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

Willis O'brien

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.

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.

 

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).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invention_of_Hugo_Cabret

Time Lapse Video Finished

3D Room Finished

Silent Hill : Revelation 3D

Silent Hill : Revelation 3D is the second film based around the game franchise and I was astounded by the visuals when I went to see it. The 3D was fantastic and came right out of the screen in front of you. An example would be when the ash is floating down at the start it feels like it is right in front of you, also when the scraper at the start murders Heather's father in her dream the sword comes right out of the screen also blood splatters on your glasses throughout the film. I also thought the digital grading was very appropriate and gave the film a grungy feeling throughout especially when they return to Silent Hill where the main colour pallet is blood red, black, white and very de-saturated browns and greens. One of my favourite scenes is the one in the clip below, I don't think I blinked during the whole sequence it was that amazing. I thought the way they decayed the walls like skin being ripped off flesh then that decaying off to reveal a cage was a very clever technique and very visually appealing.

 

Bedroom Progress (Practice Skills)

Ryan By Chris Landreth

Ryan is a short 13 minute film based around the life story of animator Ryan who's short films are famous in the world of animation but he decided to leave the animation firm he was with and live a life of begging on the streets. This short film uses recorded audio directly from Ryan and Chris talking about his life and from various people he interviewed.




 I really liked the visual style Chris used to depict the characters, it was a very interesting way of showing how fragile the characters are without resorting to dialogue. The animation is very well done and there is no motion capture used in the film at all which makes the animation even more impressive.

Throughout the film you can see that Chris has various inspirations, perticularly the surrealist movement with references to Dahli and René Magritte (the son of man can be seen directly in the film towards the end).

Anthropomorphism (Personification)

One of the major characteristics of animated films is the endowment of animals, objects and environments with human characteristics, this is called Anthropomorphism (also known as personification).  

This technique is used within animation to create new forms while still providing an empathetic or identifiable human aspect. This allows animators to create unusual objects like “dancing washing machines and villainous shrubs, and endow otherwise ordinary things with appeal, ability and abstraction. At the same time, both worlds have a relationship to humankind, despite the sense of ‘difference’ and ‘otherness’.” Referenced from Basics Animation: Scriptwriting by Paul Wells.  This sense of ‘otherness’ is corrected through the animation and imposition of human characteristics and traits that make the material or natural objects familiar to the viewer although they aren’t human.

Anthropomorphism is commonly used in films that contain talking animals such as Animal Farm (1955). There are two terms which simplify this technique into two areas: Theriomorphism, when someone or something has the form of an animal or beast and Therianthopism, when someone or something combines with elements of an animal or beast. When animals are substituted for humans many more points and issues can be raised while avoiding social, political and religious taboos, “Such stories can thus talk about forbidden ideological, sexual, moral and cultural topics under another guise, where talking animals play significant roles.” Referenced from Basics Animation: Scriptwriting by Paul Wells.

Here is an example from Animal Farm by George Orwell (1955):

 

Condensation

Condensation: The maximum degree of suggestion in the minimum of imagery. “Condensation is the animation process which uses the minimum amount of imagery to suggest the maximum of narrative and thematic information. Individual images, sometimes parts of objects and environments, are used to represent the whole of that object and environment, or operate as symbols or metaphors for more complex ideas.” Referenced from Basics Animation: Scriptwriting by Paul Wells. This technique in effect condenses the visual imagery and only focuses on the detail which will shape the narrative and enhance it. Many films will use codes and conventions to tell the narrative and in my Alevel media we had to use this as we had a complex narrative and less than ten minutes of screen time. We used props and visuals to enhance the narrative more than long character developing scenes with heavy dialogue.

Animation mostly will abandon the depth created with lengthy live action character development scenes and dialogue; animators will instead prefer the intensity of suggestion in visual composition and design. The characters created within animation are more defined by what they do than by what they say; the connotations and denotations of how they behave will define the characters rather than the actual scriptwriting.

Here is one of my favourite videos which has no dialogue and is focused entirely on the visuals: Created by mikeinel .

