Animation; My Final Major Project specialism
The specialism that I want to do is animation, I've very much liked animation for a long long time. But never really took it upon myself to practice it until a few years ago when I experimented with stop motion animation.
As I even stated in my personal statement applying for animation I admitted that I wasn't aware there was a course specializing in it till there was an introductory lecture.
I had always like animation especially the fact that you could make an animation from still images. The reason I like this because it meant that you could create any character you wanted and not have to fork out on expensive costume designs and such. I especially liked that "You can create anything you want" bit because all of the characters I have ever envisioned for animations are unworldly.
Ryan Woodward
The person I decided to research was the creator of the animation that inspired me to choose animation for my final major project. The artist explains that this was a personal project of his and that he wanted to explore the human figure and show appreciation to contemporary dance. And I too, after seeing his video. I showed a new found appreciation for contemporary dance.A small piece about Ryan Woodward
"Ryan Woodward began his career as an animator/designer and storyboard artist in 1995. He has worked for Warner Brothers Feature Animation, Sony Pictures, Cartoon Network, Walt Disney Studios and Marvel Entertainment and Dreamworks Pictures on films such as Space Jam, The Iron Giant, Osmosis Jones, Spider-man 2, Spider-man 3, Where the Wild Things Are, Ironman 2, and Cowboys and Aliens and The Avengers (2012). Ryan has produced and directed 3 short films, The Loch, The Turtle and The Shark and Aliens that have played in over 40 film festivals worldwide. In 2009, Ryan created 9 animated sequences that play nightly at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie, Hawaii. Ryan is an assistant professor of the Animation program at Brigham Young University where he teaches storyboarding, figure drawing, visual development and animation. Ryan has a BFA from Brigham Young University and an MFA from The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He is currently a member of IATSE local 800, The Art Directors Guild. Ryan and his wife, Tiffany, have three little girls, and is an avid cyclist and mountainbiker."
He made a music video of a contemporary dance animation where he exaggerates and extends the truth to make this animation rather graceful and magical, I like the simple colouring too and the rawness of the animation sketch.
I like this animation because it's quite fresh and the sketch markings on the dancers are quite raw but still consistent and smooth transitioning.
He also created a Google doodle which very much expresses the movement of the body in a very graceful manner.
Another thing that I REALLY love about his work is his colour range. He keeps it very plain but at the same time includes so much subtle shade that colour is not needed.
I guess another reason I like his work too is I actually envy it very much as it is very effective at getting the point across and I just love the flow of it.
Ryan Woodward is an Animator, concept artist and a Storyboard artists for many films and cartoons.
The differences between these two pieces of his is that they are both different formats one is a GIF and the other is a complete video, but there are huge similarities. It is very obvious that drawing the movement of a person trailing behind is this guys style of work and that is one of the main reasons I like his work so much.
Another similarity to these two pieces is the colour, or the lack of it; he doesn't use much colour in his videos or animations, he keeps it this raw natural brown colour, or stays in the region of browns. I like this because then there is a definite contrast from the character(s) and the background. I also very much like that it looks like a sketch in a brown paper sketch book.
Ub Iwerks
I chose to research him because he is an icon to illustration and animation and loved the style that his cartoons had.
He was also responsible for the animation "Flip The Frog" which is said to be mildly successful. A lot of these animations I am not so very aware of due to my age. But I can still appreciate the work of his that I do know.
The reason I chose him was because he was an icon to animation and because I know of him from common knowledge of him creating Mickey Mouse. And greatly appreciate that 81 years later and Mickey Mouse is still a very popular cartoon.
Here is a link to the history of Ub Iwerks. I read this and many other bios about him and his work with Walt Disney.
http://www.thegreat1930s.com/ubiwerks/
Here is a 1928 episode of Mickey Mouse; Steamboat Willie. The clip of him whistling at the helm is still a very well known piece now and is used in the beginning of many Disney films, still, today.
I think I prefer animations from the 20's than I do the animations today, because of technology limitations, people drew all of their animations frame by frame, by hand and it was all pure from the mind and it was not colour broadcast either which made all all that more special because you know it was a time before technology grew. I very much like videos being scratchy and old and with minimal quality. It is what I am also trying to achieve with my animation.
Here is an episode of Mickey Mouse for you all to enjoy where Mickey, Goofy and Donald Duck collaborate together to build a ship.
What I love very much about this video, is the exaggeration of reality, the thought that a wooden mast can bend and wobble, the thought of Donald Duck being able to paint air and the thought that objects would rotate around Donald Duck as if they were "K.O Stars".
My favourite part is especially when Mickey is struggling to turn the helm on the ship because Donald Duck is painting the ship tiller. I find this to be a real comedic moment and there is so much attention to the detail. And the idea that Mickey Mouse is playing String ball pong with Donald Duck being the pong ball and a boat tiller being a bat is really funny.
You can tell it's newer because the quality is clearer and most obviously because there is colour in this video, I also like that the humour is still pure and that the animation is frame by frame work, I find that everyone now relies too much on films being high graphics and full of gimmicks, where as videos then, the humour was pure and none of these "Child friendly innuendos" and they were drawn almost free hand and actually had hard workers to perfect the line work and positioning of all the frames. Also with this animation it looks like there is more blended tone within the colours where as the older 20's one may only be in black and white, but there is only block colouring, no shading at all.
Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most know Animators/Animation directors in Japan. And I am a huge fan of his creations.
