Animation Aesthetics F18

In honor of Halloween, my friends and I decided to watch Monster House . I think this was the first time I’ve seen this since I was about 7 years old and it was still just as good. So, when I was younger I’m pretty sure this movie scarred me because I was SO scared of the house. But with watching last night, I realized there’s so much that slipped over my head as a younger kid. When I was younger I really didn’t think anything of Bones, the babysitter’s boyfriend. If I’m being frank, he was quite a piece of shit. He disrespects Zee, and she then retaliates by kicking him out; however, he then gets eaten by the house (it’s really not a loss anyway). Maybe this is why adults can watch animation that is considered to be made for children. My parents watched this movie with me when it first came out and I remember thinking, when I was younger, that it was a movie for kids and they definitely wouldn’t enjoy it. To my surprise they did. I think watching animation as a young adul

Akira, released in 1988 but taking place in 2019, seems like a warning to me. It is set in a 'far away' dystopia where teens are in violent biker gangs and children are experimented on. Ultimately it ends in mass destruction. To me, the film is pushing back against the use of nuclear weapons, increased military presence and corruption. Even after this weeks reading, I was surprised at how these big ideas were tackled in an animated film. Beyond warnings of a causing a possible dystopia, Akira literally  predicts the future. There's a line about the "Olympics next year" in Neo Tokyo and it took me a second to remember that the 2020 Olympics will take place in Tokyo. More than 25 years before the bid was accepted, there was reference to the 2020 Olympics being held in Tokyo! I thought this was pretty interesting and I wonder how they will inevitably work Akira into the festivities in a few years.

A couple of classes ago we were asked if Animation was a good place for the youth to receive their information on politics. Personally I am torn, I think that it's both great and bad at the same time. Nowadays a lot of the youth don't really check on the news. Most of their news comes from places like YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, they have no intentions of watching CNN or reading a New York Times Article (I am very guilty of this). Because of this I do believe that satire in animation would be a good thing. Our generation is more attracted to something like an animation rather than an article. Here's a strange example, but has anyone heard of Gridiron Heights ? Their small 1 minute episodes that recap the NFL season every week. I'm a big fan of football, but now I can't follow it as much as I use to so I just watch those funny satirical episodes to catch up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7nLCfCKUNU However, I saw in another blog post that satires, like

When creating film categories in class, I found myself drawing many comparisons between Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir . In our group we discussed how the content of the films were similar, but served different purposes and thus was presented in different ways. Both stories were deeply personal and based on real people and experiences. They are anti-war films and depict the story of young people escaping war and facing their pasts. The use of animation as a medium is integral to both films as many of the scenes that are depicted would be impossible without them. For example, many of the battle scenes that take place, or with Persepolis the women removing their Hijabs. Animation gives the filmmakers the artistic freedom to not just portray historical events, but to also portray how people felt about them. Where the two films differed, however, was that Persepolis was much more humorous and could be suitable for younger audiences, whereas though Waltz with Bashir had humor, it was v

I was researching "Akira" after watching it in class and came across an article: "Taika Waititi May Direct 'Akira' for Warner Bros" and I found it to be hilariously opposing to this week's reading. In "Why Anime?" the author applauds anime's refusal to make its content more palatable for its foreign/Western audiences. If anime is so adamant on sticking to its aesthetic values and roots, I wonder how much of a role they have in this possible Western remake and whether or not it will adhere to the specific style of anime or transition it more to American animations.

Anime is known to be more violent and sexualized than Western Animation, and that makes me wonder how different the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is compared to its Japanese equivalent. What does the film association in Japan allow to be shown on the screen? What don't they allow? Are there strict rules about what can be in a movie and what can't, or what a movie must be? I don't have anything against it; I'm just curious about how the film industry works in Japan, and how it differentiates from the film industry in America.

