How Pixar’s Movement Animation Became So Realistic: The Technological Breakthroughs Behind the Animation

in Animation, Film | April 20th, 2021

More than a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago, Toy Sto­ry made Pixar Ani­ma­tion Stu­dios into a house­hold name. Nobody had ever seen a com­put­er-ani­mat­ed fea­ture of such high qual­i­ty before — indeed, nobody had ever seen a com­put­er-ani­mat­ed fea­ture at all. Though the movie suc­ceed­ed on many more lev­els than as a proof of tech­no­log­i­cal con­cept, it also showed great inge­nu­ity in find­ing nar­ra­tive mate­ri­als suit­ed to the capa­bil­i­ties of CGI at the time, which could ren­der fig­ures of plas­tic and cloth (or, as oth­er stu­dios had demon­strat­ed slight­ly ear­li­er, dinosaurs and liq­uid-met­al cyborgs) much more real­is­ti­cal­ly than human beings. Ever since, Pixar has been a byword for the state of the art in com­put­er-ani­mat­ed cin­e­ma.

An enor­mous and ever-grow­ing fan base around the world shows up for each of Pixar’s movies, one of two of which now appear per year, with great expec­ta­tions. They want to see not just a sto­ry solid­ly told, but the lim­its of the under­ly­ing tech­nol­o­gy pushed as well.

“How Pixar’s Move­ment Ani­ma­tion Became So Real­is­tic,” the Movies Insid­er video above, works its way through the stu­dio’s films, com­par­ing the then-ground­break­ing visu­al intri­ca­cy of its ear­li­er releas­es like Toy Sto­ry and Find­ing Nemo to much more com­plex pic­tures like Coco and Soul. Not only do these recent projects fea­ture human char­ac­ters — not action fig­ures or mon­sters or fish or cars, but human beings — they fea­ture human char­ac­ters engag­ing in such quin­tes­sen­tial­ly human actions as play­ing music.

What’s more, they por­tray it with a lev­el of real­ism that will shock any­one who has­n’t made it out to a Pixar film since the 1990s. Achiev­ing this has neces­si­tat­ed such efforts as equip­ping Soul’s piano-play­ing main char­ac­ter with 584 sep­a­rate con­trol para­me­ters in his hands alone, about as many as Toy Sto­ry’s cow­boy-doll star had in his entire body. But though ever-more-real­is­tic visu­als will pre­sum­ably always remain a goal at Pixar, the mag­ic lies in the accom­pa­ny­ing dose of unre­al­ism: mytho­log­i­cal visions, trips to the spir­it world, and super­hu­man acts (or attempts at them) also count among Pixar fans’ demands. Ambi­tious ani­ma­tors push their tools to the lim­it in pur­suit of real­i­ty, but tru­ly ambi­tious ani­ma­tors push them past the lim­it in pur­suit of imag­i­na­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Free Online Course on Mak­ing Ani­ma­tions from Pixar & Khan Acad­e­my

Pixar & Khan Acad­e­my Offer a Free Online Course on Sto­ry­telling

A Free Short Course on How Pixar Uses Physics to Make Its Effects

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Sto­ry­telling

A Rare Look Inside Pixar Stu­dios

The Beau­ty of Pixar

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Indie Animation in a Corporate World: A Conversation with Animator Benjamin Goldman on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #88

in Animation, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | April 9th, 2021

In the peren­ni­al con­flict between art and our cor­po­rate enter­tain­ment machine, ani­ma­tion seems designed to be mech­a­nized, giv­en how labor-inten­sive it is, and yes, most of our ani­ma­tion comes aimed at chil­dren (or naughty adults) from a few behe­moths (like, say, Dis­ney).

Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Ben­jamin Gold­man to dis­cuss doing ani­ma­tion on your own, with only faint hope of “the cav­al­ry” (e.g. Net­filx mon­ey or the Pixar fleet of ani­ma­tors) com­ing to help you real­ize (and dis­trib­ute and gen­er­ate rev­enue from) your vision. As an adult view­er, what are we look­ing for from this medi­um?

