14. My Final Animation

There is no assigned reading for this week, so I figured I’d talk about my animation. My animation is a 2 minute experimental stop-motion about a Ken doll. When I started to think about what I was going to for my sop-motion, I wasn’t what the story line was going to be or what characters I was going to use, but just randomly I found this Ken doll over spring break and thought it would a good thing to use. The story behind the doll is a very simple one, but I’m not how it translates just because of the fact that it is an experimental animation.

The story involves a man represented by the Ken doll, and he has cheated on his girlfriend. The animation begins with a “Garden-of-Eden-esk” location, and Ken is seen walking up to an apple. He is surprised when snakes pop out of the apple and strangle him. This scene portrays, how Ken has succumb to temptation, and now is paying for it through mental and emotional turmoil. There are many other set-ups with the girl portraying Ken’s significant other and scenes of Ken contemplating his life.

The actual making of the stop motion was very very hard to do as well as time consuming. A lot of my shots were from directly above the doll, so I had to stand of on a chair from time to time to look through the viewfinder to make sure everything was framed correctly. In one of the set-ups I actually got one my friends to help me and the process wen to much faster. Editing the frames was the most tedious part about the project because I could not find a preset to change the duration of the pictures on the timeline. So, I ended up having to just edit what I got when I dragged the pictures onto the time-line. This whole project has given me so much respect for people who do stop motions. My set-ups were relatively easy to do, but I can’t imagine how complex some of the set-ups can get.

13. Lara Croft's Polygons and Gender in Video Games

I read the article about Lara Croft and gender analysis and it talked about some pretty interesting things. I’m not an avid gamer at all but I used to play lots of video games when I was younger, but I do have a roommate who is a bona-fide gamer. I understand that the character Lara Croft was no mistake. Her breasts were intentionally made to be huge, her waist small, and she was meant to have legs for days. She was also made by and for men. This type of idealized woman doesn’t really reflect what any kind of woman looks like, and I’m sure this would upset feminists...but there is quite a lot that could upset feminists. The thing that feminists are forgetting is that the way that men are portrayed in video games is exactly the same. My roommate has recently been playing God of War, a game about Kratos setting out to kill Arez, along with the rest of the Gods. All of the male and female forms were extremely unrealistic and idealized. Aphrodite was extremely sexed-up wearing little clothing with her breasts exposed, but she is also the Goddess of sex. The male Gods also wore little clothing and were unbelievably muscular. I understand that the majority of the creators of the games sexualize and put the female form upon a pedestal but the same can be said for the male characters.

The article talks about Lara Croft being a positive role modal for women, which I can hardly agree with. I think that video games for the most part are a waste of time, and if we are letting younger elementary school age kids play these games where the point of the game is to rip some guys head off, blow up some some building, or shoot this guy in the head, is that a good thing? I don’t think violent video game characters could ever be considered role modals. I also think that you could be doing something more productive with your time than playing video games...Tasks that actually accomplish something.

The part in the article about the game patches was interesting because I had no idea that that could be done. They were referred to as hacker artists, and I was a little confused when I read the term, but it makes sense now. These people hacking and ‘rewiring’ the game so that it appears different when played can be considered art. A person has to put a lot of time and effort into a patch to make a bad guy appear as a giant chicken or some kind of farm animal. Although the effect is for comic relief, it is still considered art in my book. As for the “Nuderaider” created I’m not really going to say much, except that it is silly and...when you think about it, How weird is it that some creepy dude is slaving over a computer for hours entering codes to get a naked video game character?

12. Digital Animation

Chapter 9 in Furniss’s book, Art in Motion, discusses digital animation and how developement and advances have been made throughout the years. One aspect of the digital animation industry that is a downfall is the rapidity of change paired with the duration of time it takes to create such a film. Cel animation compared to digital animation is quite a big difference with the point of a pencil being the smallest image you could see on a drawn animation, but with digital animation a pixel , being much much smaller, is the smallest image one could see. The book even commented on the term filmmaker, and how a lot of the time in the digital field it’s not a relevant term because there is no need for the filmmaker to touch or even handle film stock. Some studios integrate the new and old technologies, using handmade puppets, as well as enhancing the image with digital animation. One film that I know that has done this is Coraline, which was a fantastic film.

