So, last week in class we watched Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, one of my favorite childhood programs--through reruns of course. However, my favorite part of the show, since it is a variety program, is the Fractured Fairy Tale portion of the show. And we didn't watch it, what a shame.
I am just so entertained by the wonderful narration and quarky stories. One of my favorites is Jack and the Beanstalk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB1EE-FDgMk. There are a lot of them on Youtube...I highly encourage everybody to watch. This is really an outstanding show, it was directed at children, but my parents always watched it with us--and I think they liked it; certainly more than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles anyway.
Anyway, for my final project I was thinking about working on Photoshop/final cut to make my images move frame to frame. I would love any suggestions for how to animate on photoshop; I'm slightly more adept at using Final Cut.
Thanks,

Matt

LEGO Fun...

This week we read about clay animation (I've always loved Gumby) and this seemed fitting seeing how our stop motion animations are due this week. Prior to working on it with my partner I remembered making stop motion clay animation when I was in elementary school. I explained that we spent most of the year studying Lincoln in 4th grade and that we did a clay motion project.
The stories we did were based on "Lincoln Myths"; one of which he had his top hat knocked off of his head and it spilled many important documents (where he allegidly stored papers), which spread through the streets. How much fun it was as a child...and still is.
I had a great time animating a lego stop motion. We had a great time making the scenery and developing the story; the process was a little tedious, but that's okay. In our animation there is a shark that swims up on a man in a boat. The man in the boat notices and tries to shoot the shark with a pitiful handgun. The shark jumps up and bites off the man's shooting hand. The man falls to the ground bloody. The shark continues to circle and the man runs to start the boats motor. The shark leaps from the water and bites the man's head off. The man's body bleeds on the boat while the shark swims out of frame. End.
I hope everyone else had as much fun with this assignment as I did!

Here it is posted to Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whH2vm7acbQ

Enjoy,

Matt

The Simpson's holds a special place in animation history; it was the first of it's kind--a sitcom. We've discussed so much about how animation became "for kids". Saturday morning cartoons wrecked what could have been a viable adult medium--at least for about 40 or 50 years it did.
The Simpson's debuted on the FOX network in a time when FOX was all about making new, exciting programming--that would attract, yes, a younger audience (what better than a cartoon). There was a shocking revilation, adults liked The Simpson's as much as the kids. Adults liked it for it's content and kids liked if for its absurdity and the fact that it was a cartoon. A whole new market was open for media producers.
Countless shows have premiered since, the most popular of which is likely the wildly nonsensical animated sitcom "Family Guy", which I believe makes a mockery of the adult cartoons. Original Simpson's had meaning, morals, and jokes that related to the story line; in short, good writing.
After years, however, even a show as good as "The Simpson's" looses what good material they had and it should be "put on the shelf" so to speak.
"Futurama", however, is another brainchild of the creator of "The Simpson's" which again breaks powerful barriers--an animated sci-fi sitcom. For four seasons it was fresh and witty. There will be many more of these animated adult shows to follow.

Geefwee Boedone's Let's Pollute was the winner of this years animation showcase at the Big Muddy film festival. It was a satirical piece on Americas history of over-consumption and pollution; right from the advent of the machine age to modern corporate mis-cues. The wit is undeniable and the animation is comical--all is hard to not laugh at.
The animation style in Let's Pollute was very simple line drawings. The characters movements flowed well, but I did wonder how the background was done. The characters were seemingly separated from their surroundings. It seemed like it was pictures all from different pieces of paper, which were then put into a sort of collage. It was colorful and fun; a lot of work I'm sure.
Finally, for my project a fellow student and I are re-making a scene from the film The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen, 1998). The scene is going to be the one which they fight the Nialists in the bowling ally parking lot. I think we are set to do a stop motion with lego's, but I want to create a really good background. If anybody has any good mini-set suggestions they would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Sand animation...

Last week we viewed an animation which was done entirely with ink on layered board, very cool indeed. I also enjoyed the silhouette Prince Achmed from the week before. These things got me thinking of the power of light to project images and create beautiful landscapes. Then I remembered some videos I ran across about a year ago, sand paintings.
They were amazing, and there are a bunch of videos posted on line of them, here is just one example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo. You can find many, many more.
These videos are a ton of fun to watch, it's amazing to see how well some people can manipulate the sand to any picture they want. However, I have never seen a frame to frame stop motion with this medium. Why not? Is the sand too hard to keep in place? That seems to be the best reason I can come up with. I would really like to see a short animated piece using sand art. Does anybody else think one would be doable? A block animation seems like it would be easier, but this just seems more appealing.

Narrative Imagery

There is so much that can be done with Animation. Stories are not limited to what a camera can record, but rather to what a person can imagine. The author talks briefly about the use of metamorphosis in animation; I immediately think of Fantasia (Disney, 1940). My favorite scene was the one with the walking brooms. The meaning portrayed in that scene is unmistakable; and impossible in real life. The best aspect of metamorphosis is the ability of the creator to derive non-verbal meaning from an unreal occurrence. Personification is my favorite means to create non-verbal meaning. After all, inanimate objects take up most of the world we live in.
The author also touches on how transitions and time lapse differ from any other medium. The creator can visually take the consumer into any time frame they see fit; they can pass time in seamless manners. The authors key examples center around disappearing/reappearing characters as well as a story in which time passes by giant leaps (in which you can see everything changing). However, going back to old cartoons, I enjoyed his simple example of a page being turned by an imaginary (or cartoon) hand. I can remember this from my early days of cartoons, and most particularly on Fractured Fairy Tales, a segment of the Bullwinkle Show (1961-1964). Since the stories were old folk tales, altered slightly, they would pass the time in the story by having the "narrator" turn a page.
The author also talks about how metaphores play a powerful role in animated imagery. While this is true, it is hard for any artist to portray exactly what he or she want the viewer to gather. Only with careful planning can will an audience truly understand the aims of the creator. This is because everybody interprets things differently; some may see the comic as a satire on government intervention while others see it as a commentary on social stratification. Messages are very hard to portray in any medium, even in an art as free as animation.

Duck Amuck

Duck Amuck, Warner Brothers, 1951 truly pushes the envelope of animation. It is hardly a story, rather it relies completely upon the animation techniques to entertain the viewer. The blank canvas can be filled by anything, at any time; animation does not have the limitations of live action. In this there is no real story line, and only one character, yet it is entertaining clean fun for near 7 minutes.
Daffy Duck is cute as hell, with his crazy little outfits and elaborate settings. This could have only been done by a great team of animators. This is a dramatization of what it actually takes to make a frame by frame cartoon...all that goes into it. They even have one instance in which we see seperate screen shots on the film strip demonstrating just how sequenced each movement is. It is hard to even fathom the amount of work that went into this.
It is also obvious that the animators, by this point, have a clear grasp of bipedal movements; legs and arms move as if Daffy Duck were human. The complexity of this cannot be understated, for many years the form of animation was much more free flowing and unrealistic (like the films we watched last week).
There was also much more dialogue, I am all the more interested.
On a side note: I would really like to watch some Fractured Fairy Tales if we get a chance!