Category: 3: Contemporary Animation Inspiration – related posts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pakistani_animated_films
Pakistani feminist animation and film
Hamida Khatri: Stop Motion
Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy
Haroon: Burka Avenger
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.
Usman Riaz: Hand-drawn anime
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.
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
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.
https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/108633
Studio Ghibli
Isao Takahata
To feel the reality within the drawings rather that think the drawings themselves are real.
Grave of the Fireflies: distancing mechnisms
Hayao Miyazaki
Yoshifumo Kondo
Watanabe
Akira
You Tube
Post on manga styles. Importance of drama and perspective – eg cropping of photo cartoons
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.
· https://www.sakugabooru.com/ – for animation inspiration (eastern)
· https://livlily.blogspot.com/ – for animation inspiration (western)
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’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/
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
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.
Steve Cutts
Humorous animation about the history of ‘Man’ in the world. Complex Flash animation.
Patrick
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.
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)
See also scratch video
- Death Valley Days: Secret Love by Gorilla Tapes 1984 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDQM_UJ0Tm0
- Absence of Satan, George Barber, 1985 http://www.georgebarber.net/video_pages/satan.htm Comply, Emergency Broadcast Network, 1993 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhZ_ UygGnN0
- Martin Arnold Passage à l’acte (1993) http://dangerousminds.net/comments/watch_a_mind_bending_video_manipulation_of_to_ kill_a_mockingbird
- A diary/travelogue film shot on super 16mm with differing frame rate transfers overlaid upon one another. – https://vimeo.com/229481476
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
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
See also Lucas Ragazoni
Czechoslovakia
Czech animators are considered pioneers in film animation. Czech animation began in 1920s. Most early animation was commercial and some children’s animation. , but there were some experimental films such as Myšlenka hledající světlo (Thought looking for light).
The “Golden Era” dates between 1950s and 1980s. The roots of Czech puppet animation began in the mid-1940s when puppet theater operators, Eduard Hofman and Jiří Trnka founded the Poetic animation school, Bratři v triku. Czech animators include Jiří Trnka, Karel Zeman, Břetislav Pojar, or Jiří Barta. Czech animators have employed Cutout animation, Puppet animation and Clay animation. Animated films were funded by the State during Communism but were censored and many projects couldn’t be realised as a result.
3D animation is seldom used due to lack of finances and trained 3D animators. This led to downturn in the years after 1989.
Film industry was privatised after 1989 which resulted in lack of finances for animated films and limitation of films produced by Czech animators. On the other hand, there are still successful films made. Jan Švankmajer made films such as Faust. Other successful animators include Aurel Klimt, Pavel Koutský or Michaela Pavlátová.
- 1945: Dědek zasadil řepu (“My grandfather planted a beet”)
- 1946: Zvířátka to petrovstí (“Animals and bandits”)
- 1946: Pérak SS (“The jumper and the men of the SS”)
- 1946: Dárek (“The Gift”)
- 1947: Špalíček (“The Czech Year”)
- 1949: Román s basou (“Story of a bass”)
- 1949: Čertuv mlýn (“The Devil’s Mill”)
- 1949: Arie prerie (“Song of the Prairie”)
- 1949: Císařův Slavík (“The Emperor’s Nightingale”)
Jiří Trnka
Jiří Trnka was a part of Puppet Films Studio. He made 3 full-length and some short animated films in the end of 1940s and was one of the most productive animators in the world. His films in the 1950s such as Prince Bayaya, Old Czech Legends or A Midsummer Night’s Dream earned him nickname “the Walt Disney of Eastern Europe”. His final film The Hand was declared the 5th best animated picture in history.
Jan Svankmajer
Břetislav Pojar
His debut film One Glass Too Much was successful worldwide.
Karel Zeman
Zeman’s films mixed animation with live-action actors. His films drew inspiration from novels Jules Verne.[10] His The Fabulous World of Jules Verne is considered the most successful Czech film ever made
Second animation studio was based in Zlín. Karel Zeman and Hermína Týrlová are considered the main figures of Zlín animators. Týrlová earned fame for her children’s films. Her most famous film is The Revolt of Toys. .
