Author: Linda Mayoux

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Ng’endo Mukii

“I propose the use of animation in relation to indigenous people as a means of just telling you that these people are human. Animation is not related to the indexical image. It is able to emulate the human emotion and experiences even if to a fantastical level…since the artist’s hand is very obviously involved in bringing these images to life, animation is not pretending to be alive as is the case with taxidermy. Unlike ethnography, it is not tied to a singular story or to any absolute truths. It allows multiple interpretations of the human experience”

“Animation can be used to emulate something that is intangible, something that is humanity. It is our soul, unlimited by the preconceptions and expectations of the ‘real’ image.“

A distinctive African feminist voice from Kenya. Highly skilled animator combining work in different physical media: cut-out puppets, drawing and charcoal, photography and video that are then composited and manipulated digitally. The fluid movement comes from the video. The other media are more static with puppet manipulation and boil effects.

Issues:

– Uses a lot of dialogue and text in English
– Many of the concerns are from urban areas. How far do these resonate with poor rural areas, or represent their voices?

Argues that animation can make real people alive. Has the full movie in the middle. Banyavanga Nyainyaina. Death, destruction, disease danger. Jim Chuchu’s film ‘African Stories’ is shot in black and white to separate African stories from the colour and romanticism of the ‘African story’.

Documentary animation technique

Real people do not like to talk on camera, so she animates them in their real words.

Textless NGO shorts

Short film made for Plan International in celebration of International Day of The Girl. Part of the Girls take Over Campaign.
Mobile phone animation. Wanjiku seeks a better future, far from home. Commissioned by HAART Kenya.

Commissioned political/development documentaries

Uses digital compositing of multiple media. But reliant on English text commentary.

This migrant business is particularly effective visually – the combination of very gritty drawings and manipulated video effects, overlaying newspaper clippings and use of ‘binocular framing. Though the commentary is very direct and not so clear on what can be done by the viewer.

A short digital puppet animation with commentary in poetic rhyme, based on a true story of human trafficking, commissioned by HAART Kenya. At the end video clips are added for realism.
Commissioned project for the Danish Refugee Council and RMMS in Nairobi. This Migrant Business, shows the systems that exist that enable and exploit African migrants seeking better lives in the Middle East and Europe. The system creates a cyclic force that ensures that demand and supply will continue to to feed into each other, indefinitely. This is a lucrative trade with vulnerable people as its currency. Really effective digital compositing of photography overlay, rotoscoping and puppet animation of drawing/painting.

Yellow Fever

Rotoscoped paint over.

https://vimeo.com/ngendo

Stencil effects

Ahwak Runaway This film was made at the Ölands folkhögskola last week, during a two-day animation workshop. The students chose Kanye West’s #Runaway film to work with. We selected a sequence and each student was given one second (25 frames) to reinterpret in any way they wanted. Most of them printed out the frames, some worked digitally. They began drawing, painting, gluing flowers, and even foil paper onto their frames, playing with masks and blending modes and layering in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects, and worked late into the night to create this beautiful piece. As we were putting the frames together the next afternoon, trying to beat the deadline, we were asking ourselves what to do with the sound. At the same moment, one of the girls began to play a song from #Syria on her phone; Jamal Slitine’s Hobbi Lak.

https://vimeo.com/ngendo

Vimeo channel

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3: Contemporary Animation Inspiration - related posts In Process Inspiration 3: PigTales, India Inspiration 4: The Airplane, Pakistan Inspiration: 15 contemporary animators

Peter Millard

https://vimeo.com/petermillard

Peter Millard, Since the Better (2015) This animation starts with a blank screen that shimmers with slight variations in white/cream while a shrill cild/female/robot/alien? distorted voice sings a vaguely familiar melody. This creates tension and anticipation waiting for something to happen. Then the voice suddenly changes to the more familiar deep male opera voice as the childlike simple pencil drawing of a man’s face moves slowly at the same speed and horizontal position across the screen. This drawing ‘boils’ with slight apparently random changes in the drawing as a whole – size and shape of the face circle, eyes and pupils and length of the line of the mouth. This creates a real poignancy of sameness, thinness of the line and blank expression in contrast to the heavy emotion of the ‘we will overcome’ vincera aria that also references the masculinity and tribalism of football matches as well as the operatic strength itself. The title ‘since the better’ then adds a layer of loss and past ‘glory’.

