Research: Mike Judge's Tales from the Tour Bus, 8 January, 2018

Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill) narrates and interviews friends and families of country music hellraisers for this animated series.  I don't love Judge's animation style but I do like animated interviews.  This is pretty entertaining stuff. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2-zL7aLbrI

BSA306, Oddisee music video, 11 October, 2017

Oddisee Mourns America's Lost Innocence In New Video For 'You Grew Up'

BSA324, Big Mouth: Adolescent anxieties for adults, 11 October, 2017

Nick Kroll's Big Mouth

BSA306, Human v. Horse, 11 October, 2017

https://www.facebook.com/nprskunkbear/videos/269419560129851/

I like these Skunk Bear people!  Science plus animation equals win win win. 

BSA306, The Animal That Wouldn't Die", 11 october, 2017

Skunk Bear's animation "The Animal That Wouldn't Die" 

NPR posts animations all the time that are provocative, informative, cleverly done, and beautiful.  This animation shows one scientist's investigation into the hydra.  This production team knows how to make science fun and thrilling. 

There's this really cool chalkboard animation.  The lines look like chalk, they're erased by an invisible duster like a chalkboard would be erased, and you can see the ghost of past drawings hovering behind the hydra diagram.  

This frame is to remind me that you can still treat animation like a film and choose what's in focus and when. 

Which of these people did the animation?  And why don't they CALL it animation?

BSA306, Tom Petty and animation, 4 October, 2017

Tom Petty died this week.  There have been tributes to him all over the news and the internet.  This one from nofilmschool.com looks at his videos.
Runnin' Down a Dream is referencing Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay. Thank you, film and animation history classes! I like the greyscale palette and thick lines around the main part of the action.  Directed by Jim Lenahan with animation by someone who doesn't seem to be credited anywhere on the internet.  What's up with that?

This appears to be early 3D animation combined with 2D.  Great song, great video.  One of many.

BSA306, Time Crimes review, 12 September, 2017

Los Cronocrímenes (2009) directed by Nacho Vigalondo



I love time travel movies and it bothers me when people can't keep up.  But maybe it isn't as simple as I think it is and those people are the geniuses?  You know it's going to be a time travel movie based on the title, but if you didn't know that you'd think it was a chase movie.  The suspense as Hector 1 runs away from the pink bandaged man is shot and timed very well.  It does feel like something horrible is stalking him through the woods.  Once we realize that the pink bandaged man is Hector 2, Hector 1 further down his timeline, the tension becomes can he stop himself from originally going back in time?  Then the tension moves to Hector 3, the one who's REALLY going to fix it making sure that everybody DOES go back in time when they were supposed to and that he keeps his wife safe and himself from doing anymore damage by going back a fourth time.  The time loop, and the movie, is complete.

Predestination (2014) with Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snook is another twisted time travel drama with multiple versions of the same character but this time they all interact with each other as their timelines cross and nobody is trying to avoid anybody else.
  

BSA306, VFX doc "Life After Pi", 29 August, 2017

Life After Pi documentary  by HollwyoodEndingMovie details how Rhythm & Hues, an academy award nominated and winning VFX studio was forced to declare bankruptcy 11 days before winning the Oscar for Life of Pi.  The VFX industry works for only 6 clients who are able to set prices by forcing them into fixed bid contracts.  Those clients are then able to change their minds about what they want done and the VFX artists have to do it on the original budget, no matter what.  3 months of delays on Life of Pi forced R&H to take money out of their own pockets to finish the movie instead of downsizing the workforce.  A brutal and sobering documentary for anyone who wants to go into VFX.  The interviewees suggested that having the director on site while they work would make a difference to creativity because the decisions would be being made in real time.  I'm sure that animation has it's own problems, but working in VFX definitely doesn't appeal to me after seeing this doc and others like it.

 

BSA306, Persepolis film review, 15 August, 2017

 Marjane Satrapi in real life and her cartoon alter-ego.

Persepolis film poster

Vincent Parronnaud and Marjane Satrapi are credited as co-directors of the film which is based on Satrapi's graphic novels of the same name.  The books were published starting in 2000 and the film came out in 2007 to much protest by the Iranian government through their film bureau.
Protest and free speech are both themes of Satrapi's work as are family and love for country, even if living there is dangerous.  The film does a good job of translating the source material.  Marjane grows from a little girl in love with the romance of revolution to an adult who cannot bear the restrictions of a state that persecutes it's citizens in the name of religious purity.  The animation is true to the graphic novels and inventive with it's use of scene transitions and the stark black and white graphics to recreate the turbulence of Marjane's transition into adulthood.  

BSA306, The Snow Day, 14 August, 2017

Amazon.com's The Snowy Day animated special based on the book by Ezra Jack Keats

 illustration

animation

The animation adapted the Jack Keats' blocky shapes and collage' textures.  I read the book when I was a kid and I can't remember more than Peter's red snowsuit and his pajamas.  The book definitely didn't have Boyz II Men singing!  It was a good adaptation of a classic children's book.

BSA303, BSA324, BSA306, So This Happened series, 12 August, 2017

I'm not sure if I'm still researching difficult subjects + engagement + animation anymore; at this point, it's just reflexive.

This TVNZ series tells the story of NZ women's experiences with sexual harassment.
So This Happened 1

Story by Shannon Addison, animation by Joelle Douglas

These episode create separation  by using soft pastels and a monochromatic palette on the backgrounds and bright colours and black outlines on the main characters.
So This Happened 2

Story by Shannon Addison, animation by Teahi Maiau

The subject matter is difficult, sometimes for both storyteller and viewer, and seeks to leave the storyteller stronger for having told their story.  Many of these segments have dealt with abuses suffered during what is still childhood- the early teen years.

