Midterm Review

For my midterm review I watched Kevin Kusina's "Paris." I liked the animation a lot; it was short, simple, and creative. I particularly enjoyed the use of the "reflection" on the water and the animation of the dots that lit up the Eiffel Tower. The way they all moved independently made it look more like fireflies than typical lights.

My only complaint was that the driving sound effect was overly loud and kind of killed the ambiance of the song, but maybe that was intended. Regardless, it was a clever animation with some interesting techniques.

The Iron Giant

Having not seen the film for years, I jumped at the chance to watch "The Iron Giant" again. Even before my first viewing of the film, I knew it was critically acclaimed and had been ranked as one of the best animated films of all-time, but it wasn't until I saw it that I actually understood why.

My favorite thing about "The Iron Giant" was its juxtaposition of two very distinct styles. There's the traditional 2D animation of Hogarth and the other humans; a pseudo-retro style in which everything looks only a few shades away from a Norman Rockwell painting. This clashes sharply with the character of the Giant, who appears to be rendered in 3D before being placed in the scene. The way in which these styles juxtapose is deliberately sharp and gives the film an anachronistic retro-futuristic feel. I don't know if it could have succeeded otherwise.

I also love how the Giant becomes a character of his own. It's inherently difficult in animation to breathe life into (literally) two-dimensional characters, but when one of those characters is a lifeless robot in the first place it's an even greater challenge. However, through the use of minimalistic voice acting and expressive gestures, the Giant becomes far more than a 50-foot hunk of metal and instead gains a life of his own.

Poetry Reviews

Robert Creeley - "The Language"

Right off the bat, I love the typography. Typography is one of my favorite elements of design; I've always loved how it can say so much, so little, and be so representative of something larger at the same time. I don't much care for the poem, it's a little difficult for me to take in, but I really enjoyed the style of the animation. It was also a nice touch to add the text with pronunciation keys the way it's displayed in the dictionary. Even the text has a hand-drawn feel to it, which I also really liked. I might try a similar typographic treatment for one of my future projects.

Nick Flynn - "Cartoon Physics, Part I"

Eh, I can't say I really loved this animation in any capacity. It's a pretty interesting concept, but one that starts out pleasant and eventually borders on melodramatic. The animation itself wasn't anything special, but I enjoyed the use of the various images being displayed on a television. The final line about a man running of a cliff but not falling until he notices his mistake was particularly powerful, however, and made me realize what an interesting metaphor a cartoon can be for the trials and tribulations of life.

Spirited Away

I remember seeing Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" for the first time in high school. A lot of my friends at the time were very much into Japanese animation, and while I didn't particularly care for much of it, the fact that the movie was released to such incredible critical acclaim made me willing to give it a shot. I loved it for a variety of reasons; the most obvious of which was that the animation itself was absolutely beautiful. The colors were vibrant and there was an astounding amount of detail that went into each scene. I also loved the characters and the character development, particularly how Chihiro acts in the beginning of the movie compared to her demeanor at the end of it.

I've seen a few more Miyazaki movies since "Spirited Away," including "Princess Mononoke" and my personal favorite "Howl's Moving Castle." He has this uncanny ability to essentially produce dreams on a screen and bring to life worlds I couldn't even fathom. The man's got an extraordinary imagination and the technical prowess to match.

I was most surprised to learn that "Spirited Away" actually overtook "Titanic" to become the highest-grossing film in the history of Japanese film, but I can't say I'm very surprised. I'm sure to watch this movie as a Japanese citizen is probably even more enthralling, as there's very clearly elements of Japanese folklore embedded into every frame. Japanese culture has always fascinated me by simultaneously being futuristic and traditional, and perhaps that's a lot of why I enjoyed the film as well.

Radiohead Animation

Right off the bat, I don't like the fact that the character is singing along to the music. It's only been 45 seconds so far, but I anticipate it becoming very distracting and annoying. I'm worried if this is going to be too silly considering the subject matter of the song.

I really like the way everything is building itself from the ground up, it's an interesting tactic to not introduce all the scenery at once and have it fill itself in as the song progresses. I get the "I don't belong here" line and how it pertains to the work environment, but everything else so far has been largely irrelevant and too comical to take seriously. Not that it HAS to fit it perfectly in every single instance, but I really fail to see the connection.

Oh, he's jumping out the window. Again, I understand the critique of office life, but I really think everything about this animation has been far too silly looking to be effective in conveying any sort of serious message.

In summation, I like the style of the animation, I just think it was a terrible song choice. I love Radiohead and I'm familiar with the song, and I tried to put any preconceived biases aside before watching it, but in the end I'm just not satisfied. I think the animation was effective as a whole, but not with this particular song.

IDD Peer Review - Max Svec

In Max Svec's animation for "we much prefer candlelight," I most enjoyed how simple and well-executed the animation was. The colors and detail were vibrant, I liked in particular the detail on the lightbulb and the lightswitch as well as the animation of the flame in the last few frames. The animation is successful, but were I to offer any sort of criticism I'd say that the typography and the layout of the text could use a little tightening up. However, it looks like he animated each letter separately on "candlelight," which gives an impressive effect.

Simple Animations

In watching these experimental animation videos, I hoped to get inspired. I really, really can't draw, and I'm very intimidated by animation, but after watching these videos I actually felt like there might be some hope for me. I just have to figure out a non-conventional, interesting way to create characters.

The Ray and Iso animation was interesting; the characters weren't much more than scribbles with arms and vague facial features. In the other animation, "These are the Boring Bits," the characters were even less. They were just faces with, sometimes, hair. I suppose the style worked, but overall I think I really just hated the animation. The dialogue and plot were stupid and pretentious, and the animation didn't much change my opinion of that.

One technique I really liked from the second animation, however, was from the scene in what I assume was a subway tunnel. The animator used a sort of crosshatch pattern to simulate the darkness of the tunnel, with negative space for the headlights of the train cars. I'd like to do something like that in my own animation, it was simple and very effective.

Lotte Reinger

After seeing only a few seconds of the clip from Prince Achmed, I was very intrigued by Lotte Reinger's silhouette style of animation. It seemed so simple yet complex, in lieu of detailed character drawings she opted instead for fluid joint movement and realistic animations. It seemed like a painstaking process, but as shown in the final behind-the-scenes clip it's shown to be relatively painless, with the puppets' joints connected by a series of hinges. The most painstaking part of the process seems to be the cutting out of various character and set models.

Her style reminded me of something I had seen recently, and after racking my brain, I realized it was a music video by the Decemberists for their song "The Tain." Made entirely out of silhouettes on tissue paper backdrops, the video (supposedly) follows the plot of the entire twenty-minute epic. Fortunately, the plot was far too convoluted for me to ever really make sense of it, but I love the song!