Whola's Context of Practice: November 2013

Thursday 21 November 2013

Lecture Notes 5: Chronologies 3: Print

Sorry there isn't much to write for this one since (Ironic considering the subject matter):

A print is 1. "to produce (A Text, picture, etc) by applying inked types, plates, blocks, or the like, to paper or other material either by direct press or indirectly by offsetting an image onto an intermediate roller" 2. "a reproduction (A design or pattern) by engraving on a plate or block" 3. "to form a design or pattern upon something by stamping with an engraved plate or block" 4. "to cause (A manuscript, text, etc) to be published in print"
"I love a ballad in print alive, for then we are sure they are true" Shakespeare
A print is a form of proof, seen to be true, as correct, and as factual

It is a documentation, a form of communication, a reproduction of something

Knowledge is power and mass communication is an important factor, and that comes in countless forms of print

More, we want more

"The Medium is the Message." ~ Marshall McLuhan, 1911-1980
Examples of Print:

Print Block

Print Blocks

Illustration

Typography

Poster Advertisement

Design Print

Architecture

Recruit Posters

Promotional Poster

Propaganda

Photographic Documentation

Lecture Notes 6: Chronologies 4: Animation

The Beginning

Animation is derived from the latin word Animare, meaning "To give Life to"
Requires one to artificially create a series of images that gives the illusion of movement of an object or form. When played back fast enough, that illusion is created, it is called the "Persistence of Vision"
For thousands of years, humans have illustrated stories sequentially, on walls, bowls, vases and various other objects (Eg, Egyptian burial chamber mural, 4000 years old, and of course cave paintings)

This reinforces the fact that sequential images and storytelling
are not modern concepts

The Magic Lantern (Around 1650) was invented by Christian Kuygens, a parabolic mirror at the back focused the light through a hand drawn slide and then through a lens that could be adjusted for clear focus. Due to rather primitive light sources at the time (Candles and oil lamps), the invention was not very efficient
The Thaumatrope (1824), was invented by John Herschel, but made popular as a toy by John Paris. It was a simple spinning disc that when spun fast enough, created the illusion that both images are there
The Phenakistoscope (Fee-ner-kiss-though-scope) (1831), was interestingly invented by two different people in two different places at the same time.
The Zoetrope (1834), similar to the previous invention, the images however were instead placed vertically within a barrel shaped device and has multiple slits for viewing as compared to the Phenakistoscope
The Kineograph or Flipbook (1868), John Barnes Linnett of London was the first to patent the design even though Pierre-Hubert Desvignes has usually been credited for its invention
The Praxinoscope Projection (1887) by Charles-Emile Reynaud and publicly exhibited in 1892, these projections will predate Edison's Kinetoscope and the Lumiere Brothers Cinematograph

1900-1927

When filming finally came to be, many artists were fascinated with the idea of bringing their drawings to life.
"Animation is not the art of drawing that move but the art of movements that are draw" ~ Norman McLaren (1914-1987)
Various animations that have influenced contemporary animators from around the world:
"In order to move forward you need to know where you have come from." ~ Michaela Paviatova (During BAF 2013)

Georges Melies: A Trip to the Moon (1902), was a combination of live action and stop motion animation. This film has been referenced numerous times by artists, musicians and comedians

Emile Cohl: Fantasmagorie (1908), known as one of the first 'modern' animations, was drawn in pencil and then photographed onto negative film (Giving it that chalkboard look).

While not his first animation, it was one of his more memorable

Windsor McCay: Gertie the Dinosaur (1908), was the first film to use keyframes, registrations marks and tracing paper
Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), depicting the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine during WW1, it was the first dramatic work of animation and the first animation to be used as propaganda, it was the longest animated film at the time of its release took only a week to travel all over the world (1918)

Lotte Reiniger: The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), oldest surviving piece of animation

1928-1957: The Golden Age of Cartoons

From 1928, animation had developed enough of a language, both technical, artistically and importantly commercially, it was no longer considered as just high art and something exclusive to the rich, it was mainstream, and was the beginning of the golden age

Walt Disney started it off with Steamboat Willie (1928) and was the first animation to have synchronized sound (Fleischer's Inkwell studios had tried but were never actually successful)
Skeleton Dance (1929), the music was done first before the animation, it might be regarded as the first ever music video

Aleksander Ptushko's: Novvy (the new) Gulliver (1929), famous for using one really, long continuous tracking shot.
Lasdislaw Starewicz: The Tale of the Fox (1930), took ten years to make this film, incredibly detailed and was considered a work of art