BSA306, Atomic Blonde, 11 August, 2017

So much to love about this movie!

Charlize Theron fighting bad guys in sensible boots

Realistic bruising and body trauma.  It's still an action film so she and the men she fights keep coming for more when IRL somebody's spleen would have been torn in half, surely.  During one fight sequence, her right cheek starts to swell and her blonde hair is so full of blood it starts to look pink.  Great attention to detail from the costume distress team and makeup fx.

Atomic Blonde review
Meanwhile, Theron – who produced Atomic Blonde – recently said that she is trying to break the rules for women in action movies. “A lot of times studios or producers are not comfortable with seeing a woman with bruises,” she said. “We really wanted to pay attention to that authenticity.”

I can't find any info online regarding how much cgi was used.  I'd like to know if the swelling of her cheek was a practical effect (they shot over multiple days, so it could have been) or added in post.  

Charlize's spy Lourraine Broughton post-fight, post-ice bath.  

There was a "oner" 10 minute action sequence that looks like it's done in one take.   It follows her from one fight to another and, when they're exhausted and can barely stand, out into the street for a series of car chase/crashes.  And a car gets T-boned and goes spinning away on it's butt like a ballerina.  I've never seen THAT before.  Absolutely fantastic.  

Based on the 2012 graphic novel The Coldest City by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart.

BSA306, A Scanner Darkly review, 1 August, 2017

rotoscoping over actress Winona Ryder's performance

Director Richard Linklater followed up his 2001 rotoscoped film Waking Life with A Scanner Darkly in 2006.  He collaborated with animator Bob Sabiston and his pioneering interpolated rotoscope software to make the film.  Previously, animators had rotoscoped, or traced, over selected live action frames to create films.  The skipped frames gave a jerky effect; Sabiston's software was able to interpolate, or predict, what the skipped frames would have been allowing for the whole film to be rotoscoped.  It was still a painstaking process requiring 9 months and 50 animators to complete.

Sabiston and his team made the trailer and producer Palotta and his team (brought in after Sabiston left due to tension with the studio) made the movie with the software they licensed from Sabiston.
Sabiston wanted to bring animation to adult moviegoers.

"I'm always first in line to see whatever Pixar does, because of the technology, but, God, I hate those movies," Sabiston says.

"I read novels, I watch The Sopranos, I love Lars von Trier movies. And I think animation can be for adult minds.

"Animation is a fine art, and I'd like to see it used that way. Scanner is a perfect example of what can be done."

A Scanner Darkly USA Today article

The look of the film is that of a graphic novel- it's quite impressive.  At times, objects move or slide slightly around the frame.  This is either a side effect of the rotoscope process or a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmakers to bring the characters drug-addled reality to life.  It's the animation that makes the theme of the film, paranoia, come through in a way that normal filming couldn't.  

BSA306, 3D short Extinguished, 27 July, 2017

http://www.iamag.co/features/animated-short-extinguished/

Extinguished, by Ashley Anderson and Jacob Mann Created at Ringling College of Art and Design.

I'd really like to know how long it took them to make this.  It's really sweet.

BSA306, Robot and scarecrow review, 17 July, 2017

Robot and Scarecrow

So boring.  BORING!  How is this even possible?  The CGI looks great, clearly a lot of time and effort was put into it, but the story is slow and surely could have come across in 7 minutes rather than 15.  

BSA306, Animation shorts review, 24 July, 2017

I saw the live-action movie Train to Busan a few months ago and really liked it.  The focus was on a believable family drama unfolding in the chaos of the beginning of a zombie outbreak.  Themes of family, class, and nation were all explored and the VFX were excellent.

Seoul Station trailer
This is the animated prequel to the movie showing the zombie epidemic taking hold.

Figures in the crowd are outlined in white, like they're being backlit, which helps them stand out from the dark background and general lack of light.

Nice use of motion blur here on the foreground figures to show extreme speed while keeping focus on the figure in the background.  

The Red book (1994) by Janie Greiser, stop motion

The reviewer reckons this is about relearning a language and therefore having to relearn yourself.  Dunno, looks good, though. 

Dialogue-free, the sound of clanking and machinery working follows the woman around.

I love the shadows that are cast by these paper pieces.  I think that this effect could be faked in a 2D program by creating a light source and then selecting which objects cast shadows.  That could be an interesting way of giving Ashes to Gold more visual depth.

Voynich Manuscript Ted ED

Another nice little animation, this time done by Ted ED.  Is it stop motion and 2D animation, or fully 2D and lit to look like dimensional objects?  I love the puppets and their obvious joints.

BSA306, BSA324, Rick and Morty Exquisite Corpse, 17 July, 2017

I love these things- we did a few Dada "Exquisite Corpse" exercises in drawing class.  In theory, the animator only sees the last frame of what the previous animator did. When it's done with a paper drawing, the last inch of the sketch can be seen under the cover sheet and it gets moved down to cover everything you've drawn, except the last inch, and on and on.  The result is a drawing that flows in and out sensibly and nonsensically at the same time.

The adult swim animators used their own styles to create a trippy meditation on Rick and Morty.

BSA306, BSA324, animation review: New Google doodle, 21 June, 2017

On what seems to be a 10 second loop, a little mouse ice skates, rolls through it's snug little root cellar and then hits the ice again in today's google doodle celebrating the 1st day of winter in the southern hemisphere.  It is a simple story told with economic images and is utterly charming.  I would like to practice this style of animation and storytelling because it's very effective.