Watchmen

This is so good -


I've included it in my 'This is why I love animation' bit. Although its obviously not really animation in the typical sense - everything about it, the way the story is told, all the different characters are developed, all the philosophical angles built, all the pop reference, is exactly what i'd like to see, animation's of a similar keel

(not) my kind of animation..

First, let me just say..
I'm really really sorry to single out one guy for this. And understand, whilst I am singling out one person - i'm also not, i'm just using it as an example of a whole canon of work - a whole canon of thought about the medium & the usage of the medium. I do not mean to single him out in anyway other than to provoke in your mind ideas of other examples.

There, haha.



This is the showreel of Sandro Cleuzo, someone who has been around for a while, worked on some big films & clearly a very talented fella. However, I wanted to point out this kind of work. I would not be happy on my deathbed to look back at my career like this. It's just regurgitating of the same subject over and over, slick, beautiful, but just dead underneath. What's the point? (besides the holy $...)

I agree whole-heartedly with what Ralph Bakshi says in this clip, and whatsmore the sentiment grows each time I watch it.



I felt that same way about Tom & Jerry as a kid, what's the point? Every episode is the same. Disney films are the same (hyper-Holywood, atleast every now & then live action throws a curveball). Dreamworks etc are largely the same. What's the point? I don't want to do this with animation. Lets not forget, it's a medium with such explorative artistic potential. (someone really needs to put a decent version of this online..)

On the contrary, I have alot of time for Pixar as they do things with heart & the occasional daring (if minor) attempt (Wife dying in first ten minutes of Up, how dark Toy Story 3 almost gets (all things considered..), largely silent first half hour of Wall-E) that I think in their own small but far-reaching way are slowly championing the change in animations public perception.

PS - just to again apologise to Sandro Cleuzo. I see he worked on Chico & Rita, a film I do very much admire, especially for its use of animation to tell an adult tale. Perhaps the above is simply an overview of his more commercial work.

Gobelins!

For those not in the know, there's a fantastic animation school in France called Gobelins. It's the equivalent of a masters university course.

I really love their output, I think it's really towards the future of animation in the mainstream; animations that are created for all, about anything. Gobelins often still rely largely on animations typicalities; fun, frantic, silly, but they are certainly a step in the right direction. France in general seemed to have a very good understanding of animation in this sense, you really felt it at Annecy with the selection, and also the response from the audience (& general public). 

Anywho, here's some of the really great work they are producing.

Persepolis & more

Just finished watching Persepolis. It reminded me of a couple of other animations, a neat little bundle that share the same skill. The other two are Arrugas (Wrinkles, 2011) & Chico and Rita (2010). All three have an ability to affably convey a niche tale to a broad audience; the story of an elderly man with dementia aclimatizing to a retirement home; a black Latino love story set in Cuba; and an obscure & ranging tale from the journal of a young woman.

These aren't typical film plots, they are niche. however, through boiling them down and reducing them to their essence (simple smiles we can all communicate with) we have the outline for a tale we can begin to relate to our own lives.

I've always been a fan of King of the Hill & now I think I have found the reason why; its just simply the boiled down essence. If it was live action, I doubt very much I'd watch it/ enjoy it if I did. The same goes for the above three.

I think that so much more comes into it with live action; I think there are atavistic, subconscious things going on.

A good example of art boiled down to their essence is Keith Haring. His work shares the broad understanding of cave paintings; anyone anywhere in the world can relate to it; and that's just it; we are all in it together, all share the common desires, vices, emotions. Boiling it down to the action, or the essence of an emotion - like a perfumer refining his substance to the most concentrated amount - we can all understand.

Feast for your eyes

For a good while now, i've been collating a selection of paintings I come across in t'internet. It's really nice to have on my computer - every so often to take a browse through my little virtual gallery. Here's a selection that hopefully will inspire you too.

Note - i've included this in my 'this is why I love animation' section. It's obviously not animation - but its all about style. Ya dig??