Just a heads up, I'm not a big gamer at all. The last game I played was Minecraft and that was quite a while ago, but I was always curious about the animation in video games. I think that we live at a time where we can make things look very very realistic in movies. Take this video as an example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs813yvc89Q It's a clip from the movie Ready Player One  and it shows the difference from live action to CGI and the difference is so slim that you can barley point out anything wrong with the CGI version. So my question is, why don't video games look as real as movies do? If we can create such realistic shots in movies why can't we create such realistic figures in games such as NBA 2k or Madden? If anyone has an answer for me that'd be great!

Believe it or not, I have never seen Coraline before. I've seen clips, I've seen the very beginning and the very end, but I've never bee able to sit down and watch it the full way through. It's not because I don't like the story, or because I don't like the method of animation they used... their stop motion is incredible. I just have never got around to watching the whole thing! I'm typing this now because I plan on watching it today so... I'm going to update you afterwards on what I think about it. But first, I want to think of my expectations of it. Well... I already expect it to be great. People have been raving about it for so long, especially animators. I WANT to be blown away by it honestly, and I want to have an interest in stop motion after (not that I don't already, but I hope I have a special interest in it. Maybe it will spark something in me. Is this too much to ask, like do I have too high of expectations right now? I'm not sure. Alr

I was trying to think of other animations categories from our discussion the other day and I really liked when we talked about mature vs immature/serious vs. not serious. It’s really interesting to think about considering the fact that serious and mature are usually pretty closely related but on Thursday we really fleshed them out. “Without My Anus” is not serious but in a way it covers some mature topics about how the United States and Canada views the Middle East, it’s all in a joking way but it’s all underlying. “Logorama” is another really good example of the serious-mature debate. It might not be a serious movie, it’s funny and everyone is a logo, well the entire film is made up of logos. But it really exposes our nation for how we deal with different crisis’ and how consumerism controls many of our lives. I think this spectrum is really helpful and needs to be used when analyzing most films to give them a correct understanding.

I think that in order to talk about some very extreme political and social issues, you have to think about them and portray them with a lighthearted approach. I also believe that when it comes to issues that adults would usually discuss, it becomes easy to make animations that relate to them, even when they are so touchy. This is the reason why TV shows like South Park are so successful.

After watching the South Park episode we saw, I knew that I didn't like it. The humor wasn't for me and it just seemed a bit cheesy. That being said the creators are still making millions by pumping out hundreds of episodes so it has to be good to most people, just wasn't for me though! That being said however, I really enjoy fart and adult humor. Family guy is one of my favorite tv shows of all time, and this clip below of fart humor is definitely on my top 10 best Family Guy moments. To me I feel like if I were to enjoy Family Guy and the fart humor they offer, then why didn't I like the humor of South Park. I really enjoy the Book of Mormon musical which was from the creators of South Park so I do enjoy their humor, but why didn't I enjoy this episode? That brings me to the though of maybe I didn't like it because the animation style. The movement of the 2D animation made me dizzy, especially when the puppets talked, so that made my ranking go down significan

The Dragon Prince was one of Netflix’s hot new animated shows that aired this season. There was a lot of hype behind the production as it was created by Aaron Ehasz of Avatar the Last Airbender (ATLA) fame. And while the show captures a similar feel to ATLA, it has several aspects that make it unique, namely it’s animation style. An animation style that is mostly… perplexing. The Dragon Prince is animated in 3D CG but with a reduced frame rate. The result is incredibly choppy. While some report the decision was made to emulate 2D animation, I looked further to see what the creators had to say about the approach. According to the shows official reddit account they used 3D CG to “have more dynamic camera angles and lighting, and much more detailed character models.” But they slowed the frame rate down to avoid what they termed a “floaty” look. They looked to anime for inspiration on their "floaty" problem and came away with the 8-12 frames per second effect. They re

Beauty and the Beast (the animated version) if you adjust the gross income for inflation is in the top 200 of highest grossing films of all time. The writer, however, was paid $35,000 upfront and a bonus upon the release of the film. As Disney racked up millions, the writer received no residuals. Feature animation is not covered by the Writer's Guild of America. Meaning there is no requirement that says that a writer will receive a contract that allows them residuals. It's not just writers who often get the raw end of the deal in animation. In 2016 many animators for the R Rated "Sausage Party" were allegedly not paid for overtime and others were uncredited. It got me thinking about the idea that animation is, "inherently" excessive. While I agree that animation has the ability to thrive in excess I don't necessarily agree that it is inherent. I've seen plenty of independent, live-action, films that were gut-wrenchingly excessive in their content and