https://lectureinprogress.com/journal/peter-millard

Peter Millard is a London-based animator. He creates his absurdist animations on paper (all recycled) with oil bar and paint. Then he scans the large images in with a large scanner, sizes them up in After Effects before using Premiere Pro to edit. 

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3: Contemporary Animation Inspiration - related posts 4: Animation Strategies: related posts In Process Inspiration 3: PigTales, India Inspiration: 15 contemporary animators Inspiration: global animation cultures Visual Storytelling

Gottfried Mentor

Gottfried Mentor is known for his powerful tragi-comic social/political allegorical animations using CGI animals. These are very expressive in terms of visuals, dramatic narrative and sound effects/music and fully comprehensible without text. He works with the German animation studio Film Bilder.

How has Gottfried Mentor influenced my own animation?

His tragi-comic narrative style, and use of bright colours and anthropomorphic animals has influenced my animation in Pig Tales, India.

https://viscom4dev.zemniimages.info/portfolio/2-pig-tales-india
Oh Sheep! 2012. Two flocks of sheep are searching for companionship. But their shepherds, being at odds with each other, do everything to keep them separated. The final solution that satisfies them through making them look different leads all the sheep to all fight and kill each other.

!! This is the most interesting. Do detailed narrative analysis of why this is so funny and serous at the same time. Use of dramatic timing, sound, framing, similarities and differences – and lots of blood.

Head Up 2013. Story of an old goat who tries to teach a very young one to behave ‘properly’. But when they get to a big crevasse, it is the young goats who takes risks and takes a creative approach who can get across. The old goat learns that he does not know everything and needs to be flexible to learn also from younger kids.
Lambs (2013). The lamb’s parents are shocked, because their little lamb doesn’t sound like the other sheep: It’s making „moo” instead of „baa” and insists on having coloured pom-poms instead of plain white fleece. But they finally see that all the other young lambs are defying convention with new fashion.

More about Filmbilder animations. See also Andreas Hykade.

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David Lynch

Six Figures Getting Sick (Six Times)[edit]

Main article: Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)

Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) (1966). Originally untitled, “Six Men Getting Sick” is a one-minute color animated film that consists of six loops shown on a sculptured screen of three human-shaped figures (based on casts of Lynch’s own head as done by Jack Fisk) that intentionally distorted the film[1]. Lynch’s animation depicted six people getting sick: their stomachs grew and their heads would catch fire.

Lynch made this film during his second year at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. The school held an experimental painting and sculpture exhibit every year and Lynch entered his work in the Spring of 1966. The animated film was shown on “an Erector-set rig on top of the projector so that it would take the finished film through the projector, way up to the ceiling and then back down, so the film would keep going continuously in a loop. And then I hung the sculptured screen and moved the projector back till just what I wanted was on the screen and the rest fell back far enough to disappear” (Chris Rodley, editor of Lynch on Lynch). Lynch showed the whole thing with the sound of a siren as accompaniment. The film cost $200 and was not intended to have any successors. It was merely an experiment on Lynch’s part because he wanted to see his paintings move.

The Alphabet

The Alphabet (1968) combines animation and live action and goes for four minutes. It has a simple narrative structure relating a symbolically rendered expression of a fear of learning. The idea for The Alphabet came from Lynch’s wife, Peggy Lentz, a painter whose niece, according to Lynch in Chris Rodley’s Lynch on Lynch book, “was having a bad dream one night and was saying the alphabet in her sleep in a tormented way. So that’s sort of what started The Alphabet going.” Based on the merits of this short film, Lynch was awarded an American Film Institute production grant and became a minor celebrity.

