Friday 6 December 2013

Illustration

An interpretation of illustration is that it is strategic form of image making, used within context of visual communication to convey meaning or concept. The earliest form of illustration can be linked with the beginning of written communication seen in cuneiform carvings.

In my opinion, illustration means to be different, to have a unique perspective of your surrounding environment, views on political and social contexts, something personal to you.

James Jean -  A beautiful mixed media illustrator that incorporates fantasy based themes with in his compositions. The attention to detail is breath taking with his control of line and blend of acrylic paints which create a surreal scenario in which his figures and environments emit this delicate atmosphere. Jean's work inspires my own work through how he portrays his surroundings and twists this into his own surreal depiction, his work heavily influenced me whilst I was creating a more experimental outlook on the Visual Language task of Set, Series and Sequence.

untitled
Marc Aspinall - Creates work that holds a lack of direct solid black outlines and instead replaces it with a gorgeous digital painted portrayal that feels heavily concept art based but depicts a story through the expression and angle of the compositions.

Broadchurch

Tomer Hanuka - A digital based illustrator who creates his work in a detailed and stunning approach. Hanuka is an illustrator who has inspired my work throughout my time at Selby College and still does. I believe his work inspires me so much as it not only incorporates detail but it absorbs such emotional and contextual expressions that it makes the composition that much more meaningful.





Emotional impact  = graphic story telling


Vania Zouravliov - A beautiful human being who creates just aesthetically stunning traditional illustrations that have made a huge impact on my work for many years. Zouravliov's work just continues to inspire me through how he captures so much detail, how he depicts the detail with media and how the placement/structure of the composition changes the outlook of the expression and body language of the character portrayed.



Edward Ardizzone began his illustrative work with the Little Tim series that held a beautiful sketchy, watercoloured appeal which worked well with the younger audience target market. I just find the appeal of the dip pen strokes aesthetically pleasing to the eyes.
Ardizzone was then known as the official British war artist, and created sketches detailing the journey in which the troops endured. These compositions which Ardizzone created contrasted drastically with the Little Tim illustrations, with the complete change in colour palette, contorting into greys, blacks, and desaturated blues, giving the imagery a deep atmosphere of despair, dread and foreboding.

Sicily

Little Tim

I believe illustration is a form of escapism, a form which allows the illustrator to create compositions that don't have to relate to reality, or ones which do relate to reality but in their own portrayal, its a from of expressive freedom that can hold so much meaning and context that it can make the audience bewildered and conjure different takes on the composition.



Wednesday 4 December 2013

Auteurship and the Avant-Garde

The Auteur theory suggest that great film directors are artists in their own right on the same page as great novelists. (It is associated with French critic Andre Bazin and writers for cahiers du cinema in 1950s). It suggests that films made by a true auteur display thematic consistency and artistic development through time, for example Hitchcock.

Truffaut - A tendency in 'French Cinema' 1954, it attacks french tradition in which the director is seen as simply adding images to pre-existing literacy scenarios. ( a non cultural industry, individual and unpredictable).


"An auteurist director was recognised as having a unique signatory across a canon of work, that holds an aesthetic and thematic terrain, and offers a coherent view of the discourses fundamental to its understanding and art"
- Quote from Paul Wells, Animation Genre and Authorship - Page 72


Auteur theory in animation
notes
Animation echoes and imitates large scale film production and can also offer the possibility for a film maker to operate almost entirely alone. (Arguably it is the most auteurist of film practices)
Collaborations require cohesive intervention of an authorial presence however few animators lauded as auteur's in relation to feature length animations. So merged within a corporate identity such as Disney.

Disney is a key figure in the animation world through the creation of its animations and is seen as a epitome of the American Dream.
With arrival of Mickey Mouse, Disney withdrew from animating to organise the establishment. Disney Studio's is an ideal of overall ownership and vision but it is at the expense of the lack of recognition of the actual animators; the animators work not being seen through the constant animation style of Disney.
Disney began to retell fairy tales and other stories which belonged to someone else, such as Alice in Wonderland originally created by Lewis Carroll, the original author is lost and all focus on Disney.
A few more examples of this can be seen in the Disney films, Little Mermaid, Winnie the Pooh and Pinocchio.

The Avant-Garde, a french term derived from a selection of an army that marched into battle ahead of the main body of troops. Both the English and the French use this to describe pioneering and innovating trends in the arts, especially in visual arts and music.

Tuesday 3 December 2013

Animation Chronology part 2

In 1928, animation developed enough to become commercial in advertising. Animation was no longer regarded an art but more for commercial purposes, cartoons had become more popular, they had become mainstream.

Walt Disney was the man who kick started the commercial purpose of animations, this can be seen in his early work such as the 'Skeleton Dance' and 'Steam Boat Willie'.
The Skeleton Dance was quite unique as Disney created the video as a response to the music that was played, it could be regarded as one of the first music videos.