   I think that comedy can be a really good vessel for engaging with politics however I do not believe that South Park should ever be shown to children and I don't think there are any lessons that should be learned from the show. I think the animation really dehumanizes people and the humor is less satire and more using political issues as comedy. I think it can be really important to laugh at the problems of the world however, South Park simply brings up hot button political issues and makes fun of everything and everyone involved. This teaches the children watching this that these important political discussion are just jokes and it desensitizes them to engaging in serious dialogues. South Park teaches a "fuck it who cares" attitude that I think can actually be a really dangerous way of seeing the world.   Mixing politics and fart jokes conflates these things in our mind, making them both topics we can laugh off and forget about after 20 minutes.

What I took away the most from the unit on adult animation was the difference in what I'm calling Adult Animation and animation that's "Not for Kids".  I would call these the main two categories. Films such as "Waltz with Bashir" or "Persepolis" I would call Adult Animations because they cover mature topics and tell stories that are too much for young kids to hear. However animations like "South Park" or "Beavis and Butthead" are not sophisticated in anyway and what I would call Animation Not for Kids because they are just super inappropriate and not meant of young viewers. These are two very different types of entertainment and story telling methods. Other animations we watched are harder to put in neat categories like the one with all the logos or "Washington". It's hard for me to exactly explain the difference, but I found "Washington" funny while I thought "South Park" was terrible. Like my

The question of is adult animation strictly for humor or does it really have a meaning behind it was given to us during Tuesday's class. I believe that it all depends on the film. Of course, Persepolis is a film that is very heavily based upon meaning more than it is upon humor, but when we look at the Beavis and Butthead sketch, there is obviously a focus on the humor. Therefore, I don't think that this question is one that can really be answered as far as one of the other. Each type of adult animation has its own purpose. Many of the feature length films that we have watched in class have been more focused on the meaning rather than the humor, which is interesting to see considering animation tends to be an outlet for humor.

No,   Absolutely not.  Saying adult animation needs to be mature is like saying all adults need to be mature to be an adult. Also, if these shows aren't "Mature" then the millions of viewing adults must be immature.  But what is Mature? This seems to be a gray area. The exact definition for Mature is "fully grown". However, I think most people would say that mature is simply something that is not suitable for children due to language, violence, etc... In class the other day we talked about the range of maturity from the films we've seen. I don't think this is necessarily possible. If that was the case, the "Most Mature" film would be the one that is the most unsuitable for children to watch. How do you rate this? South Park is definitely not for kids due to their swearing and gore on screen. However, "Waltz With Bashir" is Mature mostly due to the gore and the impact of knowing this was a real event in history. So, which one is more

So, I have a music history class called Rock Styles Since 1955 and just this past week, we were observing one part of a film called Pink Floyd - The Wall , obviously orienting itself around the band's 1979 album. The film is a mix between live action and animation, and what we observed in class was an animated portion focusing on the social and political message portrayed within one of the songs. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten the chance to find and watch it myself, but I'm on the lookout for it. However, while watching what I did see in class, I was absolutely captivated-- like, truly and honestly, I felt as though this was something unlike anything I'd ever seen before! I can't even really explain much about the whole contextual meaning, given the fact that I haven't seen the full film yet. I felt as though it would be a great example of animation that's not really meant for kids portraying a deeper idea, thought, belief, etc. I mean, if you saw this fil

I think animation as an adult genre really gives the filmmakers a chance to make obvious statements about subjects. Because there are no physical limitations for anything on screen, animators can use the properties of absurdity to make their statement clear. This is why it works so well in political contexts because you can take an obvious stance without the expectation of subtlety that often exists in film.

