Tag: animation

Global Inspiration: Pakistan

Post author By Linda Mayoux
Post date March 1, 2020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pakistani_animated_films

Pakistani feminist animation and film

Hamida Khatri: Stop Motion

https://hamidakhatri.com/animation

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy

https://variety.com/2019/artisans/awards/sharmeen-obaid-chinoy-sitara-let-girls-dream-pakistan-1203428633/

A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness is a 2015 documentary film directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy about honor killings in Pakistan.

Haroon: Burka Avenger

Tweets by BurkaAvenger

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/burka-avenger-the-pakistani-feminist-superhero/

“Burka Avenger”: Pakistan’s Middle Class Gets a Feminist Cartoon

Other Pakistani animation styles and experiences

SharoomkiSketchbook: Flash animation

Flash 2D animation in a limited palette South Park style.

An example of a successful independent You Tube animator with over 323,000 subscribers and funded from commercial sponsorship and advertising.The credits at the end state that each 8-10 minute video takes 2 weeks of hard work to produce. Though this may be reduced with recent advances in Adobe lipsync software. Funded from advertising and corporate sponsorship.

Urdu cartoons on You Tube by SharoomkiSketchbook. I understand Urdu and can follow most of what is said. I took some time looking at these animations for insights into Pakistani male youth humour. A

The interest in these animations is mainly in the spoken text and amusing satirical storylines about everyday experience of life in Pakistan, particularly for young men students. But the animation is not accessible to non-urdu speaking audiences.

Apart from lip-syncing the dialogue, the animation itself is not very developed. The main visual interest is in the drawing of caricature characters with stereotypical appearance and attitudes. Together with stylised backdrops including blank rooms, countryside, train toilets etc.

A cartoon In Urdu by about the importance of having passion for one’s work. Has a lot of different character styles and ways of abstracting the figure.

Train Journey. A humorous account of the experiences and annoyances of train travel from dubious fellow passengers, sounds of people clearing their throats and spitting, dangers of dropping a mobile phone through the toilet hole and accidentally lifting the curtain on the wrong family compartment and seeing things one shouldn’t.

Biker Boiz. Asking mother for money to buy a motorbike like friends. Mother worried about accident. ‘no keys needed’ and lots of things missing.no problem.

University Hostel. Difference between laid back richer students and excited students from poorer families far away from the city who are naively generous but get laughed at and exploited. One floor serves as common washroom’ and problems of group study with disturbance of mobile phones etc.

Cold/winter vibes Follow up by one of the dubious fellow travellers met on the train. About winter cold season, coughs and colds, lack of hygiene etiquette and heating appliances. Hot abd cold showers that cant be controlled. Need to pile about 10 layers if clothes. Handshakes with very cold hands.

Usman Riaz: Hand-drawn anime

http://manoanimationstudios.com

SiBboy: 3D/CGI

Similar genre and humour. Simple 3D animation, maybe using Blender free 3D software? But less successful with only 218 subscribers at time of linking.

Load shedding – the issue of frequent power cuts in extreme heat and mosquitoes. Juxtaposed with music from advertisements about electric fans, strip lights and other appliances that look good in TV but useless if there is no power. When the light finally cones in again everyone just wants to go to sleep.

Flash Animation

Urdu cartoons on You Tube by SharoomkiSketchbook. I understand Urdu and can follow most of what is said. I took some time looking at these animations for insights into Pakistani male youth humour. A

Tags animation, line styles, Pakistan

3: Contemporary Animation Inspiration - related posts In Process Inspiration: global animation cultures

Global inspiration: Western Europe and North America

Post author By Linda Mayoux
Post date March 1, 2020

Rough collection of animations from You Tube and recommendations I found interesting for my work on wordless animation. Unfortunately some are no longer at their 2020 URL.

http://www.edgeofframe.co.uk/

· https://www.sakugabooru.com/ – for animation inspiration (eastern)

· https://livlily.blogspot.com/ – for animation inspiration (western)