Ghost of Love
Moby ‘Shot in the Back of the Head’
I touch a Red Button Man
Six Figures Getting Sick 1966
The Grandmother (1970, 33 minutes).

The short film combines live action and animation. The story revolves around a boy who grows a grandmother to escape neglect and abuse from his parents. It is mostly silent with only occasional vocal outbursts of gibberish and soundtrack cues used to convey story.

The music in the film was provided by a local group known as Tractor, and marked the first time Lynch would work with Alan Splet, who was recommended to the filmmaker by the soundman of The Alphabet. Initially, Lynch and Splet intended to use a collection of sound effects records for the film, but after going through them all they found that none of them were useful. So, Lynch and Splet took sixty-three days to make and record their own sound effects.

The Cowboy and the Frenchman (1988, 26 minutes)

Slapstick, made for French television as part of the series The French as Seen by… by French magazine Figaro. It stars Harry Dean Stanton, Frederic Golchan and Jack Nance.

Lumière: Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (1996, 52 seconds)

Originally included as a segment in the 1995 film Lumière et compagnie. Forty acclaimed directors created works using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière brothers.

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Ryan Larkin

Ryan Larkin (July 31, 1943 – February 14, 2007) was a Canadian animator, artist, and sculptor who rose to fame with the psychedelic Oscar-nominated short Walking (1968) and the acclaimed Street Musique (1972). He was the subject of the Oscar-winning film Ryan.

Larkin had idolized his older brother, Ronald, whom he described as “the epitome of cool”.[1] In 1958, at the age of fifteen, Larkin witnessed his brother die in a boating accident and, because he had never learned to swim, was unable to save him.[1] Larkin stated that his brother’s death deeply scarred him.[1]

Larkin attended the Art School of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts where he studied under Arthur Lismer (a member of the Group of Seven) before starting to work at the National Film Board of Canada in 1962.[1]

Larkin was bisexual, having had sexual and romantic relationships with both women and men during his lifetime.

At the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), Larkin learned animation techniques from the ground-breaking and award-winning animator Norman McLaren. He made two acclaimed short animated films, Syrinx (1965) and Cityscape (1966), before going on to create Walking (1969). Walking was nominated for an Academy Award in 1970 in the category Best Short Subject, Cartoon, but lost to It’s Tough to Be a Bird by director Ward Kimball. Syrinx won many international awards.[1] He went on to direct the award-winning short Street Musique, which premiered in 1972 and would be the last of his works, finished during his lifetime.

He also contributed art work and animation effects to NFB films including the 1974 feature Running Time, directed by Mort Ransen, in which Larkin also played three bit parts.

In 1975, the NFB commissioned Larkin to create a mural for the entrance foyer at its Montreal headquarters.[1][3] He delivered a piece featuring an adolescent boy with an erection, which the NFB removed from viewing.[3]

Larkin left the NFB in 1978.

Ryan, the film[edit]

In later years Larkin was plagued by a downward spiral of drug abuse, alcoholism and homelessness. By this time estranged from his parents, he had developed a routine of spending his nights at the Old Brewery Mission, and his days panhandling at Schwartz’s, eating at Mondo Frites, drinking beer at the Copacabana bar, or reading a book in the lounge at Welch’s used book store.[1] Towards the end of his life, he found himself back in the limelight when a 14-minute computer-animated documentary on his life, Ryan, by Canadian animator Chris Landreth, won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film and screened to acclaim at film festivals throughout the world. Alter Egos (2004), directed by Laurence Green, is a documentary about the making of Ryan that includes interviews with both Larkin and Chris Landreth as well as with various people who knew Larkin at the peak of his own success.[4]

Later work[edit]