Aleksandr Ptushko's Novyy Gulliver also known as the new Gulliver was an entire stop motion mixed with live action, film created in 1929 that used tracking shots.

Ladislaw Starewicz created stop motion animations such as the tale of the fox in 1930, which took 10 years to make. The animation is beautiful through how smooth the movements of the characters are and needs to be considered as a work of art.



Many animators find Starewicz's work influential and have created their own take on his work, creating their own interpretation.

Max Fleischer created cartoons such as Betty Boop and Pop eye using a traditional pose to pose process, however Betty Boo was an outrageous character through the suggestions of the character taking drugs and nudity that was incorporated into the animation, which was eventually censored. The animation style however shuddered at places through a few transitions of movement.


Willis O'Brien created the stop motion King Kong which is considered to be one of the most defining moments of film. It has been remade and interpreted many times and is a huge inspiration for many animators and film makers.

In 1935, Oskat Fischinger created the animation named 'Komposition in Blau' which used mix media to portray the contextual background and atmosphere of the piece. The art of the animation was persuaded by Nazis and was regarded as pathetic and degenerate. Fischinger didn't agree with the Nazi belief and moved to America where he was welcomed and worked for Disney.

Len lye created an animation named 'Colour Box' in 1935-36 which incorporated different media and he spent his entire life trying to animate movement. With in his work he used direct animation which involved the artist to directly create each frame as he then filmed it. He was known for his postal service advertisement which became dynamic and responsive to the work ethics of the postal service.

In 1937 Disney created Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, one of his first big budget films that had over 1000 people working on it and spent over $1,000,000 on costs. The main animation technique used was rotoscoping, which an animator trace movement and footage, frame by frame.




Animation Chronology part 1

The word 'Animation' is derived from the Latin 'animare' meaning 'to give life to'. I think this is an accurate way to describe animation as a whole, through how animators not only make imagery move, but tell stories in which bring this imagery to life.

Animation requires an individual to create a series of images that give an illusion of life, a perception. They tell stories and events that have been illustrated sequentially for thousands of years, evidence of which can be seen as early as cuneiform on cave walls and hieroglyphics in Egyptian burial chambers.

The animation can be argued to be seen to develop from the Magic Lantern invented by Christian Huygens in 1650 - The first projector that projected an image via candle light.




In my opinion the Thaumatrope can be seen as one of the first moving images through the illusion of both sides of the toy merging together. The Thaumatrope was invented in 1824 which was patented by John Paris.


The Phenakistoscope was invented in 1831 by Plateau and Von Stampfer create individually in different countries. The device uses a circular plate which has more than one image drawn on it, and when the device spins, the imagery merges and creates a moving image. This device relies on the 'Persistance of Vison' to create an illusion of movement, an interpretation of an optical illusion.




The Zoetrope was invented in 1834 in England by William Horner which he initially named the invention "Daedalum", however it did not become popular until the 1860's when it was patented by both England and America. William F. Lincoln developed this and named it the "Zoetrope", which means the 'Wheel of Life'.
(http://www.exeter.ac.uk/bdc/young_bdc/animation/animation4.htm)



The Zoetrope images would be drawn on a strip and presented in a circular shape that would spin and have slits on the circular shape, which the viewer would look through to see the movement of the image.
The Praxinoscope projects images presented in a device similar to the Zoetrope, however it uses mirrors and a lever to rotate the circular drum.
(http://www.exeter.ac.uk/bdc/young_bdc/animation/animation5.htm)


The Kineograph or Flipbook 1868 patented by Joh Barnes Linnett of London to sell. The images would move by the person flipping through the pages, causing the imagery to move. I believe that this was developed further into the device Kinetoscope, which was created by Thomas Edison with images recorded in wax cylinders of film, and the viewer would look into a box to view the film. A predessor of this was a form of entertainment, where a flipbook like process of images would move once you rotated the handle of the box, these would contain humourous scenarios and be found mainly at coast lines where mass amounts of tourists would visit, seaside.






"Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of the movements that are drawn."

Norman Mclaren 1914 - 1987


Georges Méliès was a famous and the most influential experimental film maker who merged animation with film. He was most famous for his film "A trip to the Moon" in 1902.
This film is referenced in "Hugo" which is very influential through the incorporation of the atmosphere of that era and the technology of that time.


Personally I find this film very inspiring through the lack of technology and the amount of time that this must have taken for completion. This film would have used numerous amounts of staging and props with heavy lighting equipment and cameras. I also found it interesting that the actual film reel was then painted to introduce colour to the video.


In 1908 Emile Cohl created the film Fantasmagorie which was regarded as one of the modern animations. The animation was primitive with the use of the line and composition however the movement and change into different shapes within the animation worked really well and flowed smoothly.





Windsor McCay created the animation Gertie the Dinosaur in 1914 which used the process of Pose to Pose, it was quite primitive in appearance however it was the first animation that used key framing and registration marks to keep each image flowing into the next. The animation is jagged in places however to say that the animation was created before the advancement in technology, this piece is a huge inspiration.