Our lecture last week consisted of Bill showing us quite a lot of Bambi and nearer the end he showed us My neighbour totoro. I havent actualy seen bambi and its one of the disney films i missed out when i was a child, but i did watch my neighbour totoro when i was a child, along with some of the other studio ghibli cartoons.
What i found interesting in this cartoon was how there was no binary opposites. From a director who took influence from disney, it was surprising to see such a strong structured story which was well recieved without an obvious goody and baddy.
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Saturday, 4 December 2010
Family guy - return of the jedi spoof
i watched this with my brother the yesterday and i found it enjoyable....some parts of it did drag on but i guess its part of family guys humour.
to start of, i remember watching return of the jedi on VHS when i was a kid and it was probably one of my favourite child hood films, so the scenes, lines and characters aren't unkown to me.
Obviously the main aspect to point out is that this relates to intertextuality immensly since its basically a re-telling/spoof of return of the jedi. but whats interesting is that this special episode is intertextual with its own franchise as well as the star wars. throughout the episode, they have jokes which relate back to famil guy episodes from previous seaasons like the "Conwey Twitty" videos and they also bring characters from the Cleveland Show and American Dad. It kind of shows how big and well known Seth Mcfarlans cartoons have gotten that he can effortlesly throw in previous gags and other characters and know that his fans will get it.
Moving away from intertexualality, i noticed that not only in this episode but for many of the recent episodes, they have changed the way they animate. Some scenes have been replaced with CG for a quicker and easier way to get a sharper and clearer image. As they have a bigger budget, they can now afford to invest in these techniques. Though i think the look of it is good and has the same style as the animation, its frame rate and is a lot smoother than the traditional animation and it sticks out like a sore thumb.
to start of, i remember watching return of the jedi on VHS when i was a kid and it was probably one of my favourite child hood films, so the scenes, lines and characters aren't unkown to me.
Obviously the main aspect to point out is that this relates to intertextuality immensly since its basically a re-telling/spoof of return of the jedi. but whats interesting is that this special episode is intertextual with its own franchise as well as the star wars. throughout the episode, they have jokes which relate back to famil guy episodes from previous seaasons like the "Conwey Twitty" videos and they also bring characters from the Cleveland Show and American Dad. It kind of shows how big and well known Seth Mcfarlans cartoons have gotten that he can effortlesly throw in previous gags and other characters and know that his fans will get it.
Moving away from intertexualality, i noticed that not only in this episode but for many of the recent episodes, they have changed the way they animate. Some scenes have been replaced with CG for a quicker and easier way to get a sharper and clearer image. As they have a bigger budget, they can now afford to invest in these techniques. Though i think the look of it is good and has the same style as the animation, its frame rate and is a lot smoother than the traditional animation and it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Aniamtion
In this lecture we were shown Phantasmagoria again which was one of the first animations made. however we were shown a video made 2 yeatrs ago which was an homage to this. I have to say the new one didnt compare to the old. It was sluggish and slow and didn't flow and wasnt as dynamic as the version made 100years ago. It was immposible for the 3-D version to make all the different transitions the 2-D one did.
Metamorphisis and transformations are said to be difficult to do but i can think of examples where theyve been quite successful, such as the werewofl transformation in Van Helsing.
We were then shown a clip from loooney toons were daffy duck was being manipulated by the animator, which is seen through the eyes of the viewer. His appearance changes, the environemnt changes and also he's sometimes muted or made blind. However he always mantained character, which gave him a sense of reality as he reacts in different situations, but is always in character. this is incredibly affective as being part of the audience, i felt i could relate to the character and his reactions made me react in one way or the other.
Bill also showed us an animation by the Quay Brothers which was very surreal and was more of an art piece than anything else. the style reminded me of two stop animaters which are David Firth and Jan Svankmajer. Both have dealt with very surreal subjects and environemtns. In the Quay brothers animation, he only used music to compose the movement of the characters, but with Jan, his soundtrack is purely just he sound effects, such as the creak of the chair or the footsteps of the character. I deffionatly feel that this is much more affective since although the music can help emphisise the atmosphere or environemnt, jan svankmajers animations makes you a bit edgy about what might happen next since the environments you are in are very surreal and you never know what can or might happen.
Metamorphisis and transformations are said to be difficult to do but i can think of examples where theyve been quite successful, such as the werewofl transformation in Van Helsing.
We were then shown a clip from loooney toons were daffy duck was being manipulated by the animator, which is seen through the eyes of the viewer. His appearance changes, the environemnt changes and also he's sometimes muted or made blind. However he always mantained character, which gave him a sense of reality as he reacts in different situations, but is always in character. this is incredibly affective as being part of the audience, i felt i could relate to the character and his reactions made me react in one way or the other.
Bill also showed us an animation by the Quay Brothers which was very surreal and was more of an art piece than anything else. the style reminded me of two stop animaters which are David Firth and Jan Svankmajer. Both have dealt with very surreal subjects and environemtns. In the Quay brothers animation, he only used music to compose the movement of the characters, but with Jan, his soundtrack is purely just he sound effects, such as the creak of the chair or the footsteps of the character. I deffionatly feel that this is much more affective since although the music can help emphisise the atmosphere or environemnt, jan svankmajers animations makes you a bit edgy about what might happen next since the environments you are in are very surreal and you never know what can or might happen.
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