7.

Last minute blogging is no fun. I need to think back of what had been covered these few weeks and study for test tomorrow!

I'm thinking back what films we have watched previously that I've managed to watch (without sleeping) in class.

Terminator 2 : Judgment Day (1991)



Well seriously I didn't know it was a 1991 film until I googled for it. The effects were done by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM, yeah them again) It was one of the films that did the morphing technique well. The part whereby T-1000 transformed into the security guard in the mental hospital was very well-done. The second screencap above is an interesting effect though. I'm still trying to figure out what kind of effect is was since they stated that the CGI ILM did for this film was "manipulate, re-create and 'morph'"

And as I'm studying for test now, I'm looking at Week 17 post and I realized that animation is indeed transforming itself to many forms in the past. Hand-drawn animation being placed into films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit allows audience to believe that such characters are able to communicate and interact with humans. Suspension of disbelief. Oh my god sounds complicated. But to me it's like.. we know that CG characters are fake but they are created that real that we just want to believe that they exist. BUT no matter how real they are, THEY ARE STILL FAKE. Animation helped audiences to visualize things that are just not possible to be seen in the real world. Such as Cannibal Island in Pirates of Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (oops sounds familiar?) was created in Vue. There's no way we could see such scenes in real life, however through film we could visualize it and believe that such landscape exist in the real world.

Things such as Travelling Matte, Blue Screen Color Separation could be easily done by just opening your Adobe After Effects now. While we complain how irritating it is to work with computer programme now, we should actually thank the creators in the past for coming out with the creations. I wish I could talk more about in my posts about different films (Blade runner is not too bad as well) but test.............

That's it for my blog posting. Oops for not posting every week.

6

Oops an extremely late journal entry! ):

ANYWAYYYY, I respect people who came out with stop motion, pixilation and claymation animation. Just imagine the amount of work they have to do is just amazing. They have to shift their objects by a little everytime when they snapped in order to achieve a smooth animation. Imagine shifting the objects by 2cm instead of 1cm. I think that would make a great difference as well. Everything has to be perfect.

Claymation is very impressive, considered the fact that the props are made up of clay and the technique of stopmotion is applied as well. Creature Comforts is rather interesting. I like the fact that the voices are actually from random interviews from family and passerbys. The animal with the Brazilian accent was hilarious though. Hand movements and expression were all very well-done.

Wallace & Gromit is the next film that was shown. Simple story plot but I find the inventions really cool hahaahah.

5

Yes finally we get to watch a movie in class! "Spirited Away" is one of my favourite animated films I've ever watched. "People who don't work will turn into pigs" Yes nice one!

People tend to think that such anime are only for kids. When the film was showing in the Preview Theatre, everyone is paying attention to it. The whole story doesn't have much twist to it but the love between Chihiro and Haku is SOOOOOOOOOOO sweet (of course the standard is suitable for kids as well) Characters are well-built as well. No Face is a good example. Everyone ignores him and doesn't allow him to step into the Bath House initially. No Face started to be mean by eating up the other characters when Chihiro ignores his affection. It reminds me of a spoilt kid who tries to do nasty things to attract his parents' attention. The story is set up in an unreal world but characters are linked to our lives.

Some other animation we have watched in class are from Canada and Russia. I realised that the Canadian ones are not really PG though. Nudity and violence are seen in "Special Delivery". As for the Russian Animation, I'm sorry to say that but it's boring. Maybe it's too "deep" for me to understand and I might need more time to appreciate such animation. Beautiful drawings with striking colors, but not my type of animation. And OHHHHH "The Cameranman's Revenge" is freaky HAHAHA! Omg how the hell do you animate dead bugs like seriously. I would say the director is EXTREMELY unique in his thinking and I respect him for that. I hate bugs like mad but I think it's brilliant of him to make use of dead bugs to create a film.

My favourite shot from "Spirited Away"

4

I think that Hanna-Barbera cartoons are not entertaining for me. I can't really stand cartoons without much actions because they looked stiff. I remembered liking The Flintstones characters but I don't really enjoy the cartoon as they are always talking all the time only. It's a wise choice to cut down the number of pictures they drew so that they can produce more cartoon series for the TV animation. However the dialogues in the cartoons aren't really interesting for me. I would prefer to see a 8 minutes cartoon with interesting content rather than 25 minutes cartoon with less movements + boring conversations.

Back to the animated films.. I find "Gerald McBoing-McBoing" very interesting. Exaggerated expressions could be seen (for example, stretched necks) It's simple but unique. As for "Rooty Toot Toot", I like the way the colors are used. The colors used for the main characters are different for the other characters and the background. For example in this, red is used for the main characters and orange is used for the other characters and the background. It is simple but interesting enough to catch my attention. The background is detailed.

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is another animated film that catches my attention. It feels spooky throughout when I'm watching. We don't get to see the main character at all but narration could be heard. The whole film is dark and we get to see shadows most of the time. The way it is directed is from the point of the main character. I find it very abstract.

"Limited animation" style is a good way to cut costs and it proves that high-quality animated films (such as Gerald McBoing-McBoing) could be produced at the same time.

3

Seriously speaking, I still think that the history of Warner Brothers is rather complex for me. Hmm so basically.. Walt Disney is willing to fork out a huge amount of money to start on his animation film while Warner Brothers work on low budget animation films most of the time.

"Popeye the Sailorman" was not too bad though. But the part whereby Olive got tied to the train rail was crazy for me though. The bad guy Bluto always wanted Olive but why the hell did he tie Olive to the train rail?! He's a real psycho. However, I think that Popeye is a good influence. My mum used to say to me: "Eat vegetables and be as strong as Popeye!" This might be a good way to get children to eat vegetables if they love Popeye (but well I still hate veggies.....)

I've watched Betty Boop in the past and the short mini skirt all those doesn't really affect me much though. Maybe I was too young back then.. However Betty Boop in "Popeye the Sailor Man" gave me a shock though LOL. However I have to agree that cartoon characters such as Betty Boop might give people the impression of a "sex symbol" or whatever. "Red Hot Riding Hood" is a good example though. The wolf's eyes were popped out when the red hot riding hood was performing with skimpy clothings. It's not really a good influence for teenagers in my opinion. As I said, I was WAYYY too young to define what's a "sex symbol" when I was watching Betty Boop in the past, but now as I think back, my thinking might change if I watched it when I'm 10-12 years old.

"What's Opera, Doc?" is definitely my favourite cartoon. The part where Bugs Bunny and Fudd danced was hilarious (to me). I'm researching on this particular cartoon now and it's the first place in the 50 greatest cartoons of all times! I'm surprised that a number of excerpts are included in the cartoon. This shows that cartoon doesn't have to be stupid, lame and non-reasonable all the times.

And till now I still think that Warner Brothers history is complicated. At least I know that it consists of different animators with different styles.

2.

Walt Disney experienced ups and downs between the 20's and the 50's. He came up with many characters and tried out new types of animations films. He was willing to challenge the impossible. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was the best example to prove this. Everyone was amazed at the amount of budget ($1.5 million) used to creating this film. Disney even had to mortgage his house to help out with the production of this film. The film managed to gross over $180m and it became the top ten American film moneymakers of all time. The version I came across was only the storybook (I don't remember watching the film itself).

Many people criticize Disney for monopolizing classic stories for profit. The original story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was brutal. In my opinion, the original ending is definitely not appropriate for kids to watch them. Disney found the potential in the story and made the story his own. Well I don't see any fault in that. The story is so far one of the most successful one and it's still well-known among kids nowadays. However, I asked my cousin this question yesterday.

Me: "Do you know what's the original story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?"
Her: "Wth, who doesn't know it?! The Disney one lah!"

.... This is when I pity the original author of the ACTUAL Snow White fairywale. Most of the people only remembered the most classic version (which is Disney's) and they are totally not aware that the story was actually ADAPTED by another fairytale. But I wouldn't blame them because I'm not aware of this too.

Thinking back of the clips we have watched in the class yesterday, I realised I didn't watch most of the films before. The versions I've watched are all the TV cartoons (IF I DIDN'T REMEMBER WRONGLY). I know every single character but it's such a pity I didn't get to watch the classic films. I shall go and borrow them from the library one day. The film Pinocchio looked interesting to me. I only remembered watching the cartoon on TV. ):

When Der Ruehef's Face was introduced to us, I was shocked that Disney actually produced animated films related to military in the past. It's interesting to see Donald Duck in Nazi's uniform (HAHAHHAHA SO CUTEE <3). The ending whereby Donald throws the tomato straight into Hilter's face was the BEST PART.

When I first saw The Band Concert I was so so so so amazed! The first Mickey Mouse film in Technicolor looked so new and I couldn't believe it was made way back in 1935. The characters were animated perfectly according to the music and I was laughing happily throughout the whole film. I've got to say that The Band Concert is my favourite cartoons out of all the ones I've watched yesterday (it might be different if I managed to watch the whole of Der Ruehef's Face lol)

In my opinion, it's obvious why Disney managed to become the most influential individual in the history of animation. From silent shorts to cartoons with the characters talking TO cartoons with COLORRRRRR, he developed different animation techniques within the 10-15 years. The major breakthrough would be the multi-plane camera which still benefits the people to date. I'm looking at the top 20 greatest cartoons and I realised the cartoons we have watched yesterday were mostly in the top 20. :o yay!

AND SOOOO my final thoughts, I think that Mickey Mouse is the greatest cartoon star from Walt Disney. If Mickey Mouse wasn't famous that time, we might not have stuffs like the Silly Symphonies. I still think that Donald Duck is not as popular as Mickey Mouse because I remembered myself having a hard time to find Donald Duck toys in the past but Mickey Mouse's ones were everywhere. But I'm referring to SINGAPORE though (omg my Donald Duck toy is staring at me). Walt Disney is still active now and the cartoon world will definitely be different without Walt Disney's presence.

Next up; Warner Brothers.

WHAT'S UP, DOC?

1.

9pm now. It means that I still have 4 more hours to go before "the day ends".

Anyway, I was kind of surprised when I found out that pre-animation started way back in the 18th century. I watched cartoons (such as Popeye, Mickey Mouse and more) and I didn't know that Felix the Cat was the 1st major cartoon. I didn't have much impression of me liking it (cause I didn't like black cats) but I do remember POPEYE THE SAILORMAN which is basically from the same company as Felix the Cat. It was one of my favourite cartoons and I enjoyed watching it. The best part is when Popeye eats the spinach, gets stronger and hits the big fat evil guy in just one punch.

Animators in the past had to continuously draw the background out for all the frames in the animation. There was no camera or computer for them to capture the background or the characters. Every little details have to be drawn over and over again. I can't even imagine me drawing the character and background for a 5 minutes animation. 24 frames per second.. 1 minute would be 1440 frames. 5 minutes would be 7200 . . . . . . . . . . I seriously respect the animators in the past. But well luckily Raoul Barre came out with a "Slash" system that doesn't need them to redraw again and again. Yay for us!

Was looking at the syllabus and it seemed like all the lectures will be fun. Disney, Warner Brothers, Anime, Claymation, I'm interested to know more about them. And the fact that we get to watch films for almost all the lessons seemed pretty cool. Seriously speaking I was hoping that it's a course for History of Film so we could watch films like the Godfather or maybe Leon the Professional (ZOMG MY ALL TIMES FAVOURITE <3<3).
(video removed)
Couldn't remember most of the lyrics. The only thing that runs in my head is "I'M POPEYE THE SAILORMAN POOTPOOT"

hey yo touch man

Myfatherisyourmother. I know it's cool.