Animation & Visual Effects Inspiration Blog: 2013

Sunday 28 April 2013

Persepolis

Context: Social, Political & Historical...

Middle east
Gender
From the context of an insider not an outsider
Originally a comic book (adaptation)
Humor integrated throughout
Growing up in teen years with no family
Propaganda (seeing it from a students point of view)
Civilian in a war zone
Animated documentary like 'Waltz with Bashir'
Melancholy not depressing
History repeating itself
She is related to the last emperor of Iran
Finding her identity
A French production

Sunday 21 April 2013

Willis O'brien is most famed for his involvement in "The Lost World", "King Kong" and "Mighty Joe Young" he also worked with Ray Harryhausen at a few points in his career. He primarily made models with metal skeletons covered with latex skins and primarily employed the technique of Rear Projection in his movies.

Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen was born in 1920 and in 1942 he enlisted in the army and started work on propaganda films for them. He then started work in Hollywood in the 1960's, he was displeased as at the time Hollywood didn't allow hands on film making; each person had to stick to the role they were given within the industry. Ray Harryhausen is most known for his work on "Jason and the Argonauts", "The 7th voyage of Sindbad", "One million years BC"and "Clash of the Titans". Perhaps one of his most famous accomplishments is the skeleton fight scene from "Jason and the Argonauts", the scene took 4 and a half months to complete and Harryhausen was responsible for every frame of animation in that scene and in the whole film. He inspired many of today's filmmakers such as Peter Jackson, James Cameron and Steven Spielberg.

Friday 22 March 2013

The Secret Of Kells

The Secret Of Kells (2009) is the story of the boy behind the famed Book of Kells directed and written by Tomm Moore. I really enjoyed this film I found it very engrossing and enjoyable.

The visuals are very dramatic and based heavily on what looks like Celtic designs, there are alot of patterns used and alot of false perspective in certain scenes. The characters are drawn in a basic flat colour style the real detail is found in the backgrounds with a heavy use of colour and patterns they really come to life. I thought the story was also very interesting and full of tense moments and alot of empathy is created with the main protagonist overall.

Azur And Asmar

Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest (2006) is a feature length film by Michel Ocelot and is the tale of two "princes" who grow up hearing the fairytale of the fairy princess and both intend to rescue her and win her heart. Although this film has been rated quite highly I did not enjoy it or the visual style it uses throughout.

Overall I found the audio track irritating and also alot of it is in arabic with no subtitles which makes many scenes hard to follow and also the soundtrack is rather prominant and noisy which after a while becomes irritating to listen to. The visual style is also somewhat uncomfortable to watch as the use of flat colour against 3D rendered parts looks very wierd and does not work well together in my oppinion. The use of colours and patterns is very visually stunning throughout but sadly the combination of two different styles of animation (2D flat and 3D) spoils this greatly.

Wednesday 20 February 2013

Mary And Max

Mary And Max is a full length clay-animated feature by Adam Elliot (2009). "A tale of friendship between two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely, eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max, a forty-four-year old, severely obese man living in New York." (imdb). This film has had a lot of mixed reviews due to the amusing anecdotes and hidden jokes that mask the depressing undertone of the piece. When watching this I felt very uneasy as I wasn't sure whether to find it amusing or tragic. Elliot's work have been dubbed "clayographies" as his work is all based on the stories of individuals and often based on his own relatives or friends. Among other things his work creates awareness of disability in an entertaining and engaging format.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0978762/

A Trip To The Moon

A Trip To The Moon by George Méliès (1902) is a short film in which
he envisioned what a trip to the moon would be like. The film runs for 14 minutes if projected at 16 frames per second, which was the standard frame rate at the time the film was produced (Wikipedia). This film was produced in both black and white and a hand coloured version which has only recently been rediscovered, it was thought to be lost forever.

At the time A Trip To The Moon was one of the most technologically innovative films to date and it also was one of the first few films to use a narrative structure. Many films at the time were just images of small events whereas George Méliès used a short narrative for this short providing the first known science fiction film. I really like this short I thought it was very abstract and unusual it has also influenced many things in popular culture today such as "The Mighty Boosh" who use a similar image of the moon in several of their episodes (see clip below). Méliès is also featured in the film "Hugo" (2011) based on the book "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" (see clip below).