Many other films with live action also use digital animation to create special effects or settings that could not be achieved otherwise. Movies like the Harry Potter series use a slew of grandiose props along with the use of blue and green screens to achieve the ambience of Hogwartz. Also, in the third film I’ve heard that the superimposition and animation of the hipogryff ‘Buckbeak’ significantly slowed the production of the film down because the animators were so meticulous about animating each feather. Another big name film that used an infusion of difital animation and live action was Avatar, DUH! James Cameron has taken action tracking to a new level, putting cameras on the actors faces. I’m not exactly sure about all of the little intricacies of the technology, but Cameron has for sure made history with his film, giving birth to more life-like characters than ever before.

The chapter also talks about programs that can be used for digital animation and I am slightly familiar with some of them, such as Maya, After effects, and well, photoshop, of coarse. One interesting tidbit that I didn’t know was that most advancements in digital animation is in the making of commercials because they take so little time to complete and most all commercials are very different. Another reason they can be very developmental is because advertisers have the money to spend, and they are willing to go the extra mile, in their wallets. Another fact that I wasn’t aware of was the cost of digital animation. I knew it was expensive, but the book say that it can actually save money. although the wire framing, texturizing and preproduction on the animation can be very tedious and expensive, once the character is created and ready to be manipulated, animating them can be very easy and cheap because you’re just reusing the same digital figure.

11. Cinema and Spectators

Well talks about the relationship between the spectator and the cinema in chapter six of his book Understanding Animation. The relationship specifically talking about animation is different than film because people have different preconceived notions about animation. The animated cinema is different because people know and accept that it is fake and everything is created through drawing or some other medium that has no real life to it. Although we all understand these notions, we all take and understand the things that we see on screen as real. I think this particular part of the chapter is very interesting because unlike movie-star fanatics, animation fanatics are idolizing something that isn’t actually real; it’s an idea. To me this seemed kind of creepy at first, but both concepts are by and large the same because most likely a movie-star fanatic will never meet their idol, just as it is impossible for animation fanatics will never meet their idols.

The chapter goes on to talk about how adults actually really appreciate animation because they find it to be a different experience. Apparently many people see animation as amazing because it can be any and every one of someone’s deepest desires. Anything you can think of to draw or compose can happen on the screen; there is no limit. The chapter also addressed a debate of whether or not Fantasia could be considered art. I thought this whole section of the chapter was kind of stupid because all animation is art, no matter how crude or dumb it is. I even think Ren and Stimpy is art. Even though the show is a little off-beat and weird, that doesn’t mean the artistic value is lost.

The last part of the chapter was very enjoyable for me because it made me start to reminisce about all of the old Disney movies that I was trying to recall. I actually cannot remember the order that I saw any of the Disney movies in; I just remember bits and pieces of the films. The disney animations are very successful because they are able to reach out to a large number of people and relate to them. Many children identified with the characters in that they wanted to be a beautiful princess like Cinderella or live on the wild side like Mowgli. The animated films also reached out to the audience with the introduction of fear. Children identify with the idea of a mother figure, and if she was ever taken from them, it would be the end of the world. This is why when we become aware that Bambi’s mom was shot or Dumbo’s mom was locked away, we empathize with these characters.

10. Stop-Motion and Pixelation

Chapter 8 in Furniss’s Art in Motion is all about stop-motion animation and the different techniques and elements that are associated with it. Will Vinton was the first American to trademark claymation. He became famous for his films Closed Mondays and The Great Cognito. He was also very famous for the commercials he did for with the California Raisins. Another animator that was very well known in the stop motion genre is Jiri Trnka. He became very well known for his film, The Hand, as well as his collaboration with Brestilav Pojar.

One related field that I have been interested in is the use of marionettes. This technique is different from stop-motion because it is not animation; it is actually filmed in real time. The book also talks about ‘super-marinonation’. This kind of marionation involves wires that control the movements of the puppets mouths to match the dialogue. It is also called ‘muppeteering’ which leads most people to think of Jim Henson’s muppet television series, Sesame Street. This of course eveolved into a very large franchise which spawned many movies such as A Muppet Family Christmas, The Great Muppet Caper, and many more.

