational. Serious and rather psychological information was presented in a way where it was light-hearted and comedic – easier for people to swallow or accept. Its ultimate goal is to educate people to be able to choose how they act.
We see in the present that business and companies carry on using animation as a source to explain information. The development in this area is that there are now many different illustrative styles to choose from to convey different emotions and levels of seriousness.
Class notes: “Iwerke-Disney Commercial Artist” (1920) With Ub Iwerks Started 19, young, failed. Friendship, same goal, support. Disney Bros Studio = Roy Disney in Hollywood Experimental animation Alice in wonderland Disney studio: 6 to 100 to ~1600 employees
We were introduced to the beginning of visual music and the “Father” of Visual Music; screening Oskar Fischinger’s abstract animation, which was a concept first explored respectfully by Leopold Survage. Fischnger’s earlier pieces remind me vividly of the ‘sound visualizer’ of the old default screens of Windows Media Player back in the early 2000s.
This is stuff I grew up staring at when I had all the time in the world, and confidently believe in Fischinger’s influence on this too.
I especially enjoyed the more colourful experiments of Fischinger’s like The Composition of Blue (1935), which was made in a 3D stop-motion format. The style in terms of colours, composition and timing is still very much done in the present – showing a piece that feels timeless.
Similarly, Walter Ruttman, who started off with painting and who had helped produce backgrounds for Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed using Wax Slicing Machine (licensed from Oskar Fischinger), moved towards abstract animation . Ruttman specially looked at visual music with colour – by tinting his films with dye. I thought it’s very innovative and admirable of his efforts to explore the broader potential of his mediums.
Extra notes I want to keep: “WAX SLICING MACHINE 1922” (synched vertical slicers with movie shutter) “Allegretto” (1936) “Motion Painting #1” (1947) O.F
We looked at The Adventures of Prince Achmed, a very long but sweetly intense fairytale, by Lotte Reiniger. As it was made entirely of silhouettes and cutouts, Reiniger demonstrated precise craftsmanship shown in the detailed, ornamented designs within the characters, clothes, building structures, and etc… Her elegant beautification of protagonists versus the spooky, elongated limbs and twig-like fingers for the antagonists clearly became an inspiration for future Disney fairytale visuals. As well as visuals, her multi plane camera was also a technical starting point for Disney’s more complex camera later on. I’m extremely glad to have been able to acknowledge and appreciate her work this class.
Small thoughts noted while watching The Adventures of Prince Achmed: It is very obvious and amusing to see the “first” of Aladdin in the form of an animation (as a side character!) Similarly, the fight scene between the sorcerer and the witch, had also reminded me of the fight scene in Merlin (shown below).
This is an incredibly sweet clip of Lotte’s background and story 🙂 It helped me a lot in reviewing and appreciating her as an influencer.
Winsor McCay; a man of detail and precise craftsmanship, with reminiscences of stylistic art nouveau. 🙂 By chance, during my journey to the massive library in Causeway Bay (HK Central Library), I saw, sitting in the specially book stand… “Little Nemo in the Palace of Ice and Further Adventure and Further Adventure”
Much to my joy, I could say I know the name because of ANIM223! In this comic, the plot is based on the DREAMS of Little Nemo, where he explores different worlds and stumbles into problems with the Princess of Slumberland.
To my surprise, it seemed like the comic caught Japan’s interest and Film Director, Masami Hata, collaborated with America’s William Hurtz to transform the comic into an American-Japanese animation in 1989. (Side note: Masami Hata also directed one of the episodes in “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” in 2016!)
We’re jumping further ahead here in the timeline of animation, however this is such a good opportunity to see how American Cartoonists/Animators influenced worldwide – to Japan, another country known for their iconic animations, and vice versa. However, despite having many talented creatives involved in creating “Little Nemo”, many came and left, leaving the project unstable. To further complicate it, there were language barriers as well. Bet they learnt a lot and overcame many different obstacles as some still carried on and persevered.
Another side note: Before Little Nemo, Masami Hata also directed “Ringing Bell” (1978) and “The Sea Prince and the Fire Child” (1981), both of which were accomplished in their own right. This is def a personal note, because it’s super cute, with magical yet ‘dour’ tones, and has Little Mermaid (1989) vibes, or rather, Little Mermaid has Sea Prince and the Fire Child vibes.
On the day of the shoot, it was boiling hot and extremely sunny.
Sammy: “I’m sure we got 3 shades darker after this, but the lighting was pretty and we initially wanted a natural environment. We hit some problems with setting the tripod and getting a stable camera position at the first location of the shoot, so we had to decide to move else where.”
Wendy: “I think problem solving skills is definitely what we needed during the production process. We imagined lots of silly things that the food can do such as the using ketchup to do the explosion of the volcano. We asked for only 3 little bags of ketchup from McDonald’s, but it was not enough at all. We wanted to pinch some holes on the package and squeeze it to make the explosion. It was just not working out as we imagined and our hands are full of ketchup. 🥫🥫🥫 What we can do better next time is to do a rehearsal before the acting shooting, so we can encounter and prepare for the problem we might have.”
Please check out our short “behind-the-scenes” clip we made for fun!
To start our brainstorming process, we met up in Macdonalds to look at possible props and eat lunch.
We wrote down immediate, silly ideas from looking at our possible props, noticing the capabilities of the food (e.g. the layers in the chicken wings, the chunky-ness of the burger), and potential objects and/or animals that they resembled.
Brain storming notesStoryboarding/potential camera angles and shots
This is the video we looked at for inspiration and guidance, as it was all of our first times to attempt stop-motion.
Before these history of animation lessons, I barely knew anything about its origin as it never caught my immediate interest. The most I knew would be from watching Tarzan; who had a scene of the Praxinoscope by Reynaud, and seeing glimpses of Disney’s old Mickey Mouse. Therefore, I’m entirely grateful and consciously appreciative of being able to watch animation from the very beginning, even if the early animations are very slow and unappealing – I feel very privileged to learn about its roots and grateful to the people who took the time to innovate techniques and systems, such as the optical theatre, peg system, slash system and the cel-animation technique that enabled us to be where we are today.
In terms of genre, seeing how most of the early animations were generally very quirky yet dark, showed a glimpse of the mindset of that time. I thought it is very amazing how a short clip can carry so many other aspects, such as culture, mannerisms and lifestyle.
It is also very interesting how a lot of the ‘business men’ created shorts with the theme of ‘work’, for example in the “Felix the cat” shorts. They lead the idea of how art and entertainment can come together to make money – which opened even more opportunities for creatives to make a living in the future.
ANIM223 - HISTORY OF ANIMATION - FALL 2019 