We talk about what exact­ly con­sti­tutes “indie,” shorts vs. fea­tures, how the image relates to the nar­ra­tion, real­ism or its avoid­ance, and more. Watch Ben­jam­in’s film with Daniel Gam­burg, “Eight Nights.”

Some of our oth­er exam­ples include Jérémy Clap­in’s I Lost My Body and Skhizein, World of Tomor­row, If Any­thing Hap­pens I Love You, The Oppo­sites Game, Windup, Fritz the Cat, Spike & Mike’s Sick and Twist­ed Fes­ti­val of Ani­ma­tion, and Image Union.

Hear a few lists and com­ments about this inde­pen­dent ani­ma­tion:

Fol­low Ben­jamin on Insta­gram @bgpictures. Here’s some­thing he did for a major film stu­dio that you might rec­og­nize, from the film ver­sion of A Series of Unfor­tu­nate Events:

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Aesthetic of Anime: A New Video Essay Explores a Rich Tradition of Japanese Animation

in Animation, Television | March 22nd, 2021

Giant robots, super­pow­ered school­girls, berz­erk­er mar­tial artists: we all know the sort of fig­ures that rep­re­sent ani­me. Though clichéd, the wide­spread nature of these per­cep­tions actu­al­ly shows how far Japan­ese ani­ma­tion has come over the past few decades. Not so long ago, the aver­age West­ern­er did­n’t know the mean­ing of the world ani­me, let alone its ori­gin. Today, thanks not least to the films of Hayao Miyaza­ki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, the aver­age West­ern­er has like­ly already been exposed to one or two mas­ter­works of the form. This view­ing expe­ri­ence pro­vides a sense of why Japan­ese ani­ma­tion, far from sim­ply ani­ma­tion that hap­pens to be Japan­ese, mer­its a term of its own: any of us, no mat­ter how inex­pe­ri­enced, can sense “The Aes­thet­ic of Ani­me.”

Tak­ing that con­cept as the title of their lat­est video essay, Lewis and Luiza Liz Bond of The Cin­e­ma Car­tog­ra­phy show us a range of cin­e­mat­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties that ani­me has opened up since the 1980s. I recall, long ago, stay­ing up late to tune in to the Sci-Fi Chan­nel’s “Sat­ur­day Night Ani­me” block to catch such clas­sics from that decade as Venus Wars and Project A‑Ko.

While Japan­ese ani­ma­tion in all its forms has gone much more main­stream around the world since then, it has­n’t result­ed in a loss of artis­tic, nar­ra­tive, and the­mat­ic inven­tive­ness. On the con­trary, Bond argues: over the past quar­ter-cen­tu­ry, series like Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion, Ser­i­al Exper­i­ments Lain, and Death Note have not only pushed the bound­aries of ani­me, but demon­strat­ed a pow­er to “re-sig­ni­fy sto­ry­telling con­ven­tions that go beyond the ani­me form itself.”

In the effort to reveal the true nature of “the mis­un­der­stood and often dis­re­gard­ed world of ani­me,” this video essay ref­er­ences and visu­al­ly quotes dozens of dif­fer­ent shows. (It stops short of the also-vast realm of fea­ture films, such as Ghost in the Shell or the work of Satoshi Kon.) Its range includes the “exis­ten­tial med­i­ta­tion on lone­li­ness” that is Cow­boy Bebop, sub­ject of anoth­er Bond exe­ge­sis pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, and “city pop-fueled Superdi­men­sion­al Fortress Macross,” which did so much back in the 80s to define not just giant-robot ani­me but ani­me itself. Trope-heavy, over-the-top, and “unapolo­get­i­cal­ly weird” though it may seem (but usu­al­ly not, as Bond implies, with­out self-aware­ness), ani­me con­tin­ues to real­ize visions not avail­able — nor even con­ceiv­able — to any oth­er art form.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Exis­ten­tial Phi­los­o­phy of Cow­boy Bebop, the Cult Japan­ese Ani­me Series, Explored in a Thought­ful Video Essay