Another part of the chapter that was particularly interesting for me was the section on pixelation. Pixelation is basically the exact same process as stop-motion with puppets, except it is using real people. I have seen many of these types of animations in commercials and other youtube videos, and it baffles me how hard it must be for the actor. I sure as hell could not hold my position for that long of a time. We actually watched a pixelation in class, Neighbours (1952) by Norman McClaren. I was very impressed with this animation because I seemed as though the movements were so fluid and quick. I can’t imagine how much patience those actors had to have had with McClaren. The Bolex Brothers are another pair that are known for pixelation. They said that they used pixelation because it was cheap. They didn’t have to pay for expensively made stop-motion puppets.

9. Astro Boy and Early Japanese Animation

The article on blackboard that I read talked about early Japanese animation in the United States as well as Tezuka and Astro Boy. Much of the animation was construed differently in the United Sates because of added narration and shifting of dialogue meaning. In the original Japanese Astro Boy his death was a result of an unknown factor, but in the English version released in the US the accident causing his death is implied to be caused by faulty future highways. Tezuka was outraged about the editing and censorship of the cartoon in America. I think it’s very interesting that the Japanese version is hard to even find on the anywhere anymore, many people only come across the japanese subtitled versions. It just doesn’t make much sense that the original version of something would be almost phased out.

I also was thinking about the re-popularization of Astro Boy with the release of the CGI film in 2009. This could explain why the Japanese versions of the show have become nearly extinct. Americans became interested in where Astro Boy originated and started to watch more of the old episodes. Tezuka, the creator of Astro boy is deemed as the “Godfather of Anime or Manga”. His style of animation really set the stage for all other anime artist because much of his work is reflected in the anime of the present. He is known for drawing large eyes and exaggerating other prominent features of the characters. I thought it was strange that the article said early Japanese animation used many different techniques from many different styles of animation around the world because anime and Japanese animation has such a distinct form about it with its exaggerated drawing style and its sometimes heavy subject matters.

Astro Boy was originally named Atom, which is a very unnerving coincidence considering the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed with an atom bomb. His name was changed from ‘Atom’ to ‘Astro Boy’. ALthough the program was more violent that regular American TV shows it did well with audiences, so good in fact at one time, it had beaten out Superman and Lone Ranger.

Animation Assignment #3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3FlxIbvY_0

8. Full vs. Limited Animation

Chapter 7 in Art in Motion by Maureen Furniss describes the difference, relationship, and history between full animation and limited animation. Full animation is all about having every drawing of an animation be distinctly different or there is no cycling or images, and limited animation has the reoccurrence of many sequences of images, also known as cycling. Full animation also uses more metamorphosis of shapes and sizes, playing with the z-plane, while limited only stays within the x and y planes. Full animation uses the most fluid motion whic comes with 24 images per second, but limited animation tries to reduce the number of images per second, as much as possible, usually using about eight per second. Limited animation includes lots of different camera movement because it makes the image seem more dynamic even if the movements being made aren’t. Full animation has its focus placed on visuals, while limited has the much of the animation based in sound with voice over, narration,and dialogue.

One animator that became very well known for his use of limited animation is Osamu Tezuka. Originally, he went to school to be a doctor, but he established his stance as an animator with his synthesis of 500 to 1000 page cartoons. He has also been noted for his use of cinematic techniques within his animationsHe created a series called ‘Astro Boy’, which aired in Japan in 1963 and was a great success. He also did a feature length film called ‘Onboro Film’. In The Birth of Astro Boy it’s easy to recognize the limited animation within it because of the cycling in images of the still crowd and the repeating of the cars passing by.

One of the studios in competition with Disney was United Productions of America. Much of this company was made up of former Disney employees, which is because of the many strikes that Disney endured. UPA’s films were minimalist with very little shading to show depth, as well as the lack of perspective linesUPA was also different from Disney in their choice of story line with films like Gerald McBoing Boing, Rooty-Toot-Toot, Madeline, The Tell Tale Heart, and Mr. Magoo.

