Ladislaw Starewicz was a Russian/ Polish animator, who used 3d stop-motion in his works. Being one of the 1st animators in this area of animation, he was a pioneer that not only in story telling, but also in giving life to 3d objects.
We were presented to this Animator, accompanied with his 1934 The Mascot Animation.
The Mascot is a short film, in stop-motion, starring toys, which have a mind of their own. It tells a story of a poor family ( mother and daughter), who have to sell some toys because they are having economic difficulties. And so it starts the fight of the toys to not being sold. In this animation, we have a puppy, a cat, a tough guy, a monkey, a clown, lots of vegetable head characters and even a devil.
Being part of our project animate a everyday object, it was good to see how Starewicz actually created such different characters and incorporate them with their own distinct personality. Not to mention the beautifully technique in Stop- Motion, where is not visible any bump of any kind.
Although the story is good from the beginning the hint of dark humour so many times perceived in Eastern European Stories, actually elevated it to be one of my favourite stop-motion animations.
Starewicz dark humour pioneering works in this field, influenced many other animators to come, such as Jan Svankmajer, Brothers Quay and Tim Burton.
Monday, 15 March 2010
Animator: Walt Disney ( 1901- 1966)
Walt Disney
Walt Disney was the Animator left to be shown, and nothing better than his first big animation, Fantasia, to present him. Fantasia, in contrary, of other Disney Films, as this really eastern European feeling really dark, but beautifully crafted. We watch a series of excerpts from this film, the 1st part of the film, where, just like Mclaren's works accompany a jazz tune, the Disney Animation is accompanied by the orchestra. Simply beautifully!
Also, we watched something that I have mentioned before, the chapter Mickey The Sorcerer's Apprentice, where Mickey by the power of magic turns inanimate objects into live, with his master tricks, however in any Disney Film something has to go wrong, and it does, because Mickey is not able to control the powers. I found Mickey's performance similar to what we have to do, spread magic around the given object and make it alive and act.
Fantasia- Mickey the Sorcerer's Apprentice
Finally, We also watched the excerpt Night on Bald Mountain, and what a delight it was to watch it, in this chapter is visible, what I mentioned before, the Avant- Garde, Eastern European side of animation, so dark, malicious and gothic but yet so perfect and beautiful. It actually emphasizes what Phil said, despite Disney being known by their "good" characters, such as Snow White, Cinderella,etc, it also has a enormous curriculum of villains, and so interesting they are, from the Demon in Night on Bald Mountain to the evil witch in Snow White, all play their part perfectly.
Fantasia- Night on Bold Mountain
Animator: Norman McLaren (1914 - 1987)
Norman Mclaren
Norman Mclaren's just blew me away, with his animations accompanied by all these jazz tunes. But also, for the way that simple shapes can create such an appealing animation. Firstly, we watched Begone Dull Care, 1949, and I can't say how crazy all the animation, but it just went well with the flow of the music, which made a perfect composition. Also, the drawings, in my opinion, resembled abstract expressionism, conveying the feeling even more.
Begone Dull Care
After, we were presented with some other animations, in which I liked but another that stroke me the most was Pas de Deux, 1969.This short is dated 20 years after the previous animation, and shows a completely new approach to animation. it demonstrates how the movement of the two ballet dancers featuring this animation, can be breakdown frame by frame, creating this dragging experience that ultimately produces an abstract vision.
Pas de Deux
Finally, we saw this animation called Le Merle (the blackbird), and this once again was so different yet interesting, because it is the animation for this traditional song in Canada, and the animation just follows it perfectly flowing throughout the verses with no cuttings. The song is so cool that I'm listening over and over again.
Le Merle
Animator: Lotte Reiniger (1899- 1981)
Lotte Reiniger
I found Reiniger's work really interesting, an animation made of cut pieces of paper where is visible silhouette of places and characters, although I was already familiar with this technique practiced by other artist, is always good to know where it actually comes from. We saw the animation Cinderella, it is basically the story that Disney after took and adapted to a full length film. However this one being a bit shorter just had the same effect in story-telling. I really enjoyed the addition of gags and how the silhouetted characters look so communicative, it actually just proves what a good animation needs, a good story and characters who portray perfectly the story.