Adult animation can be very immature but that does not mean it cannot be smart at the same time. South Park is a great example of walking the line from absurd to brilliant. South Park is inappropriate and juvenile, but the show is genuinely brilliant when it comes to political satire.  The show understands how far to push certain subjects without being called out for being too inappropriate. Which leads me to my point, South Park knows it audience really well and knows how to cater to them. And even though middle school kids or younger shouldn’t be watching this show they still do and the creators know that. Because the writers are aware of this, they are able to connect to their younger side of their audience and get them to take interest in political issues. How do they gain their interest? Juvenile humor that kids can easily understand and enjoy. Through this humor, kids get hooked and slowly begin to gain interest in different social issues. It all starts as a meaningless episod

I didn't realize there was so much I didn't know about our nation's first president!! I don't even know where to begin with this film so uh, yeah. It was hilarious. The crude animation plus the catchy song with bizarre lyrics, just amazing.  It's been stuck in my head for quite some time and I kinda want it to stay there. The writing for this film was just some top notch comedy. On a more serious note, I feel like there is a crowd of people that would say this is not animation. Defending themselves with reasons such as second long frames that don't seem to connect. I guess you could look at the root of Animation and say that these characters aren't "animated." Well , you're tacky and I hate you. Each frame is connected. The song isn't necessary to find a story line. If you watch it without sound, you'd find yourself creating a narrative out of all of these frames. Yeah, it may not be what was intended, but it is non

At first glance, Finding Nemo's underwater animation looks photorealistic. This is because the team of animators intended for it to come off this way while developing the project. "One of the things we did early on was a series of photo-realistic tests. Our technical team figured out what elements are needed to create photo-realistic water. You have a murk that is like a fog underwater. You have particulate matter that is like little bits of dust floating around the water." The team used four different ocean scenes, two underwater and two above water to see if they could re-create real footage of the sea. At some point the technical crew showed the supervising animator, Dylan Brown, their work and he couldn't tell the difference between the original footage and the re-created footage. Although the backgrounds looked virtually believable, the studio aimed to create a world based on their trademark hyper-realistic style. An example is that in the real ocean things bec

Today in our small group, we talked about how animation makes something that's usually hard to watch (i.e. war movies) and makes them easier to consume. In a film like Waltz with Bashir , we saw nearly constant warfare but it wasn't until the very end that we saw the real people affected by this conflict. We talked about how seeing the entire film recreated in animation and then finally seeing the live footage at the very end made it a lot more impactful. Specifically in this case, the film centered around a repeated scene and we decided it would have been a lot less impactful if we had seen the carnage that we saw in the final minutes of the film, repeated multiple times throughout. Ultimately, the choice to make this film in animation instead of live action gives us distance from the atrocities happening and makes it easier to watch. In contrast, the method of animation shortens the distance between the audience and screen in a film like Persepolis . In this case, we see a un

We're learning that animation has endless opportunities and that animation is NOT just for kids. Aside from "adult cartoons" like  The Simpsons, Big Mouth, Bojack Horseman (all amazing shows), this week in class we were opened to a whole new world of "adult cartoons". One of my group's categories today was "animation by necessity, being that a film was made in animation because it had to be. Necessity is a strong word to use, because Persepolis and Waltz of Bashir would be doable in live action, just much more difficult. They were both true stories that were about war and the settings were in a dangerous political climate. But what both films do is use animation to supplement the story. Persepolis has the scene after Marjane and Markus break up where he's no longer an attractive, thoughtful man but actually he's disgusting, ugly, and inconsiderate. Waltz of Bashir has the fantasy dream sequences that couldn't be done in live action. The

We didn't get into this in class, but I was thinking about the distinction between "High Art Animation" and "Animation" and whether or not distinguishing this difference is productive or helpful as we try to categorize these films. I personally believe Waltz of Bashir, Loving Vincent, Persepolis, all fall under this high art category, if that gives you an idea of what I think the definition should be. But then again, I am unsure. Let me know your thoughts! 