As of 2002, Larkin had been working with composer Laurie Gordon of the band Chiwawa on a new animated film entitled Spare Change, his first auteur film since working at the NFB. Together they founded Spare Change Productions and sought funding for the film through Gordon’s production company MusiVision. They received grants from Bravo!FACT, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and SODEC but were still short of financing. MusiVision and the National Film Board of Canada went into co-production only after Larkin’s death. Spare Change premiered at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema on October 9, 2008. Spare Change features three CHIWAWA tunes for which Larkin created storyboards and animation, including Do It For Me from the 2005 release Bright. A new CHIWAWA album Bus Stop Chinese Buffet will include tracks from Spare Change including Overcast Skies whose lyrics were penned by Larkin, and part of a group of Larkin poems – Beat Poems For Grandkids.[5]

MusiVision also produced the documentary film Ryan’s Renaissance for CTV Television about Ryan’s final years, his return to creating art, and Spare Change. It was produced by Gordon and Nicola Zavaglia.[6] Larkin, who had panhandled outside Montreal Schwartz’s deli, appeared briefly in a documentary on the famous restaurant, Chez Schwartz, directed by Garry Beitel [7]

In December 2006, Larkin created three five-second bumpers for MTV in Canada, a preview to Spare Change. Each frame was hand-drawn. It was the first professional work he had executed in over 20 years.[8] Larkin said that he had given up some bad habits, including drinking, in order to better focus on his animating career.[9]

Death[edit]

Larkin died in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec on February 14, 2007 from lung cancer which had spread to his brain.[10]

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William Kentridge

William Kentridge (born 28 April 1955) is a South African artist best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films. These are constructed by filming a drawing, making erasures and changes, and filming it again. He continues this process meticulously, giving each change to the drawing a quarter of a second to two seconds’ screen time. A single drawing will be altered and filmed this way until the end of a scene. These palimpsest-like drawings are later displayed along with the films as finished pieces of art.

See more information on Tate Gallery website

Animator William Kentridge animates with charcoal on paper, leaving traces of
each drawing behind as the movement progresses. These traces lend a depth to
the image as well as the time of the animation. They also serve a narrative
purpose. Kentridge’s early animations were copied from early Soviet films, placed
in the Apartheid, South African context. Apartheid was a system predicated on
the exploitation of black South African labour in the interests of white South
African society. Kentridge uses his animation to express his feelings of guilt for
being a white male with inherited wealth and status as well as his personal
fantasies of acceptance and forgiveness. The layered shadows of previous
drawings that haunt his animations are ghostly reminders of the time that each
drawing took to make. Animation here serves as a kind of penance.

Working process

Examples of charcoal animation

Evocative charcoal drawings of Johannesburg. Has detailed historical overview, but the images could speak for themselves.

See also performance from Whitechapel Gallery

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Andreas Hykade

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Jonathon Hodgson

Jonathan Hodgson is an internationally renowned animation director based in London, he has twice won BAFTAs for Best Short British Animation in 2000 and 2019. He studied animation at Liverpool Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art. After spending 25 years directing commercials he moved to academia, setting up and leading the Animation degree at Middlesex University where he combines teaching with making personal films. He is the animation director of Wonderland: The Trouble with Love and Sex, the first full length animated documentary on British TV. 

Interview: Jonathan Hodgson on his latest film ‘Roughhouse’ – a raw portrayal of bullying

https://www.awn.com/animationworld/animators-unearthed-jonathan-hodgson

https://www.spannerfilms.net/people/jonathan_hodgson

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Yoni Goodman

You Tube comments are interesting.
https://www.yonigoodman.co.il/closedzone.html
https://www.yonigoodman.co.il/thegift.html
https://www.yonigoodman.co.il/lamplighter.html
First prize winner of 2010 Maratoon competition. The goal of the competition was to create an animation short in 5 days using the words “gong”, “tail” and “extortion”

Goodman began his career as an illustrator and graphic designer, working for two of Israel’s major newspapers, Maariv and Haaretz. In 1998, he studied at the department of visual communication in Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, majoring in animation. After his graduation in 2002, Yoni worked as a freelance animator and illustrator, working on commercials, short films and clips, as well as teaching animation in the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.