Here is Reiniger's Animation, Cinderella:
Also I found this documentary explaining the art behind the works of Lotte Reiniger
Animator: J. Stuart Blackton ( 1875- 1941)
J. Stuart Blackton was an Anglo- American film producer, who among other filmmakers, first introduced stop-motion and drawn animation techniques to films. He is considered the father of American animation.
Stuart Blackton was the founder of Vitagraph Studios, one of the most notable film studios of its time. Apart from running the Studio, he also produced , directed, wrote and starred in his own films.
All this fame led him to try different things in cinema, one of them being the introduction of the concepts of animation in cinema.
One of his first films using this idea was The Enchanted Drawing, 1900. In this film, he draws a human face, a bottle of wine and cigars. The artists starts to play with the objects and the face reacts, not only has a good montage where the artist draws the objects and they become real life, but also gives the 1st steps in animation. The low point is that the drawings do not have a good flow from image to image. but nevertheless a good start.
In 1906, Blackton actually developed even more what he had started an animation as film. Despite the first one being a bit cranky, and lacking much animation in it, this one actually was the big step into animation. With Humorous Phases of Funny Places, he actually started to explore this new area, called animation. By employing two drawn characters to the animated film, he started to give them life, and play with their faces and actions. On the second part, a man is playing with a umbrella, and there is a beautiful animation, where the umbrella rotates fluently in the air to later come back to the man.
Finally on the third part, a clown starts to play some tricks, and there once again we see a really improvement from his previous and first animation.
Animator: Eadweard Muybridge ( 1830- 1904)
Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer, best known by his pioneering work using multiple cameras to capture motion and breakdown the frames in a second.
One of his famous works is studies of the horse motion cycle in 1878, this work shows a series of sequential photos that all together create the motion of the horse, in a infinite cycle. This helped comtemporary animators to understand how animals actually walk or gallop.
This study all started with a bet between Muybridge and the horses owner, where the latter disbelieved that horses couldnt gallop with any hooves on the ground. So Muybridge, to explain it started by creating this study wtith photographs taken to a horse, in this image we can perceive that the horse does not ahve any hooves on the floor for about 2 of the pictures, so it concludes that not only a horse doesnt reall have everytime 1 hoof on the ground, but actually at some times It doesnt have any.
As I mentioned before this studies helped to breakdown motion and accurately understand it. And so it started the beginning of animation.
Muybridge's works are so remarkable that Animators nowadays still rely on them when creating movement.
Animation workshop- Session 1
Last friday, we had our fist animation workshop session, and what a session. I can say I really enjoyed doing it.
We started by watching some animations by the 1st ever animators, such as J. Stuart Blackton with the animation Humourous phases of funny faces, 1906 or Winsor McCay's How a mosquito operates, 1912.
as the session went on, we were asked to produce 12 drawings (1 sec. of animation) of morphing our face with the face of our colleague sat on the left. Actually it went better than I expected as some of the drawings we can really distinguish.
Meanwhile, we watched some other more recent animations, from previous Meg's Students to others such as Caroline Leaf's The street, 1976, and the group Blu with their animations on site.
By the end of the workshop, we were asked to write our name, and think of an object that relates to us with the letter of our name.
I came with Radio, Universe, Banana, Elephant and Necklace.
I guess it will be fun to start morphing them :)
We started by watching some animations by the 1st ever animators, such as J. Stuart Blackton with the animation Humourous phases of funny faces, 1906 or Winsor McCay's How a mosquito operates, 1912.
as the session went on, we were asked to produce 12 drawings (1 sec. of animation) of morphing our face with the face of our colleague sat on the left. Actually it went better than I expected as some of the drawings we can really distinguish.
Meanwhile, we watched some other more recent animations, from previous Meg's Students to others such as Caroline Leaf's The street, 1976, and the group Blu with their animations on site.
By the end of the workshop, we were asked to write our name, and think of an object that relates to us with the letter of our name.
I came with Radio, Universe, Banana, Elephant and Necklace.
I guess it will be fun to start morphing them :)
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