Max Fleischer: Dizzy Dishes introduces Betty Boop (1930)
Popeye (While originally part of the Betty Boop series), was given his own series later on due to his popularity
Willis O'Brien: King Kong (1933), a defining moment in the history of cinema

Oskar Fischinger: Komposition in Blau (1935), a more abstract form of animation, Oskay was pursued by the nazis as abstract work were regarded as degenerate art, he had fled from Germany in 1933 and worked with Disney for a short period of time before leaving after learning that some of the works he had done for Fantasia were altered to be more pictorial
ToyBox: Momotaro Vs Mickey Mouse (1936), a propaganda animation done by the japanese that portrayed the americans as evil demons that they need to fight off
Len Lye: Color Box (1935-6), a commercial work that is an animation based around sounds, painted directly on the film stock, it is also an example of "Direct Animation" where the actual film stock is directly manipulated. This film inspires other great animators such as Norman McLaren.
Disney: Snow White (1937), used rotoscoping for some of the characters, it also introduces some very complex layered parallax animation (Which I myself am still trying to get my head around)

Wan Brothers: Princess Iron Fan, known for being the first chinese animated feature film, it took 70 artists and 16 months to complete it, a mixture of traditional animation, drawing, rotoscoping and metamorphosis

During World War II

Disney produced a number of films during this time to support the war effort(It was also through these animations that showed Disney's own political views)
Education for Death: the Raising of a Nazi might have appeared strange to viewers especially since such a serious subject matter was presented in Disney's usual goofy animation style and narrative
Victory through Air Power (1943), was a feature length push commissioned by the USAF to get more resources to build more aircrafts (Disney's are evident in this one, he had even gone so far to use some of his own money to fund this project)

UPA Films: The Brotherhood of Man (1945) articulates a progressive view of racial integration in American in the 40s and that all men should be seen as equals regardless of where they come from, it was nominated for an Oscar in 1943
UPA: Gerald McBoing Boing (1951), an adaptation of a Dr Seuss story, it was a nice minimalistic styled animation with endearing characters
Norman McLaren: Neighbours (1952), a pixilation animation that was an allegory for the cold war that developed as a result of end of WW2 and nuclear proliferation in the 1950s

Chuck Jones: Duck Amuck (1953), animation genius (Oh yeah! <3), Daffy breaks the forth wall in this episode by addressing the animator to fix the animation (This one gets a clip since its one of my favorites), only to be constantly tortured

Saul Bass: The Man with the Golden Arm (1954) a highly stylish graphic title sequence that lead Bass to work on many more narratively driven title sequences such as Anatomy of a Murderer (1959)

1958-1985: The Television Age (The Silver Age)

The golden age ended in the late 50s-early 60s, rise in popularity of TV meant that broadcasters demanded large quantities of programming on low budgets, so there were considerable amounts of cut backs such as reusing the same backgrounds and simplifying them, reusing walk cycles and talking mouths, leaving to the slow decline of 'quality' feature animations that were replaced by much cheaper mass produced shorts.

The time of Hanna Barbera begins here

Bob Godfrey: Do it Yourself Cartoon Kit (1961), supposedly pokes at the cheaper quality of animations at that time by showing that anyone can make an animation with a minimal amount of supplies
Zagreb Film: Ersatz (Surogat) (1961), piece of modernist animation about the absurdities of the modern age
Stan Brakhage: Mothlight (1963), scanned in real objects (Like insects and plants), pretty abstract
Ray Harryhausen: Jason and the Argonauts (1963), developed lots of techniques when animating the iconic skeleton fight
Osamu Tezuka: Astro Boy (1963) was one of the earliest examples of anime (Interestingly enough was inspired by the story of Pinocchio)
Jiri Trnka: The Hand (1965) was an allegory for a cry against repression and a totalitarian state

Chuck Jones: The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (1965), a beautiful modernist piece of animation that tells the story of a love one holds for the other and how far he goes to change himself for her (This one also gets a video, just because)
1966: Walt Disney dies
Terry Gilliam: Monty Python's Flying Circus, cut out animation (1966) his animations were integral to the success of the identity and success of the series
Richard Williams: A Christmas Carol (1971), had wanted to remain faithful to the original source as compared to more light hearted interpretations seen in the past, quotes that it was never meant to be a children's film after all
Ivor Caprino: The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix (1975), uses animatronics for the first time, it holds the Norwegian record for the longest running screening of any film and was shown for 28 years

Martin Rosen: Watership Down (1979), an animation that focuses on the cruelty of both man and nature as a colony of rabbits journey to find a new home for themselves, also if you think this to be a family friendly animation, you were lied to (The epitome of "DAMN NATURE YOU SCARY!")
Roger Mainwood: Autobahn Music Video (1979), first attempts at computer animation (1979) despite the limitations of technology, Halas and Batchelor and Mainwood embraced the usage of it