The Ani­ma­tions That Changed Cin­e­ma: The Ground­break­ing Lega­cies of Prince Achmed, Aki­ra, The Iron Giant & More

The Phi­los­o­phy, Sto­ry­telling & Visu­al Cre­ativ­i­ty of Ghost in the Shell, the Acclaimed Ani­me Film, Explained in Video Essays

How Mas­ter Japan­ese Ani­ma­tor Satoshi Kon Pushed the Bound­aries of Mak­ing Ani­me: A Video Essay

The Phi­los­o­phy of Hayao Miyaza­ki: A Video Essay on How the Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Reli­gion Shin­to Suf­fus­es Miyazaki’s Films

The Ori­gins of Ani­me: Watch Free Online 64 Ani­ma­tions That Launched the Japan­ese Ani­me Tra­di­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Three Leonard Cohen Animations

in Animation, Music, Philosophy, Poetry | March 22nd, 2021

Leonard Cohen, High Priest Of Pathos…

     Lord Byron of Rock and Roll…

          Gen­tle­man Zen

                Mas­ter Of Misery…Morbidity… Erot­ic Despair…

                    Prince of Pessimism…Pain…

                         Trou­ba­dour For Trou­bled Souls…

The grav­el-voiced singer-song­writer accu­mu­lat­ed hun­dreds of nick­names over a career span­ning more than half a cen­tu­ry. He wasn’t thrilled by some of them, remark­ing to the BBC, “You get tired, over the years, hear­ing that you’re the cham­pi­on of gloom.”

Tak­en all togeth­er, how­ev­er, they make for a decent com­pos­ite por­trait of a pro­lif­ic artist whose sen­su­al­i­ty, mor­dant wit, and obses­sion with love, loss, and redemp­tion nev­er wavered.

He took some hia­tus­es, includ­ing a 5‑year stint as a monk in California’s Mount Baldy monastery, but nev­er retired.

His final stu­dio album, You Want It Dark­er, was released mere weeks before his death.

Jour­nal­ist Rob Sheffield artic­u­lat­ed the Cohen mys­tique in a Rolling Stone eulo­gy:

This man was both the crack in every­thing and the light that gets in. Nobody wrote such mag­nif­i­cent­ly bleak bal­lads for brood­ing alone in the dark, star­ing at a win­dow or wall – “Joan of Arc,” “Chelsea Hotel,” “Tow­er of Song,” “Famous Blue Rain­coat,” “Clos­ing Time.” He was music’s top Jew­ish Cana­di­an ladies’ man before Drake was born, run­ning for the mon­ey and the flesh. Like Bowie and Prince, he tapped into his own realm of spir­i­tu­al and sex­u­al gno­sis, and like them, he went out at the peak of his musi­cal pow­ers. No song­writer ever adapt­ed to old age with more cun­ning or gus­to. 

Cohen also excelled at inter­views, leav­ing behind a wealth of gen­er­ous, free­wheel­ing record­ings, at least three of which have become fod­der for ani­ma­tors.

The ani­ma­tion at the top of the page is drawn from Cohen’s 1966 inter­view with the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Corporation’s Adri­enne Clark­son, short­ly after the release of his exper­i­men­tal nov­el, Beau­ti­ful Losers. (His debut album was still a year and a half away.)

Ear­li­er in the inter­view, Cohen men­tions the “hap­py rev­o­lu­tion” he encoun­tered in Toron­to after an extend­ed peri­od on the Greek island of Hydra:

I was walk­ing on Yorkville Street and it was jammed with beau­ti­ful, beau­ti­ful peo­ple last night. I thought maybe it could spread to the [oth­er] streets and maybe even … where’s the mon­ey dis­trict? Bay Street?… I thought maybe they could take that over soon, too.