7. Disney's Rise

In the reading for Chapter 6 in Art In Motion by Maureen Furniss Disney’s rise to fame within the animation medium is attributed understanding of traditional storytelling, character development and other factors. Disney was first employed at Newman Laugh-O-Grams, a studio that made animated ads and shorts, with many other would-be-big names in animation, such as Ub Iwerks and Hugh Harman. One film that helped Disney rise was Alice’s Wonderland, which is a live-action and animation film. He signed with a big name, Margret Winkler, after the fact to make a series of Alice comedies, helping him financially. Winkler was not satisfied with many of Disney’s cuts of the comedies and asked him to send all of the raw footage to her, so she could recut it. Winkler was still focusing on a story line in terms of gags or jokes, but Disney wanted to move toward a more liner or plot driven story line.

The Alice comedies began to loose steam, in their later stages because the double exposure technique used to insert a live-action character into an animated scene was tricky and unreliable. This lead to Alice’s screen time being very much down-played and diminished. Disney came up with another character to replace Alice, and it was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. This character was an overnight success and was also profitable for a lot of spin-off merchandise. Charles Mintz was Margaret Winkler’s husband who had taken over the business and started to edge Disney out of the studio and since Disney did not own the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit there was nothing he could do. After this Disney came up with his most famous character, Mickey Mouse. Disney had broken away from Mintz and moved toward liner storytelling with Mickey’s character.

Disney then came up with the idea of ‘Silly Symphonies’ or stories that were not recurring. They just used a set of characters for one Silly Symphony and then they were done with them. With his focus on short-format films, Disney later shifted his attention to possibly making a long format film or a feature film. He decided on Snow White as the story line, and soon thereafter Disney’s staff jumped from about a handful to 750. Many of these new animators did not know how to handle the emotion of a certain movement, so they had to study movements of actual things and try to match them on paper. Disney has received a lot of flack for being able to only make a realist female character, many saying his ‘Prince” was stiff and unrealistic. All together Snow White took about $1.5 million to make and garnered about $4.2 million in profit.

There are four types of traditional tales used when considering an audience of children: folktales, fairy tales, myths, and legends. Fables are stories that teach a lesson. Fairy tales can involve humans and animals and be set in a nonspecific time and place. The function of the myths are to explain great mysteries of the world. Legends are based on actual historical events. Bruno Bettelheim suggest that fairy tales help children deal with growing up because they present solutions to situations. it provides children a model for coping with his or her fears. One of the most interesting parts of the chapter was when the book tells of how societal norms are reflected in mainstream media. There is a construction that most if not all of the films follow, that is white, heterosexual, and male dominated social order. I would like to see Disney, Pixar or some other big animation company step outside the box and portray another side of society. Let’s see two princes or two princesses fall in love.

6. Gender Constructions

In Chapter 5 of Understanding Animation by Paul Wells, I learned animation has often been put into the children’s category, or many brush it off as if it has no implication. Cartoons have many biases and discrepancies in how genders are represented. Many main male characters such as Popeye and Superman are shown as tough and strong implying their masculinity because those are classically associated traits. Popeye’s masculinity comes from his working with hard metal, machines, and his display of his biceps. Clark Kent shows many similarities with his muscles, super strength, and his ability to save Lois from evil.

The female image and femininity also have an extremely direct relationship. In “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” Jessica Rabbit portrays the epitome of a cartoon woman. She has large breast, small waist, long hair, and is wearing stiletto heels. Gender-bending is also common in animations. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are no strangers to this; they both have been dressed up and made-up to look feminine, which introduces questions about sexuality. The genders of these characters are sometimes indistinguishable, leaving the audience thinking of the characters being in a state of sexless androgyny.

I thought the section about questioning Jerry’s gender was very interesting. It is never clearly stated or even shown what Jerry sexual identity is, bur she is often shown dressing up in women’s clothes. She also has very feminine mannerism and body language, like covering the area where breasts would be when she is naked. There are also lesbian tensions implied when Jerry is shown being embarrassed from being in bed with a female doll. The question of gender can be implied with shades of colors, with the darker being the male and the lighter typically being the female.

5. Abstract Animation

Chapter 13 from Art in Motion by Maureen Furniss discusses the problem of spectator interpretation of abstract animation. I thought Wassily Kandinsky had an interesting and very valid point about todays viewers and abstract animation. He basically says that todays spectators are overanalyzing the picture that we view in any type of cinema. He thinks that instead of trying to make meaning out of the picture, we should let the picture make its own meaning. This of coarse comes from Hollywood cinema’s hyperdominace in the main stream, making narrative story lines the norm.

