Category: 4: Animation Strategies: related posts
Genndy Tartakovsky (born 1970) is a Russian-American animator, director, producer, screenwriter, storyboard artist, comic book writer and artist. He is the creator of the animated television series Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and Primal on Cartoon Network‘s Adult Swim.
He co-created Sym-Bionic Titan and directed the animated Hotel Transylvaniafilm series. Additionally, Tartakovsky was a pivotal crew member of The Powerpuff Girls and worked on other series such as 2 Stupid Dogs and Batman: The Animated Series.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genndy_Tartakovsky
Yuri Norstein was born to a Jewish family in the village of Andreyevka, Penza Oblast, during his parents’ World War II evacuation. He grew up in the Maryina Roshcha suburb of Moscow. After studying at an art school, Norstein initially found work at a furniture factory. Then he finished a two-year animation course and found employment at studio Soyuzmultfilm in 1961. The first film that he participated in as an animator was Who Said “Meow”? (1962).
After working as an animation artist in some fifty films, Norstein got the chance to direct his own. In 1968 he debuted with 25th October, the First Day, sharing directorial credit with Arkadiy Tyurin. The film used the artwork of 1920s-era Soviet artists Nathan Altman and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin.
The next film in which he had a major role was The Battle of Kerzhenets (1971), a co-production with Russian animation director Ivan Ivanov-Vano under whose direction Norstein had earlier worked on 1969’s Times of the Year.
Throughout the 1970s Norstein continued to work as an animator in many films (a more complete list can be found at IMDb), and also directed several. As the decade progressed his animation style became ever more sophisticated, looking less like flat cut-outs and more like smoothly-moving paintings or sophisticated pencil sketches. His most famous film is Tale of Tales, a non-linear, autobiographical film about growing up in the postwar Soviet world.[3]
Norstein uses a special technique in his animation, involving multiple glass planes to give his animation a three-dimensional look. The camera is placed at the top looking down on a series of glass planes about a meter deep (one every 25–30 cm). The individual glass planes can move horizontally as well as toward and away from the camera (to give the effect of a character moving closer or further away).[4]
For many years he has collaborated with his wife, the artist Francheska Yarbusova, and the cinematographer Aleksandr Zhukovskiy.
Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Norstein’s animations were showered with both state and international awards. Then, in a bitter twist of irony, he was fired from Soyuzmultfilm in 1985 for working too slowly on his latest film, a (presumably) feature-length adaptation of Gogol‘s Overcoat. By that time he had been working on it with his usual small team of three people for two years and had finished ten minutes.
In April 1993, Norstein and three other leading animators (Fyodor Khitruk, Andrey Khrzhanovsky, and Edward Nazarov) founded the Animation School and Studio (SHAR Studio) in Russia. The Russian Cinema Committee is among the share-holders of the studio.
To this day, Norstein is still working on The Overcoat – his ardent perfectionism has earned him the nickname “The Golden Snail”. The project has met numerous financial troubles and false starts, but Norstein has said that it currently has reliable funding from several sources, both from within and outside of Russia. At least 25 minutes have been completed to date. A couple of short, low-resolution clips have been made available to the public.[5][6] The first 20 minutes of the film have also toured among various exhibits of Norstein’s work in Russian museums. The full film is expected to be 65 minutes long.
Norstein wrote an essay for a book by Giannalberto Bendazzi about the pinscreen animator Alexander Alexeïeff titled Alexeïeff: Itinerary of a Master.
In 2005, he released a Russian-language book titled Snow on the Grass. Fragments of a Book. Lectures about the Art of Animation, featuring a number of lectures that he gave about the art of animation. That same year, he was invited as “guest animator” to work on Kihachirō Kawamoto‘s puppet-animated feature film, The Book of the Dead.[7]
On 10 August 2008, the full version of the book Snow on the Grass was released (the “incomplete” 2005 book was 248 pages). The book, which was printed in the Czech Republic and funded by Sberbank, consists of two volumes, 620 pages, and 1700 color illustrations.[8] The studio stopped working on The Overcoat for nearly a year while Norstein worked to release the book.[9]
Filmography[edit]
- The 25th, the First Day (25-e — первый день, 1968), in collaboration with Arkadiy Tyurin.
- The Battle of Kerzhenets (Сеча при Керженце, 1971), in collaboration with Ivan Ivanov-Vano.
- The Fox and the Hare (Лиса и заяц, 1973).[10]
- The Heron and the Crane (Цапля и журавль, 1974).
- Hedgehog in the Fog (Ёжик в тумане, 1975).[11]
- Tale of Tales (Сказка сказок, 1979).
- Participated in Winter Days (冬の日, 2003).
- The Overcoat (Шинель, still in production).
“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?
Documentary animation technique
Textless NGO shorts
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.
Yellow Fever
Rotoscoped paint over.
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.
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.
!! 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.
More about Filmbilder animations. See also Andreas Hykade.
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]
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
See also performance from Whitechapel Gallery