Yuri Norstein: Tale of Tales (1979) is a somewhat confusing (Due to how the stories are not exactly organized, like distant memories and dreams) but nonetheless beautiful animation that uses a range of processes and techniques such as basic cut out animation to complex multiplane animation

Don Bluth: The Secret of NIMH (1982), has all the hallmarks of a traditional disney animation (Seeing that Bluth had worked with Disney for 10 years prior), it has excellent character animation and made use of techniques such as multiplane filming and Xerox (Photocopying)
Steven Lisberger: Tron (1982), originally meant to be an animation with some live action, it instead became a live action film with 20 minutes animation in it, with even less CGI used, still it was pretty ahead of its time (It got a bigger fangirl base for its sequel at least)

1985 Onwards

Pixar (1986): Luxo Jr. showed the potential that 3D Computer Animation had and was regarded as groundbreaking at the time, the rest was history
Joanna Quinn: Girls Night Out (1987), her loose drawn animation makes this a memorable animation

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), advanced compositing was used for this, animation had to realistically respond to the movement of the cameras, giving a real sense of solid characters (I think most of us still wish something like this was actually possible in real life… y'know, cartoon characters coming to life)
Akira, regarded as the piece of Manga that opened the world's eyes to what Japan had to offer in animation terms
Disney: Beauty and the Beast (1991) one of first animations to use 3D animated backgrounds with traditional animation, an incredibly beautiful animation with great lighting and colors
Barry Purves: Screenplay (1992) a very smoothly animation stop motion with creatively gorgeous lighting, has won many prizes and gained a cult following

Steven Spielberg: Jurassic Park (1993), a combination of CGI and animatronics, the stampede scenes used 3D CG to simulate dinosaurs running along the planes
John Lasseter: Toy Story (1995), the first fully computer animated feature film, Lasseter was clever enough to choose a story that focuses around toys (Due to how plastic and cartoony they can look) instead of humans, taking into consideration that they were still after all starting to familiarize themselves with 3D animation tech
Aardman: A Close Shave (1995) goes back to traditional techniques unlike Pixar that was moving forward with 3D digital animation
Mamoru Oshii: Ghost in the Shell (1995) mixes 2D effects with CGI
Lasseter and Stanton: A Bug's Life (1998) despite the debate about whether Antz stole its idea and vice versa since they both came out at the same time, aside the fact that these two animations had ants as their main characters, both films were actually pretty different from one another (I prefer Antz though)

Michael Dudok de Wit: Father and Daughter (2000), produced using traditional animation processes, it was influenced by Eastern European Animation and Tintin, a beautiful piece of heartbreaking animation that makes excellent use of light, shadow and silhouette
Narayan Shi: Freedom Song (2000) combines 2D and 3D animation to produce a vibrantly cute short
Jamie Hewlett: Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood (2001), notable for going along with the times as the characters are animated in 2D before switching to 3D later on

Sylvain Chomet: Triplets of Belleville (2003), a virtually dialogue free comedy, beautifully drawn with CG elements that were carefully created with deteriorated lines to make it fit with the hand drawn works. It was also an internationally project that included animators discussing their work through the internet instead of all staying in one studio to work together
Semiconductor: Magnetic Movie (2007), an interesting piece that visualizes invisible magnetic files in the Nato Space Science Laboratory
Marjane Satrapi: Persepolis (2007), an animation that was nicely translated from the original graphic novel it was based on (Even sticking to the monochromatic coloring instead of fully coloring it)
Ari Folman: Waltz with Bashir (2008) combines rotoscoping, flash and frame by frame drawings, giving off a rather jilter, jerky feeling that matches the horror and disorientation of what took place during the 1982 Lebanon War
Henry Selick: Coraline (2009) along with several other stop motion animations at the time proved that animation is as popular as ever (Book is still scarier though)
James Cameron: Avatar (2009), it was said that no animators were involved during its making, which is questionable as motion captured date requires cleaning up and animators are pretty much the only ones that can do that.

Saturday 16 November 2013

Lecture Notes 4: Chronologies 2: Illustration

My favorite CoP lecture so far! ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

Illustration is a shining, spiritual illumination, vivid representation, an enlightening, light up, illuminate, make clear, disclose, explain, adorn, shine light, act of making clear in the mind.
It is normally added to something else to enhance it.

Illustration is the strategic (Not accidental, it is decided and planned properly most of the time) image making, used within the context of visual communication to convey meaning or concept.