The Hollywood cinema has trained us to try and probe beneath the surface of what we are watching, but one has to realign his or her process of interpretation to appreciate viewing abstract animation. Viewing an abstract animation more than once in a sitting is preferable because it is hard to extract meaning from one viewing. When one switches their conceptualization of an image, they use different parts of their brain. The right part of the brain is predominantly used at night and the left during the day. One switches their interpretation to the right side of their brain to let the meaning of an abstract film make itself.

This seg-ways into the idea that watching a film is like having a dream, and sometimes strict laws of reality don’t bind the world of dreams. Shamus Culhane says that people have an aversion to thinking with right side of their brain because there is no use of logic or reason, just intuition. This scares people because they perceive a loss of control. A final element I thought was interesting, was the section about mandalas. A mandala is a symmetrical object , sometimes a circle or a lotus, used in Buddist or Hindu culture to meditate. These ‘mandalas’ are used in many abstract animations as focal points.

4. Narrative Strategies for Understanding

There are many different techniques that can be used within animations to help the viewer understand the story better, as talked about in Paul Wells book Understanding Animation. The narrative can develop in certain ways, as a result of these different techniques. One device is called metamorphosis, which is a fluid linkage between imagery. It is the actual transformation of the drawings. Although unrelated images can be connected, narrative continuity can be conserved. Another technique is condensation, which is also known as elliptical storytelling. This is when cuts are to show a significant passing of time between the shots, and it is predominantly used in shorter films. The third technique is synecdoche. This is when a part of something is used to represent the whole. This is often used as a metaphor, when some small action is used to represent a greater meaning. Another way it can be used is to have a hand representing the whole body, a part acting for the whole entity.

A very commonly used technique within animation is symbolism and metaphor. Symbolisms complicate the structure of the narrative because they can be used to represent something else or some other meaning, but the object or character can also be construed as representing literally what it is. Peter Munz said that a sign merely duplicates the thing that it symbolizes because there is the existence of the implied meaning, as well as the literal and more specific meaning. Metaphor is very similar to symbolism, but it’s used to represent a system of ideas in a more appealing way. Another very common technique within animation is fabrication or the idea that objects or material things can have a sort-of life. Svankmajer introduces this idea, and he believes that objects have much more memories than men. All of the experiences that they have had, they conceal within them. Fabrication introduces the existences of a meta-reality, where objects are alive.

Associative relations are displayed when unrelated imagery and conjunctions are spliced together to create a different narrative impetus. This construction is used more for experimental animations, similar to montage of motion picture films. Acting is another part of narrative strategies because the animator has to understand how a certain character would look, reacting in a certain situation. A character has to be developed from a script, taking into consideration the character’s role, their rang of motion, and their overall demeanor. Another construction of animation is choreography or how the movements of the characters correspond with weight, space, and time. The animator has to understand how certain conventions of the real world would translate onto paper. The animator has to relate shape movement to effort action, or make sure the action the character is doing matches with what they want.

3. Claymation and Stop-Motion Animation

Claymation and stop-motion animation has interested me because recently I have seen The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Coraline, two amazing films. Claymation is a form of stop-motion animation that uses of frame captures of clay figures in different positions to create the illusion of movement; stop motion is the same thing, just not specifically with clay. The claymation and stop-motion animations that I have seen have enlightened me to how tedious the work is. I have also seen the shift toward realism manifest itself within these forms of animation. Coraline being a claymation film and the latter being stop-motion animation. both of these films were fantastic in plot line, but I had never seen a feature length stop-motion or claymation film before, and I realized how tedious the art work must have been because of all of the little subtle movements of their whiskers, eyes, hair, and endless other aspects of movement. Although I did find out that the sets in Coraline were scanned into a computer and converted into digital imaging, the film was nonetheless amazing. these types of films are usually projected at a frame rate of about 12 frames per second, different from motion picture films which are projected at a frame rate of 24 frames per second. This type of animation really does depend on the “interstices that lie between the frames”, just as Norman McLaren put it.