Metamophosis

"The animation film is a form which is ultimately defined by its use of metamorphosis, an effect in which a cinematic image, whether 2D graphic or 3 dimensional, appears to effect a transition in form over a period of time.” http://www.academia.edu/239880/_Graphic_and_Literary_Metamorphosis_Animation_Technique_and_James_Joyces_Ulysses_

Warner identified two different types of metamorphosis, first is when a character, object or environment suddenly becomes something else an example would be Peter Parker transforming into Spiderman. The second is when the character, object or environment goes through organic changes as a result of the circumstances it exists inside. An example of this would be Peter Parker having to resume his normal life.

“Any image can metamorphose into another and consequently, any story can be told through visual transitions from one pictorial element to another.” Referenced from Basics Animation: Scriptwriting by Paul Wells , this suggests that anything can ‘flow’ from one state to another and enables the writer to take short cuts and lead the audience from one perspective to another without using the traditional cutting together of images which is done in the editing process.

Here is an example of Metamorphosis animation: This is done by GhostDancer16 .

Here is another example of Metamorphosis animation: All rights reserved to Marvel Industries



This is a rough 3D version of the above video: Done by kronkhal

My 3D Teddy Bear (Practice Skills)

This was our project today to create a teddy bear to use for our assignment, I found this to be a very laborious and frustrating process (about 5-6 hrs.). I modelled my teddy using 3Ds Max using the polygon editor tool, I modelled the head and body separately then welded the vertices to make it all one solid object. This is a relatively low poly model so it would be more suited to the games industry rather than the film industry which requires much higher poly objects. This is what it looks like with a turbosmooth and realistic colour.

My First 3D Object

 This was the first 3D object I created in 3Ds Max using the line tool to outline the shape then using various other manipulators to create the 3D model. I then added a glass texture to it and made a platform for it to stand on which has a ceramic tile texture.

Reflection On My Screencast

After producing the screencast I realised the software I used called XSplit was difficult to manage and hard to edit after running through all the material. Also my sound was a bit out and grainy due to a bad quality microphone and I need to add background music to keep the screencast flowing. In future I won't use a video to fill time, instead I will use short clips and narrate over them as this is where I fell down. After watching two of my other classmates screencasts about their work and inspirations I feel like I know them a little better and some of the work they showed (by them and by others) was very inspiring and interesting.

My First Screencast

Watch live video from squirle1 on TwitchTV

Animal Farm

Animal Farm (1954) is an animated film based on George Orwell's bestselling novel. "Britain's second animated feature, which, despite the title and Disney-esque animal animation, is in fact a no-holds-barred adaptation of George Orwell's classic satire on Stalinism, with the animals taking over their farm by means of a revolutionary coup, but then discovering that although all animals are supposed to be equal, some are more equal than others." Referenced from: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047834/

I thought the idea and storyline was good and an interesting concept but I disliked the animation style. I dislike animation that is done too stylized or too "cartoony" however the emotions of the characters were done very well and conveyed all the right emotions, some people will have more empathy for the animals than for people.
 

There is an interesting concept of propaganda and dictatorship woven into the storyline, the pigs end up ruling over the other animals and making them all miserable. The American cartoon tradition from the 1920’s until after the Second World War, used animals as funny distractions from the social despair of the Great Depression and the war, they sacrificed their 'animalness' and became purely comical.

 This story is based on the Cold War and uses Anthropomorphism very cleverly as if this had used live action actors or human figures it would of reduced the appeal of the film, it would of also had some of the ideas frowned upon due to them being considered taboo. "In 1954, however the Halas & Batchelor Studio released Animal Farm, making the animals far more like animals and less like humans, in order to underpin the seriousness of the political metaphor at the heart of George Orwell’s famous fable." Referenced from Basics Animation: Scriptwriting by Paul Wells.

 

 

This is a short extract from towards the end of the movie (see above).

This story contains a lot of interesting ideas and basis on real events but I still discredit it due to its unappealing animation style. I don't feel that this film has aged well due to the loud and distracting soundtrack and annoying sounds. I feel that this film can be easily understood by anyone of a mature age but the historical and political context is very important to the story, I have never studied this area of history and yet by watching this film I picked up on the hidden and interwoven messages within the film.