The aesthetic of an image, its formal qualities, its media and composition can communicate as much as the semiotics of the signs and symbols employed.
Good illustrators not only communicates through the use of sign and symbol, but also by the very aesthetic of their chosen media and its application.

Born from an individual image making process and creative practice that is unique to it's creator, illustration often communicates with a specific tone of voice.
It is the authenticity, craft, consistency and individuality of an illustrators visual tone of voice that will inform their success as an applied artist.

It is this combination of both an individual visual aesthetic and use of functional visual symbols that allows illustration to communicate both an explicit message whilst also being able to convey more subtle, nuanced or abstract sensibilities.
Disciplines however need to work together, they can't actually be distinguished when the time comes for one to start working out there.
It could be argued that during a recession, where the publishing industry is dying and creative budgets are being slashed the the need for illustration is weaning.
It is believed that the discipline of Illustration has never been so exciting. It has more contexts within which to exist and more ways to be seen.
As an applied art, contemporary illustration has the potential to overlap with many other communities of creative practice, including textiles, model making, costume, film, animation, games design, photography, architecture and graphic design.
With the inclusion of moving image and the web there is a massive demand for visual content within contemporary media. Brands, published, businesses and products are all desperate to develop deep and genuine relationships with consumers.
When it's done well, illustration can communicate an idea or notion too specific, complex or sophisticated for any other medium.
How do we define good illustration?
Good illustration is more than illumination. It can be more the vapid, trend driven cool. It can be more than twee, pretty embellishment. I can be functional. It can have a message. It can have emotional impact.
Good examples of Illustrations:

The most important thing in looking at design work is a willingness to form your own opinion.

Tuesday 5 November 2013

Seminar Two – Auteurship and the avant-garde

Auteur Theory

."A director's film reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur".

. Auteur = Author

. Film theory associated with French critic Andre Bazin and writers for Cahiers du Cinema in 1950s

. Suggests that great film directors are artists in their own right on a par with great novelists (Eg, Hitchcock, David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese and Orson Welles)

. Films made by a true auteur display thematic consistency and artistic development through time

. Developed in response to Hollywood cinema and the criticism that American films are anonymous products of the studio system and the culture industry

. Truffaut - "A Certain Tendency in French Cinema" (1954) - attacks French tradition in which director is seen as simply adding images to a preexisting literary scenario

. Truffaut's theory maintains that a good director (And many bad ones) exerts such a distinctive style of promotes such a consistent theme that his or her influence is unmistakable in the body of his or her work.

. "An auteurist director was recognized as having a unique signatory imprimatur across a canon of work, that larked out an aesthetic and thematic terrain, and offered a coherent view of the discourses (A discussion, conversation, debate, etc.) fundamental to its understand and "art".

Auteur Theory in Animation

. Animation on one hand echoes and imitates large scale film production processes

. And on the other hand it offers possibilities for a film-maker to operate almost entirely alone

. So arguably it is the most auteurist of film practices

. Even at most collaborative it requires cohesive intervention of an authorial presence

. But - few animators are praised as auteurs in relation to feature length animation

- Subsumed within a corporate identity (Eg, Disney)

- Persistent view that animation is largely for a children's audience, which is not interested in issues of authorship

Disney

. Key figure in creation of art, commence and industry of animation

. Seen as the epitome of American dream, but also ideologically unsound and politically incorrect

. Walt Disney used to be involved in drawing and animating (see this) responsible for drawing, animating, filming and set production

. With the arrival of Mickey Mouse, Disney withdrew to organize the organization

. Idea of overall ownership and vision, but is it at expense of the recognition of actual animators?

. Equally notion of absenting and demoting the original author (Eg: Alice in Wonderland/Lewis Carroll, Pinocchio/Carlo Collodi, Winnie the Pooh/A.A. Milne)

Ray Harryhausen

. Arguably maker of B movies but elevated via his use of effects, which create a distinctive and signature cinematic style

. Question of how his effects were achieved, and also what would be lost without them - virtually all narrative and symbolic content

. Located within the parameters of cinematic

. Responsible for character development, formation of story and narrative which would allow characters to come into being

. Then would drawn them, sculpt then, and bring them to life through stop-motion

. DYNAMATION

The Avant-garde

."The french term originally designated that section of an army which marched into battle ahead of the main body of troops (The "Van'") but has come to be used in both French and English to describe pioneering or innovatory trends in the arts, and especially music and the visual arts. It originates in the works of utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) who applies it to the elite of artists, scientists and industrialists who will be the leaders of the new social order." ~ Macey, D (2000)

Carolin Leaf