The concepts of these films both have surrealist and realist aspects within them. As talked about in chapter one of Understanding Animation, Disney pushed for a shift toward realism within cel animation. This shift is still present today because there are very few mainstream films that are abstract and lack a perception of some sort of reality. These two stop-motion films are no exception. The Fantastic Mr. Fox displays ideas such as foxes and other woodland animals can dig tunnels to anywhere or foxes can drive cars or foxes can have wars with humans. The characters within the film are basically given human characteristics. Coraline is more surreal with the introduction of an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ type alternate reality, where Coraline can escape to. These films both have surreal elements, but they would definitely be classified with Disney’s genre of realism because of the life-like movements and the boundaries of reality within each film.

Another claymation, which was viewed in class, is Creature Comforts. I thought it was such a clever little short because it combined surreal and real aspects. The animals in the zoo were talking about life living in the zoo, but the twist was that some of the animals were actually people who they interviewed at a zoo. The idea of animals having human characteristics is shared with The Fantastic Mr. Fox, but they were both realism inspired as well because of the life-like movements, and the setting in which the animals are in.

2. Orthodox vs. Experimental Animation

The Reading from Understanding Animation focused on how different styles and approaches of certain animations vary. I found it interesting how structured orthodox animations were just with their configuration, continuity, narrative form, as well as the rest of the elements of style. There are three types of animation styles: orthodox, experimental, and developmental; they all fall on a continuum. Orthodox is at one end, experimental is at another, and developmental is in between. Orthodox animation has a narrative story line, and even though it may have some fantastic elements, there is still a certain logic and continuity within the world of the animations to how things work. An example of an orthodox animation would be “Silly Symphonies”.

An interesting discussion of “Duck Amuck” is in the reading, and I thought it was neat how it recognizes that it is an orthodox cartoon within itself by the way Daffy adapts to the background. It also sort-of mocks the orthodox cartoon by having Daffy speak straight to the artist who is present. This would not fit into the orthodox category, but it’s definitely not a completely developmental animation.

Experimental animation is typically associated with abstraction and image illustration. There are a multitude of different styles that one can use to achieve an artistic vision. The artist is present within the animation; when one is watching, it becomes evident that what appears in front of them is a visual expression of the artist. An experimental animation that was viewed in class was “Deadsy”. It is a compilation of illustrations including xerography of a narrator man, revealing the story of how Deadsy had a sex change. Although it did have a weak story line element just as orthodox do animations do, its interpretive form and lack of a singular style makes it experimental.

1. Early Animation

The reading in the first chapter of Understanding Animation is very interesting because of its explanation of how animation developed through time. Animation started out as very primitive and slowly developed into more complex ideas with themes shifting from more surrealist to realist. Some interesting people introduced innovative concepts to the scene of animation. One of there people was Norman McClaren; he said that the most important thing about animation is what happens between each frame, not the actual frames themselves. A very meaningful quote that I found from Czech surrealist , Jan Svankmajer, is, “animation enables me to give magocal powers to things.” The surrealist view embraced the fact that animation is anything you wanted it to be; one could break the bounds of reality.

At a point, animation became less about the imaginary and more a way to blur the lines between reality and fantasy. This subtle shift towards realism was started by McCay with his animations like the “Sinking of the Lusitania.” His conjunction of real world conditions into animation started a trend. Disney also became a part of this trend with cartoons like “Felix the Cat,” “Willie the Steamboat,” and “Flowers and Trees.” Disney kept moving further and further toward realism with life-character movements and realistic scenarios. This shift was also enhanced by Disney’s introduction of the multiplane camera, used to maintain realistic aspect ratios in animations.

In chapter one of Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics, the definition of animation is debated. Some do not believe that animation id real art because of its hypercommercialization and youth audiences. Many others, including myself believe that animation is art because of the extreme amount of craftsmanship that goes into it. Charles Solomon tries to define animation as imagery recorded frame by frame to create the illusion of motion, which is very similar to Norman McClaren’s view of animation discussed earlier. Solomon attempts to put bounds on exactly what animation is by putting certain works in a continuum of ‘animation’ to ‘live action’ or ‘abstraction’ to ‘mimesis,’ but the reach of animation is inescapable.