Serov (sketch)

Edgar Degas - Mary Cassatt (1880)

Egon Schiele - Self portrait with hands on chest (1910)

Jeremy Lipking

Jeremy Enecio - portrait

Jim Phillips - George Clinton poster

John Minton - Self portrait

Kathe Kollwitz - Death & the woman 2

Mark Demseader - Bethany seated

Mark is a contemporary artist, check out his site his pictures are awesome.

Rembrandt - (sketch) Saskia sleeping

I think this sketch is really nice to see. We are very used to seeing Rembrandt's superb finished paitings, but I to see him capture it so quickly in a sketch is just as fulfilling (on a smaller, equally fruitful scale)

Robert Valley - Print 05 (from Pear Cider & Cigarettes)

Another contemporary artist i greatly admire, Robert Valley did the design work for the Tron animated series.

Serov

Vanessa Bell - Roger Fry

I think from this you can adjudge quite clearly the type of drawings/paintings I currently admire. One's that are somewhat 'half-finished', with points of interest that are worked up. I think it's because I like to be taken by the subjectivity in art :- as you can see above from the Schiele, Serov's & Jeremy Lipking especially, they all focus on the head of the figure, & the rest of the body is sometimes just an outline. The Demsteader one probably most overtly uses this technique, whilst the Degas one encompasses it to a totally different degree - a very well worked painting, but he has bought attention to the head with even greater detail, & with the white splurge behind.

I also love the capturing of different, often muted - but still plainly visible - emotions. Degas, Serov (the sketch), Minton & Enecio are good, varied examples. I think this comes from being an animator, the slight slight tweaks in a human face, innumerably possible & remarkably acute. You gotta admire when someone captures this. It's something a camera often can't do, as the subject is all to aware of the camera, and therefore there expression/manner is blighted.

I think largely, this all comes back to the opposition painting found itself up against in the 20th century. The advent of the camera blew the necessity of formal painted portraiture out the water. I (perhaps ignorantly..) assume this is the root of many of those modernist styles also; Futurism & Cubism, two good examples - Futurism looked to induce weight & speed into the paintings, whilst cubism included the multi faceted relationship of a personality, something very real - but unseeable to a camera.

Also will take this point to include some 'inspirational photographs', beginning with David Hockney:

I love these montages he did. To me (I havent read into them so excuse me if i'm wrong) but they are cubist essentially. Showing subjectively the different & slight iterations that make up a person.

Diane Arbus

Marilyn Monroe

Miles Davis

Patti Smith & Bob Dylan

Sharon Tate

Steve McQueen

Unfortunately, i'm not so particular when I save these images, so my apologies to not being able to name the taker of the above photo's (besides the first - Diane Arbus). My guess would be some are Richard Avedon's. 

Anywho, if you want a little more inspiration, check out HERE. 

This is why I love animation, Part 1

Gunna start a new little feature here on my blog, which is essentially a library of all the animation that I love. 2D animation especially has so much virtue in it, and to begin with, this, I think, is my favorite music video ever..

Rome - Two Against One by Anthony F. Schepperd


A quote from Anthony F. Schepperd (the animator behind it) - "Animation gives us the rare opportunity to spill our most coveted attribute, the imagination"

This is how I feel about animation too; This is why I love Virginia Woolf's writing so much. What she toiled to do in her writing is a shared attribute of animations; It's such a vivid & likely way to express the mind -- and feelings. It can do this very succinctly, e.g...

Sisyphus by Jankovics Marcell


Balance by Wolfgang & Christoph Lauenstein



Animation too you sometimes find can be a little too ambiguous for it to really mean anything to you at that precise moment. But often, because of the aesthetic beauty of it, those images are locked in your mind, and recalled as a metaphor at a later date.:
Rotary Signal Emitter by Reuben Sutherland



Even when animation is being more filmic, the ingrained, implicitly spontaneous attributes of the medium lend it to subjectivity.. - eg; how the characters move (the weight & exaggeration), the colours, the drawing style, weight of the line, the flow of the animation, the smoothness of it or choppyness etc etc etc (Film has similar abilities, but they are alot more confined and not as vividly implicit).  EG - 
Les Chiens Isolés by CRCR


Everything I can see From Here by Sam Taylor & Bjorn Aschim