I chose to research about Hayao Miyazaki because I have watched many of his movies and decided he would be an appropriate research subject for animation.
I think I favour his work not because it's anime and the style, but because of the stories he tells in his movies, they are very abstract and surreal.
although he has a team of animators, as a director, the films produced are amazing.
Hayao Miyazaki is one of the reasons I wanted to do animation because I liked to think of weird creatures and depict them in drawings and animation. And he has done just that.
He also has produced some very big name films. I.e, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and My Neighbour Totoro.
All VERY amazing films.
I found a snippet from Wikipedia that speak of his inspiration for the film spirited away. It speaks of a friend's daughter, I've not really found much more information about this but i felt that this would be necessary to include.
"During this period of semi-retirement, Miyazaki spent time with the daughters of a friend. One of these friends would become his inspiration for Miyazaki's next film which would also become biggest commercial success to date, Spirited Away. The film stars Rumi Hiiragi, Mari Natsuki and Miyu Irino, and is the story of a girl, forced to survive in a bizarre spirit world, who works in a bathhouse for spirits after her parents are turned into pigs by the sorceress who owns it. The film was released on July 2001 and grossed ¥30.4 billion (approximately $300 million) at the box office. Critically acclaimed, the film was considered one of the best films of the 2000s.[9] It won a Japan Academy Prize, a Golden Bear award at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival, and an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature."
Source HERE.
I've noticed a lot in Miyazaki's videos that he is either very influenced by females or he somewhat idolises them with the lead role in many films so I went on to find some interviews to see if he ever speaks of why he does this and I did find quite a lot actually, he in face mentions that when he is animation he considers both genders but when a man is being heroic in a film, it doesn't feel special, but when there is a woman being heroic it is because people don't often see a strong woman.
"Disclaimer
Translated without permission for personal entertainment purpose only. This is not, by any means, an accurate word for word translation, and the translator is solely responsible for any mistranslation or misunderstanding due to it.
Question: Why do you always choose a girl as your theme?
Miyazaki: I don't logically plan it that way. When we compare a man in action and a girl in action, I feel girls are more gallant. If a boy is walking with a long stride, I don't think anything particular, but if a girl is walking gallantly, I feel "that's cool." Maybe that's because I'm a man, and women may think it's cool when they see a young man striding. At first, I thought "this is no longer the era of men. This is no longer the era of taigimeibun. But after ten years, I grew tired of saying that. I just say "cause I like women." That has more reality.
[Kikan Iichiko, October 20, 1994. Reprinted in Shuppatsuten by Hayao Miyazaki; published by Tokuma Shoten, 1996.]"
"Taigimeibun can mean justification, justice, or a big good cause something like "for the human race" --ryo"
Source HERE.
The style of Hayao's work often varies, but there are still similarities. One of my favourite films by him is "Spirited Away" because it is so surreal and it tells tales of another world and a lot of his other films are rather unworldly, like his film Princess Nausicaa, that tells tales of a girl who stopped a hoard of giant bugs, it's not so much another world, but the "old world" is trapped underground. I've put Hayao's style to surrealism, because his stories and films do have worldly things in them, but they are not the shape and size you'd expect them to be, for example, there are giant slug like creatures with hard armour and lots of eyes and in another film there is a cat that is also a bus with lots and lots of legs and glowing eyes. It is all very surreal. Also as pointed out earlier, he often makes the main character female.
Hayao / Disney comparison.
I think Hayao's work is very similar to the old style Disney, when everything they did was frame by frame drawn and not CGI, there are obvious differences, like the fact that they are differently styled due to another artists hand, setting also has a huge role in it. Disney films frame by frame work back then used to be set in places like the woods and castles and jungles ( Snow White, Cinderella and Tarzan ) .. But the film Ponyo which Hayao did for Disney was a collection of underwater work and this small community island where everybody knew everybody, and I feel as if where the location was had a slight Japanese feel to it, even if it was not intended, I think that is because Hayao made the most famous anime's there are and some of the Anime style is still lurking in that animation.
Also with Hayao's animations or films, I notice he pays a lot of attention to wind direction and clothes movement in the wind, where as films like Tarzan watching closely there isn't really much wind movement but there is movement with Tarzan's loincloth moving in the directions that he is moving.
How Japanese culture seems to have influenced Hayao Miyazaki's work.
Japanese culture seems to be a huge influence to Hayao Miyazaki as the style of his animation is for one, anime styled which is a style of drawing seen in mainly countries like China, Japan, Thailand and South Korea. Also the cultural differences definitely have an influence, I.e, the way the people eat in his animations, they tend to eat knelt on the floor and with the common knowledge of east culture, they eat mainly with chop-sticks.
I notice as well that in some of his animations they are focused less in the city areas of Japan, but in the country sides.. In his films you will often see people in the backgrounds or as part of the story, farming rice in the traditional manner, like in the film "My Neighbor Totoro", there is a family that decided to move to the country side and the house is traditional Japanese styled with the thin paper walls and sliding doors. Also I notice that he has used a lot of traditional metaphors in the sense that in "Spirited Away" a girls parents eat food that is not rightfully there's and they get turned into pigs; from what I read they see greedy people as pigs, I cannot say this is for certain as what I read could have been lost in translation, more than likely.
Animation and Animators definitions
Here is a link to wikipedia specifying what Animation is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation
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