Oona Grimes, murd : pagina quattro, 2020, Courtesy of the artist and Danielle Arnaud gallery, London. 2.28 mins
Fellini’s La Strada [1954] mis-remembered and re-invented… Rapid fire images and action notations create unplanned collisions… Flashes of accidental animation. Gelsomina is a naif from the margins who has fallen through the cracks. She retains her innocence despite being sold to the brutal travelling performer, Zampano. Her drum playing gives her a job and a voice, a starring role loved by children and therefore a means of survival in the ruins of post-war Italy.
https://www.tintypegallery.com/exhibitions/unstilled-life-artist-animations-1980-2020/

Edwina Ashton, Mr Panz at Lake Leman, 2010, Courtesy the artist and Tintype, London, and with thanks to Animate Projects and to Drawing Room, London. 6 mins
Edwina Ashton’s hand-drawn, animated films hinge on the mismatch between our intentions and reality, offering narratives that draw on painful observations of everyday behaviour and individual foibles. The film follows the daily habits and explores the memories of Mr Panz, a removed, particular gentleman elephant living in a hotel on Lake Geneva. His diffidence is matched by the sensitive, almost hesitant style of Ashton’s animated drawings, which include a remarkably economical differentiation of an elephant and a mole.
https://www.tintypegallery.com/exhibitions/unstilled-life-artist-animations-1980-2020/

Markus Vater, Worlds Don’t Come Easy, 2020, Courtesy of the artist. 10 minutes
A tear finds happiness in the first of these short film vignettes packed into ten minutes: a mountain top rescue has an unexpected outcome; a chameleon gets confused matching its own reflection; God loses an eye; dandelion fairies commit mass suicide; a gun barrel proves a sub-optimal choice of home… There’s a dark twist to many of these tales, belied by the jaunty and diverse range of accompanying music, candy colour combinations and absurd humour. Markus Vater recently gave a talk entitled ‘Things that are there because they are not there, like a shadow, or death…’

Documentary narrative

Jonathan Hodgson

Commentary on life and narratives about mental illness, sexuality, cruelty and politics. Some of the animations are driven by voice-over narrative. But his very simple evocative style is carefully adapted to subject matter and uses drawing styles and animation techniques that I could experiment with in my own work.

See more on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/jonathanhodgson/videos

Dogs (1981) A man takes his dog for a walk in the park where they encounter other dogs and their owners. The film explores the relationship between a man and his dog highlighting their contrasting approaches to life. Worldess animation, originally 6mm film.

Menagerie (1984) is a wordless animation about the experience of the animals in living in captivity in London Zoo. The film was used by the charity Zoocheck zoocheck.com/ to help promote their campaign for the protection of wild animals. The film was animated with pencil on paper and frosted cel and shot on 16mm film.

An example of his psychological narratives. The animation is driven by the voice narrative. But the evocative painterly style is something I could experiment with. A gang of kids find a strange house with an overgrown garden where they play. Only once do they meet the man who lives there, a dead-beat alcoholic with a free and easy spirit who welcomes them. The children see him as a romantic character in stark contrast to their neurotically house proud parents.

End of the Death Penalty 2012 spearheading Amnesty International’s campaign. Simple monochrome style with voiceover narrative about one Iranian lawyer’s fight to save juveniles from execution. Uses a combination of still backgrounds and moving figures, ending in photographs of actual people and events.

Surreal narrative

Peter Millard

See movies on: https://vimeo.com/petermillard

Produces short surreal animations in a child-like style with simple line and crayon/wash. Many of his animations depend on use of sound effects and have no words.

David Shrigley

British illustrator who has some of his comic narratives converted into animation. Although he relies a lot on voice narrative, his very direct and simplified cartoon style could be replicated in iPad animation.

http://davidshrigley.com/category/drawing-painting/

https://www.britishcouncil.org/arts/shrigley/animations

Steve Cutts

Humorous animation about the history of ‘Man’ in the world. Complex Flash animation.

Patrick

Amusing animation about tyranny and conformity. Quite complex Flash animation.

3D animation but basic idea could be translated into simple 2D style.

Filmbilder

Baker Mark

Ross Bollinger

Pencilmation simple humorous Flash animation.