How to tap into the source of all this hap­pi­ness?

The future Zen monk Cohen was pret­ty con­vinced it could be locat­ed by sit­ting qui­et­ly, though he doesn’t con­demn those using drugs or alco­hol as an assist, explain­ing that his fel­low Cana­di­an, abstract expres­sion­ist Harold Town, “gets beau­ti­ful under alco­hol. I get stu­pid and gen­er­al­ly throw up.”

8 years lat­er, WBAI’s Kath­leen Kendel came armed with a poem for Cohen to read on air, and also plumbed him as to the ori­gins of “Sis­ters of Mer­cy,” one of his best known songs, and the only one that did­n’t require him to “sweat over every word.” (Pos­si­bly the con­so­la­tion prize for his dashed hopes of erot­ic adven­ture with the song’s pro­tag­o­nists.)

(The ani­ma­tion here is by Patrick Smith for PBS’ Blank on Blank series.)

Ani­ma­tor Joe Don­ald­son riffs on an excerpt from Cohen’s final major inter­view, with The New York­er’s edi­tor-in-chief, David Rem­nick, above.

Rem­nick recalled that his sub­ject, who died a few days lat­er, was “in an ebul­lient mood for a man… who knew exact­ly where he was going, and he was head­ed there in a hur­ry. And at the same time, he was incred­i­bly gra­cious.”

The 82-year-old Cohen spoke enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly if some­what pes­simisti­cal­ly about hav­ing a lot of new mate­r­i­al to get through, “to put (his) house in order,” but also admit­ted, “some­times I just need to lie down.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Inter­view: Record­ed by David Rem­nick of The New York­er

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Leonard Cohen Plays a Spell­bind­ing Set at the 1970 Isle of Wight Fes­ti­val

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch the Trippy 1970s Animated Film Quasi at the Quackadero: Voted One of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of All Time

in Animation | March 16th, 2021

There cer­tain­ly are a lot of weirdos out today. —Qua­si at the Quack­adero

Ani­ma­tion is a pro­fes­sion where­in child­hood influ­ences hold vis­i­ble sway.

Today’s young ani­ma­tors are like­ly to cite the for­ma­tive pow­ers of Sponge­bob Squarepants, Avatar: The Last Air­ben­der, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and the films of Japan­ese mas­ter, Hayao Miyaza­ki.

As a child of the 50s, Sal­ly Cruik­shank, cre­ator of cult favorite Qua­si at the Quack­adero, above, mar­i­nat­ed in Carl Barks’ Don­ald Duck comics. In The Ani­ma­tors, an early-80’s PBS doc­u­men­tary cen­tered on the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area scene, she mused that “the images of the mon­ey bin and Don­ald Duck and the nephews and Uncle Scrooge all sunk into my sub­con­scious and came out lat­er, not real­ly look­ing like ducks to any­one but me, but in my mind they are ducks—Quasi, Snozzy, and Ani­ta.”

Qua­si at the Quack­adero places two of those odd ducks, con­tent­ed loafer Qua­si and his con­trol­ling, lisp­ing ladyfriend, Ani­ta, in a bizarre amuse­ment park where the attrac­tions include oppor­tu­ni­ties to “Relive One of the Shin­ing Moments of Your Life” and “See Last Night’s Dreams Today.”

The fun house mir­rors in the 3:10 mark’s Hall of Time are a par­tic­u­lar treat, con­tribut­ing to a car­ni­val of sen­so­ry over­load that’s as old timey as it is trip­py.

“You don’t need to take acid to have weird thoughts and imag­ine weird things,” Cruik­shank, whose oth­er favorites, telling­ly, include Win­sor McCay, Max Fleis­ch­er, and Yel­low Sub­ma­rine, replied to an admir­er on YouTube.