I've been thinking about excess in the media since last year when I wrote a long argument essay detailing the rating system. I thought that it was silly that we are so quick to rate violent live-action films higher than violent cartoons. And it's because there is a discrepancy between live-action and animation and what is seen as acceptable for both mediums. It is a common theme to blame the faults of our children on the things they grew up experiencing: especially with media, political events, etc... I can't help but think that children grow up with a love for slapstick humor, something that I know has definitley stayed with me since watching Spongebob when I was younger. It's not even just Spongebob either, there were tons of cartoons that contained a lot of violence that was made out to be funny, yet acceptable in a way that wouldn't have been if it were live-action. This is excess to me, and demonstrates the limits of each medium.

Something that stuck with me from this week's reading was the statement that animation has the ability to "engage with excess." We've all seen satire and know how it is employed, from novels to political cartoons to caricatures. But animation already has a tendency to exaggerate and distort reality, making it so easy to carry satire and its message across. It's like how violence and gore in animation is more acceptable/digestible ("Celebrity Deathmatch") and political satire works in Terrance and Phillips because it's paired with fart humor that makes the topic more digestible.

In recent years, 2D animation seems like it has taken a major step backwards as many production companies and television shows have take up 3D animation. If you take a look at any Disney, Dream Works, or Illumination Entertainment animated films you can see that all they are no longer 2D animated. It almost feels like 2D animation is the flip phone to smart phones. Is 2D animation dying Or is there a place for it? In my opinion, when it comes to block buster animated films such as Moana or Coco there is no longer a place for 2D animation. I believe the last big 2D animated film was Princess and the Frog and that was in 2009.  I do believe that there is a place for 2D animation. For example, many of the films that we watch in class are 2D animated. I think that 2D animation will live still thrive in many aspects of film. Many cartoons on television and many of the films that watch in class are still 2D animated. I think that 2D animation will live in the heart of art house cinema and c

Animation that isn't meant for kids may be distinguished in a few ways. For one thing, color might play a role; kids animation may have brighter and more eye-popping colors, while adult animation may have more realistic colors, but still have the colors play a part in telling the story. (although some adult animated shows, like Bojack Horseman, have bright colors in their scenes, but it's still easy to tell that the show is not intended for kids) The way the characters are created may be different, too; most characters in adult animation don't look realistically like humans; they're just the artists' vision of what the characters would look like in such a dysfunctional world. Of course, characters in kids animation don't look realistic, either, but they're probably created with a more innocent approach, so they can connect better with kids. Some ways kids animation distinguishes between adult animation may only be described as things people can tell by

As creators, representation has become a paramount thing in creating bodies of work. Viewers desire to see more diverse characters in their favorite shows. Since animation is a universal art form, its place in LGBTQ representation is a tricky one. Many still perceive it as strictly a medium designed for adolescents, and bringing those concepts into a show on a children's network is a subject that can get a lot of parents really heated. In fact, there's a very short Wikipedia category dedicated to the ever-growing list of LGBT characters in animation. Nickelodeon and Disney Channel have contributed to this very delicately. Disney is responsible for their first animated gay kiss on Star vs. The Forces of Evil, while Nickelodeon has featured a bi-racial gay couple and a queer main character on their show, The Loud House. They were also responsible for giving viewers the relationship between Korra and Asami on The Legend of Korra, one of the most beautifully unforced storylines t

Okay, so I don’t know why, but for some reason the scene from Toy Story 2 with the Cheeto guy popped in my head. It was so memorable to me and I know it had to do with how detailed the animation was. It felt so real, real enough to where I think it may have scarred me? Anyway, if you haven’t seen this, I linked it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBip_ujb5Fo The cheese crumbs on his fingertips were so meticulous that I felt as though I had cheese on my own hands. I specifically remember looking down and feeling my own hands to make sure that my hands didn’t look like that. I have no idea why his orange smeared fingertips bothered me so much???? Is it because it looked so real? I’m not sure where I am even going with this, but I just feel like I can’t be the only person that felt this way towards this scene. In no way am I dissing this movie or hating this part of the film. I actually just amazed by how something on a screen can make me cringe this much. Not only is