The Fan and the Flower

This animation is The Fan and the Flower, by Bill Plympton. This animation follows the love between a ceiling fan and a potted plant. One thing that is interesting is how much detail is accomplished with such little use of color in the animation. There is only one instance in which there is color, and that is when the potted plant is blooming in different ways for the fan. The rest of the time there are 3 colors used: White, Black, and Grey. Despite this though, the animator succeeds in creating a lot of detail, such as dust on the fan after it had not spun for a while. IT shows that a wide range of colors is not always necessary to show detail in an animation.

The Moon and the Sun

In this class we watched The Moon and the Sun: an Imagined Conversation by John Canemaker. As the title suggests, the animation follows an imaginary conversation between the animator and his now deceased father. Going from his father's early days in Italy to his death, the animator spills his anger and frustrations with his father throughout the film. Despite the fact that the animator is an adult, he uses a style for the animation that looks as if it would be used for a children's cartoon. The style, with its whacky proportions and bright colors, makes the animation looks bright and cheerful. It seems strange to use this style of animation when one looks at the dark and crime filled life the animator's father lived.

Adam Phillips - Little Foot

In this class we watched the animations of Adam Phillips, and his Brackenwood Films. One particular animation is Little Foot. Probably the most impressive thing abou this animation is how different the walking and movement animations of the different characters are. The Littlefoot for example almost waddles, as if not used to walking quite yet. Bitey, the horned character, brings his legs out to the side before putting them forward. He also seems to bounce quite a bit when moving about. The different types of character movements gives the characters more personality and makes them more entertaining to watch.

Spirited Away

In this class we watched a documentary about the making of the film, Spirited Away. The documentary covers the making of the animation, and the voice recordings that go along with the animation. One particular thing that related to what we have been doing in class. The use of key drawings show when characters transition from one movement to the next. Much like what we have done in flash, with keyframes, the key drawings are the most important part of the animations because they show the movements the characters will make. Something else that was particularly interesting was the study of movements that the animators did when trying to capture the motions made when a character feeds something to a dragon. To try and get a sense of what this would be like, the animators looked at the motions made by dogs when fed in the same manner.

Class 5

The animation starts off with a single character standing in a blank space. As the animation progresses, objects and architecture are drawn around him. Starting with a potted plant, it goes all the way to a full office with people talking. To draw this many detailed objects, but also have all be drawn in as the animation goes on must have made it taken so long. Not only that, but making everything drawn to the speed appropriate so that everything was drawn within the span of the song must have eaten up even more time with the motion editor. I'm amazed that flash can do this kind of thing, and I never would have though of trying it out.

Class 3 Animation Post

In this class we watched The Danish Poet. This film looks very much like a cartoon I would watch as a kid, or the drawing style I'd expect from a comic in the newspaper. It is very simple in how it is drawn. For instance, the main character Casper's hair is simply a brown shape with lines through it. It's this simplicity in how the characters and scenery and drawn that makes the animation easy and enjoyable to follow. The way the characters are drawn makes them more interesting and, in my opinion, helps make the characters more enjoyable.

Class 4

This animation uses stop animation. The first part of it has everyday objects forming a person's head. As two head's approach each other, they split apart into individual pieces and seem to almost battle each other. In one part it showed a book biting into a plate and shattering it again and again. What amazed me was the ability to make things seem like they were in midair despite being in stop animation. It must have taken them a while to plan and execute all of this.

The next animation we watched was by the Quay Brothers, titled The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer. The animation has one part where a pair of sticks, which seem to be used as a pair of arms, looks and turns a pamphlet around and opens the pamphlet up. When the pamphlet is open, some pins move around the table. Unless the table the animation was done on was soft enough, I can't imagine how they could have gotten the pins to stay upright on the table.