In 2009, Cruikshank’s dement­ed vision found its way into the Library of Con­gress’ Nation­al Film Reg­istry, an hon­or she cel­e­brat­ed with a blog post toast­ing her late boss, E.E. Gregg Snazelle of Snazelle Films:

The job was to exper­i­ment with ani­ma­tion, and do com­mer­cials for him when the jobs came in. He also hoped I’d fig­ure out how to solve 3‑d with­out glass­es.

Need­less to say I did­n’t solve 3‑d. I did­n’t even do very many com­mer­cials over ten years, but I showed up at 8:30, took an hour off for lunch and worked till 5:30. I was paid $350 a month, and I could live on that then.

He encour­aged me gen­er­ous­ly with­out ever pay­ing much atten­tion to me. These days if an oppor­tu­ni­ty like that even exist­ed, you’d be forced to sign all kinds of rights state­ments for char­ac­ters and con­tent cre­at­ed, but this was before “Star Wars” and he just seemed to be hap­py to have me around. We were nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly close. It spoiled me for any job after that.

I made all my “Qua­si” films while I was work­ing at Snazelle. Unfor­tu­nate­ly he’s no longer alive, but here’s to you, Gregg, with a big heart and much thanks.

Cruik­shank was indeed lucky to have secured a day job in her cho­sen field, pro­vid­ing her with access to pro­hib­i­tive­ly expen­sive equip­ment.

Remem­ber that her 1975 short pre­dates per­son­al com­put­ers, afford­able ani­ma­tion soft­ware, and a pletho­ra of free shar­ing plat­forms. Cruik­shank says that Qua­si at the Quack­adero required two years of near dai­ly work, liken­ing its ani­ma­tion process to “some­thing from the Mid­dle Ages.”

Of course, 1975 was also a peak year for under­ground comix, anoth­er tra­di­tion from which Qua­si sprung, right into the arms of a recep­tive audi­ence. Ani­ta and Qua­si also appear in Cruikshank’s one and only com­ic, Mag­ic Clams. In addi­tion to her work at Snazelle Stu­dios, Cruik­shank cock­tail wait­ressed in a hang­out for San Francisco’s under­ground car­toon­ists, includ­ing then-boyfriend Kim Deitch, Quasi’s “Spe­cial Art Assis­tant.” Bob Arm­strong and Al Dodge of R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders con­tributed the short’s score. Oth­er friends from the indie comix scene were enlist­ed to paint cells at 50 cents per.

Quasi’s inclu­sion in the Nation­al Film Reg­istry not only car­ries the impri­matur of cul­tur­al, his­toric, and aes­thet­ic sig­nif­i­cance, it sug­gests the psy­che­del­ic short is a sem­i­nal influ­ence in its own right.

We agree with KQED’s Sarah Hotchkiss that “the sat­u­rat­ed col­ors, hard edges, and con­stant move­ment of Cruik­shank’s ani­ma­tion could be source mate­r­i­al for the future real­iza­tion of Pee-wee’s Play­house.”

Both deliv­er us from real­i­ty into the lim­it­less pos­si­bil­i­ties of an anthro­po­mor­phic uni­verse.

Explore more of Sal­ly Cruickshank’s ani­ma­tions on her You Tube chan­nel, includ­ing her  car­toons for Sesame Street. Some of her ani­ma­tion cels, includ­ing ones from Qua­si at the Quack­adero are for sale in her Etsy shop.

Qua­si at the Quack­adero–vot­ed one of the 50 Great­est Car­toons, in a poll of 1,000 Ani­ma­tion Pro­fes­sion­als–will be added to our list of ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ani­ma­tions That Changed Cin­e­ma: The Ground­break­ing Lega­cies of Prince Achmed, Aki­ra, The Iron Giant & More

The Ori­gins of Ani­me: Watch Free Online 64 Ani­ma­tions That Launched the Japan­ese Ani­me Tra­di­tion

Bam­bi Meets Godzil­la: #38 on the List of The 50 Great­est Car­toons of All Time

Free Ani­mat­ed Films: From Clas­sic to Mod­ern 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