See You Tube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/rossbollinger

Miscellaneous

From Google search on 2D and/or Flash animation

Visual abstraction

Oskar Fishinger

Oskar Wilhelm Fischinger (22 June 1900 – 31 January 1967) was a German-American abstract animator, filmmaker, and painter, notable for creating abstract musical animation many decades before the appearance of computer graphics and music videos. He created special effects for Fritz Lang’s 1929 Woman in the Moon, one of the first sci-fi rocket movies, and influenced Disney’s Fantasia. He made over 50 short films and painted around 800 canvases, many of which are in museums, galleries, and collections worldwide. Among his film works is Motion Painting No. 1 (1947).

Ian Gouldstone

Experimental conceptual animations using a range of techniques.

https://iangouldstone.com/

Two forms, a red ball and a yellow stick, rest in the silent darkness, then hover and morph with sound effects. Can I replicate this through a blended foreground in procreate to give atmosphere? Certainly later in Adobe Animate.

Use of front mask to contain and emphasise the motion. This could be done as a foreground in Procreate or added later in Adobe Animate.

Experimental film

Websites:

http://ubu.com/
vimeo
You Tube
https://www.sakugabooru.com/ – for animation inspiration (eastern)
https://livlily.blogspot.com/ – for animation inspiration (western)

Parada, Jerzy Kucia, 1986

http://ubu.com/film/kucia_parada.html

A very evocative Polish black and white film animation about Harvest.

Uses variations in abstract framing, focus and timing to evoke memories and reflections.

Film grain, light and shadow plays evokes the time that has passed. Subtle monochrome colour shifts and selective colouring eg shirts of harvesters as the main things remembered.

Dreamlike reflections are produced through eg drawn/overlaid animation of birds.

Music and sound effects re-inforce the feelings of dreamy nostalgia, noise or threat.

Con Leche, Jordan Wolson, 2009

http://ubu.com/film/wolfson_leche.html

Animated cartoon of Diet Coke bottles filled up with milk. Shot on video in Detroit Michigan, the characters walk through the desolate streets in real video sometimes in groups and sometimes alone. The image wobbles, flips and turns inside of the video frame.

A commercial voice over actress speaks from texts collected from the internet referencing identity, technology, memory and mortality most of which are personal accounts spoken in first person. Every few minutes Jordan Wolfson interrupts her giving basic formal instructions and adjustments distorting her tone, volume, and “sex”.

Wimshurst selection

Confusion Through Sand

Kairos Trailer by Studio La Cache

Film de Cube – Ecole la Poudrière

Good Books Metamorphosis

Delta Sleep – Afterimage music Video

Whooosh

Wednesday with Goddard

ROXY x Masanobu

Zed: Death Mark by Ryan Woodward

EAUX FORTES

Split

Strong

Snowman wordless.

website: http://www.edwardmonkton.com

Google images

Pig of Happiness

Love Monkey

The Lady and the Chocolate

Work with the Samaritans

Cloud of Loveliness

Beautiful thoughts

The Coffee of Joy

Let Us Be Lovely

Sheep of Destiny

Global Inspiration: Africa

Post author By Linda Mayoux
Post date March 1, 2020

!! Rough Notes. To be further developed and updated. Fast evolving industry.

Ng’endo Mukii

William Kentridge

You Tube animation 2020

Main topics:

Cartoons for childrens’ education
African heritage and history
Development issues

Features of You Tube animations 2020

Puppetlike stylised 2D animation. Seems to be done in Flash?
Some beautiful colourful, flat cut-out illustration, with characteristically African use of angular tapered line and geometric shapes and shading.
Very little realistic character movement apart, mostly stiff limb movements and head turns. Much of the animation is produced by camera zooming and panning on still illustrations, sometimes multicamera, that may have some minor looped movement like hair or breathing.
Some Strong gender stereotyped differentiation between women and men.
Heavily dependent on crudely lip-synced dialogue.

Key Sources

Africa Angles To Be Animation’s Next Global Hotspot, Rob Salkowitz, Forbes Magazine, Jun 26, 2020

Why Africa’s animation scene is booming Vivienne Nunis & Sarah Treanor BBC News, 14 October 2020

African Animation Network

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation_industry_in_South_Africa

Storytelling through pages of a book from Guinea. These illusrations are beautiful though.