In 2004, Yoni worked as an animation director for Ari Folman‘s documentary series The material that love is made of. Folman and Goodman’s collaboration continued with Yoni as an animation director in Ari Folman’s acclaimed film Waltz with Bashir. Goodman also developed the Adobe Flash Cutout technique for the film.

In 2009, he made several short films for human rights organizations, notably the short film Closed Zone, protesting against the Gaza blockade.[1][2] Yoni also worked as an animation director in the short film The Gift,[3] directed by Ari Mark.

In 2011 Yoni began his work as Animation Director for Ari Folman’s feature The Congress (2013), based on a novel by Stanislaw Lem.

He also collaborated on a Global Health Media project about Healthcare literacy, notably on[4]

Yoni Goodman currently lives in Israel with his wife and 3 children.

Filmography[edit]

  • Waltz with Bashir (2008, animation director)
  • Closed Zone (2009, director)
  • The Gift (2010, animator)(short film)
  • “The Story of Cholera” (2011, director)(short film)
  • The Congress (2013)
  • “The Story of Ebola”
  • “The Story of Coronavirus”
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In Process

Howard Wimshurst feedback

<@!699577798049923083> As you have said, i am someone who can help you with elevating the technical standard of your work, so that is what I will try to do here.

for Mary’s story
i can see quite a big disconnect between the drawing style of the face – which I understand has been drawn by someone else – and the drawings to the right of that face.

Maybe this is a good thing or maybe you want to unify them under a consistent style. You could perhaps commission the artist to make more sketches like that one? Or you could meet in the middle of the two styles?
Are you basing the styles of the people on the right on other community member’s drawing styles too?

In part 2 i notice the perspective of the landscape. The house currently sits on the horizon. In perspective this would suggest that the house is on the edge of a cliff or is a giant looming on the horizon. Either way, that there is no land behind the house. typically we “cut through” the house, or any object, with the horizon line.

Currently your lines have no pressure input for size or opacity. Whilst this is not wrong, it does reduce the amount of information you can communicate in a line. lines with pressure input feel more organic and give the artist greater control and ability to express with the line.

The drawing process of them forming is quite a nice touch. It might be a little controversial – one could see it as a bit of a gimmick or could see it as a callback to Windsor McCay. I wouldn’t dwell too long on the drawing part of it though, I would just have them form over half a second or less, then the rest be focussed on animation. The wonderful thing about animation is the illusion being played right in front of you. You can see that they are drawn imitations, but you can’t help empathizing with them.

I really love the kind of split screen / overlay of the close up and the long establishing shot. it communicates well that the character is recalling a memory or thought. I think after a bit of time spent on that composition, the audience would understand that and you can move away from that composition, having already established that this is in the character’s memory.

About the overlay of the face –
The best example i can think of with these kind of overlays is in Apocalypse now 1979. I’ll post a scene in <#695628377884721174> i can only find the intro montage on YouTube but there are more overlay montage sequences in other parts of the film like the riverboat making its way up river. very different thematically from yours but you can extract the techniques.

In the shot which follows this one, you could take the face out, and have something like a watercolour fade vignette around the frame, which would still communicate it as being imaginary or from memory. That would give you back the full frame to play with.

Disney’s Bambi has some unfathomably beautiful production artwork – the whole film is a piece of art – like it belongs in a gallery

<@!699577798049923083> There is a great animated mini-documentary I think you would like called A is for Autism 1992 by Tim Webb. A real landmark achievement of animation. It assembles hundreds of drawings made by autistic young people, then Tim Webb (and I think a small team of animators?) fleshed out the drawings into frame by frame animation. It is quite extraordinary as the faithful interpretation of the drawings give a window into the special minds of these autistic children. The way he interprets the interview soundbites is just fantastic. I’m sure he has done other projects you would like too.
https://youtu.be/cPR2H4Zd8bI

insert images