How Looney Tunes & Other Classic Cartoons Helped Americans Become Musically Literate

in Animation, Film, Music, Television | March 9th, 2021

Dis­tance learn­ing exper­i­ments on tele­vi­sion long pre­date the medium’s use as a con­duit for adver­tis­ing and mass enter­tain­ment. “Before it became known as the ‘idiot box,’” writes Matt Novak at Smith­son­ian, “tele­vi­sion was seen as the best hope for bring­ing enlight­en­ment to the Amer­i­can peo­ple.” The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment made way for edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming dur­ing TV’s ear­li­est years when the FCC reserved 242 non­com­mer­cial chan­nels “to encour­age edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming.”

Fund­ing did not mate­ri­al­ize, but the nation’s spir­it was will­ing, Life mag­a­zine main­tained: “the hunger of our cit­i­zen­ry for cul­ture and self-improve­ment has always been gross­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed.” Was this so? Per­haps. At the medium’s very begin­nings as stan­dard appli­ance in many Amer­i­can homes, there was Leonard Bern­stein. His Omnibus series debuted in 1952, “the first com­mer­cial tele­vi­sion out­let for exper­i­men­ta­tion in the arts,” notes Schuyler G. Chapin. Six years lat­er, he debuted his Young People’s Con­certs, spread­ing musi­cal lit­er­a­cy on TV through the for­mat for the next 14 years.

“It was to [Bernstein’s] — and our — good for­tune that he and the Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion grew to matu­ri­ty togeth­er,” wrote crit­ic Robert S. Clark in well-deserved trib­ute. Much the same could be said of some unlike­ly can­di­dates for TV musi­cal edu­ca­tors: Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and oth­er clas­sic ani­ma­tors, who did as much, and maybe more, to famil­iar­ize Amer­i­can view­ers with clas­si­cal music as per­haps all of Bernstein’s for­mi­da­ble efforts com­bined.

But Jones and his fel­low ani­ma­tors have not been giv­en their prop­er due, car­toon­ist and ani­ma­tor Vin­cent Alexan­der sug­gest­ed in a recent Twit­ter thread. Aim­ing to rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion, Alexan­der post­ed a wealth of exam­ples from Bugs Bun­ny & company’s con­tri­bu­tions to Amer­i­cans’ musi­cal lit­er­a­cy. Grant­ed, many of these car­toons start­ed as short films in the­aters, but they spent many more decades on TV, enter­tain­ing mil­lions of all ages while expos­ing them to a wide vari­ety of clas­si­cal com­po­si­tions.

Alexan­der points out how car­toons like the first Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheep­dog (1953) set a prece­dent for using Mendelssohn’s “Früh­lingslied (Spring Song)” in lat­er ani­mat­ed favorites like Ren & Stimpy and Sponge­bob Squarepants. He gives oblig­a­tory nods to Dis­ney and cites sev­er­al oth­er non-Looney Tunes exam­ples like Popeye’s “Spinach Over­ture,” based on Franz von Suppé’s “The Poet and Peas­ant Over­ture.” But on the whole, the thread focus­es on Warn­er Bros. clas­sics, espe­cial­ly those in which Bugs Bun­ny demon­strates his tal­ents as a con­duc­tor, pianist, and bar­ber to the bald Elmer Fudd.

“I don’t know who can lis­ten to the famous opera The Bar­ber of Seville by Gioachi­no Rossi­ni with­out think­ing of Bugs Bun­ny,” writes Alexan­der. “The way direc­tor Chuck Jones syn­chro­nizes the slap­stick action to the sound­track is flat-out mas­ter­ful.” There are fair ques­tions to be asked here — and Bern­stein would sure­ly ask them: How many of those peo­ple can appre­ci­ate Rossi­ni with­out the slap­stick? How many have heard, and seen, a full per­for­mance of his work sans Fudd?