Kwame. Kenyan animation of Beauty and the Beast style animation. Bright brilliant colours. Most of the animation is like 2D puppet cutouts. Angular sex-stereotyped figures – big angular brawny men and small coy curvy women that flutter their eyelids and flirt. Uses light colour angular taper brush line art on dark skin shapes. A lot of camera moves. Comments from You Tube Kenya men and women viewers are very positive as authentically Kenyan.

Cosmic Xo from Ghana. Very short really funny – if it did not have a lot of truth – satire on the education system. Very simple direct animation style that is very dynamic, expressive and effective with just outline and shapes with sound effects and dialogue.

Ajebo toons from Nigeria. Cartoons for children. Has really stylised amusing characters – including girls and women who are strong and non-stereotyped.

By Home Team History an (unnamed) group of US? animators working on African history. The story of the woman founder of Burkina Faso. Disney style with stiff cut-out flat animation and US voiceover. Big hunky men and over-sexualised female heroine. A lot of camera work and still images. But many positive comments about African cartoon better than Disney and African women’s empowerment before colonialism.

By Home Team History. Similar Disney style, with huge chunky soldiers but less sexualised Queen.

A much too long drawn out story with sexist stereotyped characters. The animation is very crude and unconvincing dialogue – even the walk cycles look like figures sliding across the screen. But the childlike figure cutouts and stiltedness has a certain charm, and points to what can be achieved with very flat scenes, lots of looped animation and camera panning moves. Looks like it was done in Flash.

August House US. animation of traditional folk tales. Very colourful black line illustrations with interesting framing and square format. Character movement is used sparingly but quite fluid.

Raymond Okai, Nigerian animator.

Raymond Okai animation of Anansi story. Mostly a series of well composed, coloured stills with limited figure animation.

Martyna Majewska, a Polish animator.

William Kentridge

Tags Africa, animation, animation styles

2: Creative Translation - related posts External Voices In Process

External Voices: empowerment animations

Post author By Linda Mayoux
Post date February 20, 2020

Women’s empowerment

Illustrations

See Google searches on:

From agriprofocus

Animations

You Tube and Google searches on ‘women’s empowerment animations’ and ‘gender equality animations. Some of the You Tube viewer comments are also quite revealing – and shocking.

Amusing short textless animation for Social Europe about the inequalities in recognition of skills between women and men.

An overview for Trocaire of meanings and patterns of women’s participation and empowerment in DRC, Nicaragua and India. Shows variety between cultures. Argues we must address underlying inequalities between all women and all men, and between citizens and states. Voiceover and text are both in English, and seems to be aimed more at promotion to donor publics, rather than women in communities on the ground.

A comparison of the lives of two girls: Maritas who is the daughter of a teacher and gets secondary education and sex education and trains as a doctor. She is able to plan family and contribute to family and community. Cristina is from a poor family, her mother dies in childbirth, her father remarries and she is married off at 13 to a man three times her age. She contracts HIV and has a series of unplanned children. Argues Cristina should have had the chance to decide. Voiceover and text with supporting statistics and arguments in English.

Video for Pacific Community on causes of domestic violence in sex differences and stereotypes that are internalised by girls and boys from being very young, then translated into low pay and work opportunities reinforcing men’s feeling of power, leading then to violence. This is reinforced by the attitudes of church and police. Voiceover and simple text in English.

A Sketchnote cartoon by USAID. Apart from You Tube and USAID, it is not clear who the audience is.

Thinking Beyond Borders: India and US published May 2012
Through questions and stories from around the world, Thinking Beyond Borders gap year students examine the meaning of empowerment and it’s potential to create social impact.

Animation in Hindi about the behefits of womem gettingva loan to buy a cow. Hanna Barbara productions.nwholecseries of Meena stories. Meena’s oarehts are un debt and her father says she will havevto be taken outbif school. They gobtobthe jarket to get a loan from a shopkeeper. Meena notices thaf thecshopkeeoer has put the loan for 18 years and not 8 years – cheating her father outbif a lot of money. Hecsays he wants her to carrybon a5 school. Her teachers suggesr they get a loan and buy a cow. And everything ends happily. Meena gets a bike.

About UN commitment to increasing women’s agency to control her life. Argues that the way to address global poverty is to empowerment women. All in English with lots of text. Promotion of a Christian training programme called ‘Imagine’, Empowerment Workshop.

An8mation witg English text about eatly marriage,