Estonia
Estonian animation tradition dates back to the 1930s when the first experimental films were made. The only surviving short film from the era is Kutsu-Juku seiklusi (Adventures of Juku the dog) (1931). After the Great Depression, World War II, and Soviet Occupation interrupted its development, Estonian animation was reborn in 1958. Elbert Tuganov founded a puppet film division Nukufilm in Tallinnfilm Studio. The first film was titled Peetrikese unenägu based on a Danish writer Jens Sigsgaard’s children story Palle alene i verden. Joonisfilm a traditional cell animation division of Tallinnfilm was founded by Rein Raamat in 1971. Films like Põld (1978), nominee for Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival in 1979; Lend (1973), the winner of Special Jury Award at the Zagreb World Festival of Animated Films; the Suur Tõll (1980), 2nd place at Ottawa International Animation Festival in 1982 and Põrgu (Hell) (1983), the winner of FIPRESCI Prize and Special Jury Award at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival made Raamat the first internationally recognized Estonian animation director.
Since Estonia regained independence in 1991 Nukufilm and Joonisfilm continued to operate as private companies owned by the filmmakers. During the era internationally most successful Estonian animation director has been Priit Pärn[1] the winner of Grand Prize at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 1998 for Porgandite öö (Night of the Carrots). Crocodile by Kaspar Jancis was selected to be the Best European Anima film at Cartoon d’or 2010. The other film of Jancis “Villa Antropoff” was awarded with the Special Mention on Scancroma Festival[
The country’s animation industry got under way in the 1950s, under the aegis of the state film studio. The first directors were amateurs: trained biologists or wannabe architects who learned to animate by improvising in the studio. Steady funding from above gave them the leeway to experiment. On the other hand, scripts had to be approved by Moscow mandarins, who tended to ban films they didn’t like and take credit for those they did. Censorship fostered a flair for coded satire among many Estonian filmmakers. The country’s location on the fringes of the USSR let them get away with more than artists closer to Moscow, while also putting them in touch with western culture through such media as Finnish television.
Pars Nails animation political satire scenes of seduction and violent confrontation are acted out by two pliable nails. The risqué subject matter troubled Moscow, but it was the virtuosic manipulation of the props that caught my eye. You wouldn’t guess that the nails are made of rubber. https://www.awn.com/animationworld/keep-it-motion-classic-animation-revisited-nail
Rein Ramaat
Avo paistik
Priit Parn
Commercially and creatively, however, it has been eclipsed by cel animation. This is mostly due to the output of one man: Priit Pärn. Starting out as a caricaturist, Pärn flourished as an animator in the dying days of the USSR, by which time his art was stretching the censorship laws to breaking point. The characters in Triangle (1982) and Breakfast on the Grass (1988) are ugly and poor, and dream of being elsewhere. The films enliven their dreary routines with garish colours and a fiendish comic timing. Social realism this ain’t.
After the USSR crumbled, Pärn turned his sharp sights on everything from capitalism to movies themselves. His masterpiece 1895 (1995) marked the centenary of cinema by skewering it, arguing that it has warped and falsified our historical memory. A grim, absurd humour permeates all his films, saving them from mere political didacticism. The retrospective of his works in Hiroshima was enhanced by the presence of the man himself, who came in a Je Suis Pärn T-shirt and spent the week casually flouting the decorum of our Japanese hosts.
Pärn’s films are hugely charismatic, his crude visuals easy enough to imitate, and almost every major Estonian animator in his wake bears his influence. This was very apparent at the festival, where I watched his shorts and those of his acolytes Ülo Pikkov and Priit Tender in quick succession. In their positions as teachers at Estonia’s sole animation school, Pärn and his wife Olga continue to train the country’s youngest artists – including foreigners who have moved there to learn from them. The Pärn style has gone global, impressing itself on everything from Rugrats to a whole generation of Japanese filmmakers (just watch Nihei Sarina’s Small People with Hats, 2015).
!! Rough Notes. To be further developed and updated. Fast evolving industry.
Ng’endo Mukii
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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation_industry_in_South_Africa
William Kentridge