Who can hear Wag­n­er with­out want­i­ng to sing at the top of their lungs, “Kill da wab­bit, Kill da wab­bit, Kill da wab­bit!” Good­ness knows, I can’t. Nonethe­less, Chuck Jones’ What’s Opera, Doc? has been rec­og­nized for its major con­tri­bu­tions to “Amer­i­can enlight­en­ment” — deemed “cul­tur­al­ly, his­tor­i­cal­ly or aes­thet­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant” by the Library of Con­gress and pre­served in the Nation­al Film Reg­istry. This, Alexan­der sug­gests, is as it should be. (Just con­sid­er the opera singers Bugs inspired). We should hon­or ani­ma­tion’s major con­tri­bu­tions to our cul­ture lit­er­a­cy: a mass musi­cal edu­ca­tion by car­toon. See many more clas­sic clips in Alexander’s Twit­ter thread here.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Evo­lu­tion of Chuck Jones, the Artist Behind Bugs Bun­ny, Daffy Duck & Oth­er Looney Tunes Leg­ends: A Video Essay

Kill the Wab­bit!: How the 1957 Bugs Bun­ny Car­toon, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” Inspired Today’s Opera Singers to First Get Into Opera

Books Come to Life in Clas­sic Car­toons from 1930s and 1940s

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

De-Stress with 30 Minutes of Relaxing Visuals from Director Hayao Miyazaki

in Animation, Nature, Psychology | February 22nd, 2021

What does it mean to describe some­thing as relax­ing?

Most of us would agree that a relax­ing thing is one that qui­ets both mind and body.

There’s sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence to sup­port the stress-reliev­ing, restora­tive effects of spend­ing time in nature.

Even go-go-go city slick­ers with a han­ker­ing for excite­ment and adven­ture tend to under­stand the con­cept of “relax­ing” as some­thing slow-paced and sur­prise-free.

HBO Max is tout­ing its col­lec­tion of ani­ma­tion mas­ter Hayao Miyaza­ki’s films with 30 Min­utes of Relax­ing Visu­als from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, above.

Will all of us expe­ri­ence those 30 min­utes as “relax­ing”?

Maybe not.

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li fans may find them­selves gripped by a sort of triv­ia con­test com­pet­i­tive­ness, shout­ing the names of the films that sup­ply these pas­toral visions—Ponyo! Grave of the Fire­flies!! Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle!!! 

Fledg­ling ani­ma­tors may feel as if they’ve swal­lowed a stone—no mat­ter how hard I try, noth­ing I make will approach the beau­ty on dis­play here.

Sticklers—and there are plen­ty leav­ing com­ments on YouTube—may be irri­tat­ed to real­ize that it’s actu­al­ly not 30 but 6 min­utes of visu­als, looped 5 times.

Insom­ni­acs (such as this reporter) may wish there was more loop­ing and less con­tent. The select­ed scenery is tran­quil enough, but the clips them­selves are brief, lead­ing to some jar­ring tran­si­tions.

(One pos­si­ble workaround for those hop­ing to lull them­selves to sleep: fid­dle with the speed set­tings. Played at .25 and mut­ed, this com­pi­la­tion becomes very relax­ing, much like artist Dou­glas Gordon’s video instal­la­tion, 24 Hour Psy­cho. Leave the sound up and the lap­ping waves, gen­tle winds, and chuff­ing trains turn into some­thing wor­thy of a slash­er flick.

Final­ly, with so much atten­tion focussed on Mars these days, we can’t help imag­in­ing what alien life forms might make of these earth­ly visions—ahh, this green, sheep-dot­ted pas­ture does low­er my stress lev­el… wait, WTF was THAT!? Noth­ing on my home plan­et pre­pared me for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a mon­strous winged house com­prised of over­grown bag­pipes and chick­en legs lum­ber­ing through the coun­try­side!

We con­cede that 30 Min­utes of Relax­ing Visu­als from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li is a pleas­ant thing to have play­ing in the back­ground as we wait for COVID restric­tions to be lift­ed… but ulti­mate­ly, you may find these 36 min­utes of music from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li films more gen­uine­ly relax­ing.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Makes 1,178 Images Free to Down­load from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & Oth­er Beloved Ani­mat­ed Films

A Mag­i­cal Look Inside the Paint­ing Process of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Artist Kazuo Oga

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Puts Online 400 Images from Eight Clas­sic Films, and Lets You Down­load Them for Free

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Watch “The Stroke,” a Hand-Animated Music Video Where the Visuals Came First & the Improvised Music Second

in Animation, Music | February 12th, 2021

The idea of a film score seems clear enough. Writ­ers, direc­tors, and edi­tors make a visu­al sto­ry, then com­posers enhance it with songs, cues, and themes. But things are nev­er so straight­for­ward in prac­tice. Music is always a part of the process, whether in the screenwriter’s choice of accom­pa­ni­ment (Taran­ti­no choos­es film music as soon as he has an idea for a film), the director’s mood dur­ing film­ing, or the “temp score” edi­tors use. Musi­cals are obvi­ous excep­tions, but on the whole, sto­ry and images come first, if not in the process, then in the viewer’s imag­i­na­tion.

A music video works dif­fer­ent­ly, “scor­ing” pre­re­cord­ed music with images, which then become accom­pa­ni­ment, a sec­ondary part added lat­er as enhance­ment. It is “an under­tak­ing Vin­cent de Boer knows well,” Grace Ebert writes at Colos­sal. “The Nether­lands-based artist has been work­ing with the jazz quar­tet Ill Con­sid­ered since 2017, lis­ten­ing to the band’s large­ly impro­vised melodies and cre­at­ing abstract ani­ma­tions, along­side stills for its 11 album cov­ers, to match.” In his most recent col­lab­o­ra­tion with the band, how­ev­er, de Boer got to take the lead.

“The Stroke” began with a painstak­ing ani­ma­tion that took two years to com­plete, a process you can see doc­u­ment­ed in the mak­ing-of video above. “With the help of his cre­ative part­ner Hans Schut­ten­beld, de Boer hand-drew 4,056 frames that range from dark, geo­met­ric shapes to gan­g­ly crea­tures to scenes that morph from one trip­py com­po­si­tion to the next.” De Boer describes the six and a half-minute piece as “the sto­ry of a brush­stroke: a trace of a move­ment per­formed by the artist with his instru­ment, the paint­brush.”

Once de Boer fin­ished the film, he passed it on to Ill Con­sid­ered, “who record­ed an entire­ly impro­vised track on its first view­ing.” The two come togeth­er at the top in a music video that “match­es the jazzy riffs with de Boer’s shapeshift­ing sequences in a cohe­sive con­ver­sa­tion between the two art­forms.” Can we call it a “music video” in a tra­di­tion­al sense? Or a kind of ekphra­sis in sound? Would we know, with­out the back­sto­ry, that the images came first?

Ill Con­sid­ered has also released “The Stroke” as an LP, “pack­aged with 12 of de Boer’s orig­i­nal art­works on the cov­er and inside” (see a selec­tion above and below)–a fur­ther chal­lenge to our seem­ing desire to rank sound and image. Which came first? Does it mat­ter? Can we see what Ill Con­sid­ered heard when they impro­vised over de Boer’s swirling draw­ings? Can we hear what de Boer was play­ing with the “instru­ment” of his brush? One thinks of the synes­the­sia of Kandin­sky, who saw music in his paint­ings, and of David Bowie, sit­ting in his blue room, won­der­ing about the gift of sound and vision….

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Come to Life in Art­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Scores: Stravin­sky, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & More

Watch Ani­mat­ed Scores to Music by Radio­head, Talk­ing Heads, LCD Soundsys­tem, Photek & Oth­er Elec­tron­ic/­Post-Punk/A­vant-Garde Musi­cians

Spheres Dance to the Music of Bach, Per­formed by Glenn Gould: An Ani­ma­tion from 1969

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast