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

in Animation, Film | February 10th, 2021

Ani­ma­tion is child­ish. So believe those who nev­er watch ani­mat­ed films — but also, on anoth­er, deep­er lev­el, those who hold up ani­mat­ed films as the most com­plete form of cin­e­ma. What­ev­er our gen­er­a­tion, most of us alive today grew up watch­ing car­toons meant in every sense for chil­dren, and often artis­ti­cal­ly flim­sy ones at that. But even on such a low-nutri­tion view­ing reg­i­men, we could now and again glimpse the vast pos­si­bil­i­ties of the form. Or per­haps it was just our imag­i­na­tion — but then, as Stephen King once point­ed out, noth­ing is “just” our imag­i­na­tion in child­hood, a time when we occu­py “a secret world that exists by its own rules and lives in its own cul­ture.”

In order to nav­i­gate this real­i­ty apart, where noth­ing is entire­ly for real and noth­ing entire­ly pre­tend, chil­dren “think around cor­ners instead of in straight lines.” The best ani­ma­tors retain this abil­i­ty into adult­hood, har­ness­ing it to cre­ate a pur­er kind of cin­e­ma that reflects and engages the imag­i­na­tion in a way even the freest live-action films nev­er can. The work of such ani­ma­tors con­sti­tutes the sub­ject mat­ter of “The Ani­ma­tion that Changed Cin­e­ma,” a new essay from The Cin­e­ma Car­tog­ra­phy. In just over half an hour, the series’ cre­ators Lewis Bond and Luiza Liz Bond explore ani­ma­tion pro­duced all over the world over near­ly the past cen­tu­ry in search of the films that have widened the bound­aries of the medi­um.

Though most video essays from The Cin­e­ma Car­tog­ra­phy and its pre­de­ces­sor Chan­nel Criswell have focused on con­ven­tion­al film, Bond has already demon­strat­ed his pro­found under­stand­ing of ani­ma­tion in video essays on Stu­dio Ghi­b­li co-founder Hayao Miyaza­ki and the acclaimed cult ani­me series Cow­boy Bebop. “The Ani­ma­tion that Changed Cin­e­ma” spends a great deal of time on oth­er works from Japan, the one coun­try that has done more than any oth­er to ele­vate the ani­mat­ed film, includ­ing that of Miyaza­k­i’s Ghi­b­li part­ner Isao Taka­ha­ta, Per­fect Blue auteur Satoshi Kon, and Kat­suhi­ro Oto­mo, whose Aki­ra per­ma­nent­ly changed much of the world’s under­stand­ing of “car­toons” as cin­e­mat­ic art. But as with The Cin­e­ma Car­tog­ra­phy’s pre­vi­ous “The Cin­e­matog­ra­phy that Changed Cin­e­ma,” the cul­tur­al-geo­graph­i­cal man­date ranges wide­ly.

Among these vision­ary ani­ma­tors are sev­er­al pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture: the Ger­man Lotte Reiniger, cre­ator of the all-sil­hou­ette The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed; Euro­peans from far­ther east (and pos­sessed of wilder sen­si­bil­i­ties) like Jan Švankma­jer; Amer­i­cans like Don Hertzfeldt, the Broth­ers Quay, and Wes Ander­son (whose fil­mog­ra­phy includes the stop-motion The Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs). That last group includes even Hol­ly­wood direc­tor Brad Bird, now best known for Pixar movies like The Incred­i­bles and Rata­touille, but here cel­e­brat­ed for The Iron Giant, a pic­ture that sank upon its release, but in the two decades since has come to be appre­ci­at­ed as just the kind of work of art that, as Bond puts it, “makes us for­get that we’re watch­ing mov­ing draw­ings” — what­ev­er age we hap­pen to be.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Ani­mat­ed Films: From Clas­sic to Mod­ern

How the Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Work Their Ani­mat­ed Mag­ic, Explained in 4 Video Essays

What Made Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Ani­ma­tor Isao Taka­ha­ta (RIP) a Mas­ter: Two Video Essays

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

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

The Cin­e­matog­ra­phy That Changed Cin­e­ma: Explor­ing Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, Stan­ley Kubrick, Peter Green­away & Oth­er Auteurs

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.

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Watch 36 Short Animations That Tell the Origin Stories of Mexico’s Indigenous Peoples in Their Own Languages

in Animation, Language, Travel | February 2nd, 2021

In our efforts to pre­serve endan­gered species we seem to over­look some­thing equal­ly impor­tant. To me it is a sign of a deeply dis­turbed civ­i­liza­tion where tree hug­gers and whale hug­gers in their weird­ness are accept­able while no one embraces the last speak­ers of a lan­guage.

 — Wern­er Her­zog, Encoun­ters at the End of the World

Trees and whales aside, we sus­pect the ever quotable Her­zog would warm to fel­low direc­tor Gabriela Badil­lo’s 68 Voic­es, 68 Hearts, a series of one-minute ani­ma­tions that pre­serve indige­nous Mex­i­can sto­ries with nar­ra­tion pro­vid­ed by native speak­ers.

“It was cre­at­ed in order to help fos­ter pride, respect, and the use of indige­nous Mex­i­can lan­guages between speak­ers and non-speak­ers, as well as to help reduce dis­crim­i­na­tion and fos­ter a sense of pride towards all com­mu­ni­ties and cul­tures that are part of the cul­tur­al rich­ness that makes up Mex­i­co,” Badil­lo says in an inter­view with Awasqa.

The project stemmed from a real­iza­tion in the wake of the death of her grand­fa­ther, a Max­canu from Yucatan:

Aside from los­ing a loved one, I real­ized that an enor­mous wis­dom had also been lost: a lan­guage, sto­ries, tra­di­tions and cus­toms, a whole world had dis­solved with him.

Each ani­ma­tion involves col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nation­al Insti­tute of Indige­nous Lan­guage and the com­mu­ni­ty whose sto­ry is being shared. Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers choose the sub­ject, then sup­ply nar­ra­tion and trans­la­tion. Their chil­dren draw scenes from the select­ed sto­ry, which steers the style of ani­ma­tion.

Pri­or to being released to the gen­er­al pub­lic, each film is pre­sent­ed to its com­mu­ni­ty of ori­gin, along with a book­let of sug­gest­ed edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ties for par­ents and teach­ers to use in con­junc­tion with screen­ings. Box­es of post­cards fea­tur­ing art­work from the series are donat­ed to the com­mu­ni­ty school.

Some of the entries, like the above About Earth­quakes and the Ori­gin of Life on Earth, nar­rat­ed in Ch’ol by Euge­nia Cruz Mon­te­jo, pack a mas­sive amount of sto­ry into the allot­ted minute:

They say many years ago Ch’u­j­ti­at, the Heav­en’s lord, cre­at­ed the Earth with 12 immor­tal men to car­ry it. And it is when they get tired that the Earth moves, pro­vok­ing earth­quakes.

At the same time he cre­at­ed the first men, who were ungrate­ful, so Ch’u­j­ti­at sent the flood and turned the sur­vivors into mon­keys, and the inno­cent chil­dren into stars. He then cre­at­ed our first par­ents, na’al, Ixic y Xun’Ok, who mul­ti­plied and pop­u­lat­ed the Earth. 

That’s how life on Earth began.That’s how the Ch’oles tell it.

Vari­ants of “that’s how we tell it” are a com­mon refrain, as in the Cora (also known as Náay­eri) sto­ry of how the Moth­er God­dess cre­at­ed earth (and oth­er gods), nar­rat­ed by Pedro Muñiz López.

Here is the writ­ten ver­sion, in Cora:

E’itɨ tiuséi­jre cháana­ka

Yaapú ti’nyúukari tɨkɨn a’najpú ɨtyáj nái­mi ajnáana Náa­sisaa, Téijkame jemín ɨ cháana­ka ajtá ɨ máxkɨrai, góutaaguaka’a ɨ tabóu­jsimua yaati’xáata tɨkɨn mata’a já guatéchaɨn majtá tyuipuán iyakúi cháana­ka japuá.

Muxáj kɨmen­pú góutaaguaka’a tɨ’kí nájkɨ’ta gojoutyáj­tua. Áuna me’séira aɨjme tabou­jsimua matákua’naxɨ.

Tɨ’kí aɨj­na tanáana Náa­sisaa, ukɨpuapú guatákɨɨnitya’a, yán guajaikagua’xɨjre uyóu­j­mua matɨ’jmí jet­sán guatyáakɨ yán miye’ntiné tajapuá. Kapú aɨn jé’i, matákua’naxɨ máj akábibɨɨ yán juté’e, makaupɨxɨɨ ujet­sé matɨ’jmí chuéj kɨj ten­tyóu metya’úrara, ajtá ɨ Taja’as xu’rabe’táana tiuɨrɨj tyau­tyáj­tua ajpúi tanáana Náa­sisaa tsíikɨri guatyákɨs­ta­ka ukɨpuá kɨmen. Japuan­pú aɨj­na chuéj utía­j­ka tɨ’kí goutaíjte aɨjme tabóu­jsimua guatái­jte máj atapa’tsaren metya’tanya’tɨkɨ’káa ayaapú tiutéjbe máj tiunéi­tan.

Ayaapú tiuséi­jre cháana­ka. Ayáj tigua’nyúukari Náay­eri.

Badillo’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion is well served by one of our favorites, The Ori­gin of the Moun­tains. In addi­tion to moun­tains, this Cucapá sto­ry, nar­rat­ed by Inocen­cia González Sainz, delves into the ori­gin of oceans and the Col­orado Riv­er, though fair warning—it may be dif­fi­cult to restore class­room order once the stu­dents hear that tes­ti­cles and ear­wax fig­ure promi­nent­ly.

To watch a playlist of the 36 ani­ma­tions com­plet­ed so far with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles, click here.

68 Voic­es, 68 Heart’s Kick­starter page has more infor­ma­tion about this ongo­ing project. Con­tri­bu­tions will go toward ani­mat­ing sto­ries in the three lan­guages that are at the high­est risk of dis­ap­pear­ing—Akateko, Popolo­ca, and Ku’ahl.

As Badil­lo writes:

When a lan­guage dis­ap­pears, not only a sound, a way of writ­ing, a let­ter or a word goes away. Some­thing much deep­er than just a form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion dis­ap­pears — a way of see­ing and con­ceiv­ing the world, sto­ries, tales, a way of nam­ing and relat­ing to things, an enor­mous knowl­edge that we should relearn because of its deep respect with nature.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

200+ Films by Indige­nous Direc­tors Now Free to View Online: A New Archive Launched by the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Peru­vian Schol­ar Writes & Defends the First The­sis Writ­ten in Quechua, the Main Lan­guage of the Incan Empire

Opti­cal Scan­ning Tech­nol­o­gy Lets Researchers Recov­er Lost Indige­nous Lan­guages from Old Wax Cylin­der Record­ings

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.

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Innovative Pinscreen Animations of Kafka’s “Before the Law”, Gogol’s “The Nose” & Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” (1932–1972)

in Animation, Literature | January 21st, 2021

What do Franz Kaf­ka, Niko­lai Gogol, and Mod­est Mus­sorgsky have in com­mon? They stand alone among their peers for their dark­ly humor­ous sen­si­bil­i­ties, fas­ci­na­tion with the grotesque, imag­i­na­tive takes on cul­tur­al tra­di­tions, and a pre­dis­po­si­tion for the pro­to-sur­re­al. Like the odd fig­ure lurch­ing through the first move­ment of Mussorgsky’s Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion, they are gnom­ic artists: enig­mat­ic and ambigu­ous, giv­en to the apho­ris­tic in sto­ries and tone poems of mon­strous and mar­velous beings. It’s easy to imag­ine the three of them, or their works at least, in cryp­tic con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er.

We might imag­ine that con­ver­sa­tion as we watch three works by these major Euro­pean artists—all of which we’ve fea­tured on the site before—animated via the painstak­ing pin­screen method pio­neered by hus­band-and-wife, Russ­ian-and-French duo Alexan­der Alex­eieff and Claire Park­er.

The two invent­ed the tech­nique in the 1930s. Ded­i­cat­ed to this extreme­ly labor-inten­sive process, they made 6 short films over a peri­od of 50 years, includ­ing adap­ta­tions of Kafka’s “Before the Law,” nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles, Gogol’s “The Nose,” and Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Moun­tain.

We know the Mus­sorgsky piece as a ter­ri­fy­ing vignette from Walt Disney’s Fan­ta­sia. Sev­en years before that mar­riage of clas­si­cal music and ani­ma­tion came out in 1940, Alex­eieff and Park­er released their ver­sion, at the top. Steve Stanch­field at Car­toon Research calls it “one of the most unusu­al and unique look­ing ani­mat­ed films ever cre­at­ed.” Its “delight­ful and at times hor­ri­fy­ing imagery… chal­lenge the view­er to com­pre­hend both their mean­ing and the mys­tery of how they were cre­at­ed.” The same could be said of “The Nose” (1963), whose impro­vised sound­track by Hai-Minh adds dra­mat­ic ten­sion to the eerie ani­ma­tion.

Each of these films uses the same method, a hand­made pin­screen device in which thou­sands of pins are pushed by hand out­ward and inward for each frame to cre­ate areas of light or dark. The pair intend­ed to move beyond the flat­ness of con­ven­tion­al cel ani­ma­tion tech­niques and cap­ture the depth and con­trast of chiaroscuro. They achieved this through the most aching­ly slow process imag­in­able, yet “the illu­sion of dimen­sion­al draw­ing in ani­ma­tion has rarely been cre­at­ed bet­ter,” Stanch­field writes, not even in the most sophis­ti­cat­ed com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed imagery.

Alex­eieff and Parker’s “Before the Law,” from a para­ble in Kafka’s The Tri­al, takes a pic­ture-book approach to the ani­ma­tion that would reward younger view­ers. Welles’ nar­ra­tion anchors the pro­duc­tion with even more than his usu­al grav­i­tas. In 1972, they returned to Mus­sorgsky, in the short Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion, above. Here, after a pro­logue in French and the styl­iza­tions of the open­ing Pre­lude, the fig­ure of the “The Gnome” appears, a translu­cent homuncu­lus hatch­ing from an egg and danc­ing across the piano keys. I like to think Mus­sorgsky, Kaf­ka, and Gogol would find this imagery irre­sistible.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kafka’s Para­ble “Before the Law” Nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles & Illus­trat­ed with Pin­screen Art

Night on Bald Moun­tain: An Eery, Avant-Garde Pin­screen Ani­ma­tion Based on Mussorgsky’s Mas­ter­piece

Niko­lai Gogol’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, “The Nose,” Ani­mat­ed With the Aston­ish­ing Pin­screen Tech­nique (1963)

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

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

in Animation, Art | January 18th, 2021

The mag­ic of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s films owes much to their char­ac­ters: the high-fly­ing Princess Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind; the World War I‑fighter ace-turned-swine Por­co Rosso; the spir­it­ed ten-year-old Chi­hi­ro, spir­it­ed away into the realm of folk­lore; the dog-rac­coon-bear-cat for­est spir­it known only as Totoro. But to under­stand what makes these fig­ures come alive, we must remem­ber that they inhab­it liv­ing worlds. A Ghi­b­li pro­duc­tion stands or falls (which would still count as an artis­tic tri­umph at most oth­er stu­dios) on not just char­ac­ter design and ani­ma­tion but back­ground art, which demands the kind of care­ful and inspired work you can wit­ness in the video above.

The artist at the desk is Kazuo Oga, a vet­er­an back­ground artist cred­it­ed as art direc­tor on Ghi­b­li’s My Neigh­bor Totoro, Only Yes­ter­day, Pom Poko, Princess Mononoke, and The Tale of Princess Kaguya, among oth­er ani­me projects. His work begins at about 9:30 in the morn­ing, as he brings out a mod­est­ly size sheet of paper and pre­pares its sur­face to receive paint.

24 dif­fer­ent col­ors of Japan­ese-made Nick­er Poster Col­or brand gouache stand ready right near­by, and with them Oga applies the ground, or first lay­er of paint. Even before he takes a seat, a for­est scene has clear­ly begun to emerge. Then down­ward strokes become the thin trunks of its trees, which by the ear­ly after­noon have branch­es.

Broad­ly speak­ing, Oga works from the large details in toward the small, arriv­ing mid­way through the 2:00 hour to the stage of adding light pur­ple flow­ers. These are Paulow­n­ia, called kiri in Japan, where these “princess trees” (that also appear on the offi­cial Gov­ern­ment Seal) car­ry a cer­tain sym­bol­ic weight. The final paint­ing, Paulow­n­ia Rain (or kiri same), emerges only at 3:40 in the after­noon, after six hours of paint­ing. This evoca­tive for­est land­scape attests to the truth of an inver­sion of the Pare­to prin­ci­ple, in that the parts of the job that seem small­est require most of the work to achieve — and to the truth of the Ghi­b­li’s appar­ent artis­tic prin­ci­ple that every pain is worth tak­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Pro­duc­er Toshio Suzu­ki Teach­es You How to Draw Totoro in Two Min­utes

Hayao Miyazaki’s Sketch­es Show­ing How to Draw Char­ac­ters Run­ning: From 1980 Edi­tion of Ani­ma­tion Mag­a­zine

Watch Hayao Miyaza­ki Ani­mate the Final Shot of His Final Fea­ture Film, The Wind Ris­es

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

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

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­terBooks 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Animation Pioneer Lotte Reiniger Adapts Mozart’s The Magic Flute into an All-Silhouette Short Film (1935)

in Animation, History, Music | January 6th, 2021

When Lotte Reiniger began mak­ing ani­ma­tion in the late 1910s, her work looked like noth­ing that had ever been shot on film. In fact, it also resem­bles noth­ing else achieved in the realm of cin­e­ma in the cen­tu­ry since. Even the enor­mous­ly bud­get­ed and staffed pro­duc­tions of major stu­dios have yet to repli­cate the stark, qua­ver­ing charm of her sil­hou­ette ani­ma­tions. Those stu­dios do know full well, how­ev­er, what Reiniger real­ized long before: that no oth­er medi­um can more vivid­ly real­ize the visions of fairy tales. To believe that, one needs only watch her 1922 Cin­derel­la or 1955 Hansel and Gre­tel, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

It was between those pro­duc­tions that Reiniger made the work for which she’s now best remem­bered: the 1926 One Thou­sand and One Nights pas­tiche The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed, the very first fea­ture in ani­ma­tion his­to­ry. Nine years lat­er, she turned to source mate­r­i­al clos­er at hand, cul­tur­al­ly speak­ing, and adapt­ed a sec­tion of Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart’s opera The Mag­ic Flute.

You can watch the result, the ten-minute Papa­geno, at the top of the post. A bird-catch­er, the title char­ac­ter finds one day that all the avians around him have become tiny human females. Though none of them stick around, an ostrich lat­er deliv­ers him a full-size maid­en, only for a giant snake to dri­ve her away. Will Papageno defeat the ser­pent and reclaim his beloved, or sub­mit to despair?

“The mag­ic of the fairy tale has always been her great­est fas­ci­na­tion, yet her own inter­pre­ta­tions attain a unique qual­i­ty,” says the nar­ra­tor of the 1970 doc­u­men­tary short just above, in which Reiniger re-enacts the thor­ough­ly ana­log and high­ly labor-inten­sive mak­ing of Papageno. “The fig­ures she cuts out and con­structs were orig­i­nal­ly inspired by the pup­pets used in tra­di­tion­al East­ern shad­ow the­aters, of which the sil­hou­ette form is the log­i­cal con­clu­sion.” This hybridiza­tion of ven­er­a­ble nar­ra­tive mate­r­i­al from West­ern lands like Ger­many with an even more ven­er­a­ble aes­thet­ic from East­ern lands like Indone­sia has assured only part of her work’s endur­ing appeal. “Ms. Reiniger will con­tin­ue to have a strange affec­tion for each of her fig­ures,” the nar­ra­tor notes. This is “an under­stand­able affec­tion, for in their flex­i­bil­i­ty they have almost human char­ac­ter­is­tics of move­ment.” It’s an affec­tion any­one with an inter­est in ani­ma­tion, fairy tales, or Mozart will share.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ground­break­ing Sil­hou­ette Ani­ma­tions of Lotte Reiniger: Cin­derel­la, Hansel and Gre­tel, and More

The First Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture Film: The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed by Lotte Reiniger (1926)

Mozart’s Diary Where He Com­posed His Final Mas­ter­pieces Is Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

See Mozart Played on Mozart’s Own Fortepi­ano, the Instru­ment That Most Authen­ti­cal­ly Cap­tures the Sound of His Music

Hear All of Mozart in a Free 127-Hour Playlist

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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

in Animation, Film | December 31st, 2020

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li make lush and cap­ti­vat­ing ani­mat­ed films. So, on occa­sion, do oth­er stu­dios, but of how many of their pic­tures can we say that each and every still frame con­sti­tutes a work of art in itself? As a test, try putting on a Ghi­b­li movie and paus­ing at ran­dom, then doing the same for any oth­er major ani­mat­ed fea­ture of sim­i­lar vin­tage: chances are, the for­mer will far more often pro­duce an image you’d like to cap­ture in high res­o­lu­tion and use for your desk­top back­ground, or per­haps even print out and hang on your wall.

Now, Stu­dio Ghi­b­li have pro­vid­ed such images them­selves, in an online col­lec­tion (click here and scroll down the page) that offers more than 1,100 stills from their films, all free for the down­load. This trove has grown con­sid­er­ably since we first fea­tured it this past fall here at Open Cul­ture.

In that post, Ted Mills quotes Ghi­b­li pro­duc­er Toshio Suzu­ki as instruct­ing vis­i­tors to use the images “freely with­in the scope of com­mon sense.” It was Suzu­ki, you may recall, who once taught us to draw the epony­mous feline-ursine star of My Neigh­bor Totoro, the most beloved of the stu­dio’s works — down­load­able frames from which Ghi­b­li put up only in Novem­ber.

Along with Totoro came images from the acclaimed (and high­ly suc­cess­ful) likes of Spir­it­ed Away and Por­co Rosso, as well as its less­er known roman­tic dra­ma Ocean Waves, made for tele­vi­sion by the stu­dio’s younger ani­ma­tors in the ear­ly 1990s. The most recent update, made ear­li­er this month, includes images from 1984’s Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, which is now con­sid­ered Ghi­b­li’s hon­orary first pic­ture, hav­ing been direct­ed by co-founder Hayao Miyaza­ki before the stu­dio’s foun­da­tion. There are also stills from 2016’s The Red Tur­tle, the stark, word­less fea­ture pro­duced by Suzu­ki but direct­ed by Dutch ani­ma­tor Michaël Dudok de Wit.

Though the site is only in Japan­ese, any­one who’s seen at least a few Ghi­b­li movies should have no prob­lem find­ing their favorites, from the afore­men­tioned res­i­dents of great­est-ani­mat­ed-films-of-all-time lists to high­ly respect­ed but low­er-pro­file works like Only Yes­ter­day by Miyaza­k­i’s Ghi­b­li-found­ing parter, the late Isao Taka­ha­ta. There’s also plen­ty to delight Ghi­b­li fans of a more die-hard per­sua­sion: take, for exam­ple, the visu­al mate­ri­als from “On Your Mark,” the futur­is­tic, non­lin­ear ani­mat­ed music video made for rock duo Chage & Aska. What­ev­er your own lev­el of invest­ment in the work of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, you’d do well to assume that they’ve only just got start­ed putting up their archives.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Free Back­grounds for Vir­tu­al Meet­ings: Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away & More

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Pro­duc­er Toshio Suzu­ki Teach­es You How to Draw Totoro in Two Min­utes

Hayao Miyazaki’s Sketch­es Show­ing How to Draw Char­ac­ters Run­ning: From 1980 Edi­tion of Ani­ma­tion Mag­a­zine

Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Reimag­ined in the Style of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch the Oscar-Winning “Gerald McBoing-Boing” (1950): It’s Ranked as the 9th Greatest Cartoon of All Time

in Animation | December 11th, 2020

To under­stand how rev­o­lu­tion­ary this short film from 1950 was to con­tem­po­rary view­ers, just con­sid­er the pre­vi­ous four decades (or so) of ani­mat­ed films. There were talk­ing ani­mals, singing ani­mals, bounc­ing ani­mals, and in Dis­ney films humans based on roto­scop­ing live action. From its hum­ble and humor­ous begin­nings, ani­ma­tion was strid­ing towards real­ism as fast as it could. But in the first minute of this adap­ta­tion of a Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel sto­ry, you can see that’s all been tossed out the win­dow, a win­dow shaped like a trape­zoid.

This ani­ma­tion from the rene­gade stu­dio Unit­ed Pro­duc­tions of Amer­i­ca (UPA) ush­ered in the space age look that suit­ed the dynam­ic post-war Amer­i­can econ­o­my. The pace of life was fran­tic, sleek, mod­ern, and the ani­mat­ed char­ac­ters and back­grounds fol­low suit: laws of per­spec­tive are gone. Back­grounds are sug­gest­ed with one or two objects, and col­or is impres­sion­is­tic, not real­is­tic. The char­ac­ters are cute, but drawn with an econ­o­my of line.

Which would all suit a sto­ry by Dr. Seuss that already exist­ed as a children’s record, told in his famil­iar rhyth­mic rhyming style.

The Ger­ald of the title is a young boy who doesn’t speak in words, but in sound effects. His par­ents freak out, a doc­tor can’t help, and his class­mates and school reject him. But like many a Dr. Seuss sto­ry, Gerald’s prob­lem is actu­al­ly a gift, and the film con­cludes in a pos­i­tive way, cel­e­brat­ing dif­fer­ence. The film went on to win the Oscar for Best Ani­mat­ed Short that year, beat­ing out the estab­lished stu­dios of Warn­er Bros., MGM, and Dis­ney. It paved the way for the more min­i­mal ani­ma­tion of Han­na-Bar­bera (Gerald’s dad has a pro­to-George Jet­son look) and opened the door for more abstract films from the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da, and influ­ence the Klasky Csupo stu­dio and oth­ers in the 1990s ani­ma­tion rebirth.

UPA was formed from the exo­dus of sev­er­al top Dis­ney ani­ma­tors after a cre­ators’ strike in 1941. Head among them was John Hub­ley, a lay­out artist who bris­tled against Disney’s real­ism and want­ed to branch out. At first known as Indus­tri­al Film and Poster Ser­vice, the stu­dio made films for the Unit­ed Auto Work­ers and for the Army, mak­ing edu­ca­tion­al films for young pri­vates with the Pri­vate Sna­fu series after Warn­er Bros stepped aside. Chuck Jones helped direct these shorts. Anti-Com­mu­nist sen­ti­ment put an end to gov­ern­ment work, and, so by the late 1940s, UPA decid­ed to take on the big stu­dios with the­atri­cal shorts and after “Ger­ald McBo­ing-Boing” was a hit, they con­tin­ued with the Mr. Magoo series, sev­er­al McBo­ing­Bo­ing sequels, and a TV ver­sion of Dick Tra­cy.

The stu­dio dried up in the 1960s and instead of ani­ma­tion teamed up with Toho Stu­dios in Japan and helped intro­duce a gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can audi­ences to kai­ju (giant mon­ster) films like Godzil­la by re-cut­ting and dis­trib­ut­ing many of their films.

Along with its Oscar, “Ger­ald McBo­ing-Boing” is now part of the Library of Con­gress’ Film Reg­istry as a sig­nif­i­cant Amer­i­can Film and often gets vot­ed as one of the great­est ani­mat­ed films of the 20th Cen­tu­ry. (It was vot­ed the 9th best ani­ma­tion of all time, by 1,000 ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als.)

Last­ly, Gerald’s last name lives on as the inspi­ra­tion for the “hap­py mutants” zine and web­site, boingboing.net.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Chuck Jones’ 9 Rules For Draw­ing Road Run­ner Car­toons, or How to Cre­ate a Min­i­mal­ist Mas­ter­piece

Leg­endary Ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones Cre­ates an Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion About the Virtues of Uni­ver­sal Health Care (1949)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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The Internet Archive is Saving Classic Flash Animations & Games from Extinction: Explore Them Online

in Animation, Archives, Internet Archive, Software, Technology | December 2nd, 2020

Flash is final­ly dead, and the world… does not mourn. Because the announce­ment of its end actu­al­ly came three years ago, “like a guil­lo­tine in a crowd­ed town square,” writes Rhett Jones at Giz­mo­do. It was a slow exe­cu­tion, but it was just. So use­ful in Web 1.0 days for mak­ing ani­ma­tions, games, and seri­ous pre­sen­ta­tions, Flash had become a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, a viral car­ri­er that couldn’t be patched fast enough to keep the hack­ers out. “Adobe’s Flash died many deaths, but we can tru­ly throw some dirt on its grave and say our final good­byes because it’s get­ting the preser­va­tion treat­ment.” Like the ani­mat­ed GIF, Flash ani­ma­tions have their own online library.

All those love­ly Flash memes—the danc­ing bad­gers and the snake, peanut but­ter and jel­ly time—will be saved for per­plexed future gen­er­a­tions, who will use them to deci­pher the runes of ear­ly 2000’s inter­net-speak. How­ev­er sil­ly they may seem now, there’s no deny­ing that these arti­facts were once cen­tral con­stituents of pop cul­ture.

Flash was much more than a dis­trac­tion or frus­trat­ing brows­er crash­er. It pro­vid­ed a “gate­way,” Jason Scott writes at the Inter­net Archive blog, “for many young cre­ators to fash­ion near-pro­fes­sion­al-lev­el games and ani­ma­tion, giv­ing them the first steps to a lat­er career.” (Even if it was a career mak­ing “advergames.”)

A sin­gle per­son work­ing in their home could hack togeth­er a con­vinc­ing pro­gram, upload it to a huge clear­ing­house like New­grounds, and get feed­back on their work. Some cre­ators even made entire series of games, each improv­ing on the last, until they became full pro­fes­sion­al releas­es on con­soles and PCs.

Always true to its pur­pose, the Inter­net Archive has devised a way to store and play Flash ani­ma­tions using emu­la­tors cre­at­ed by Ruf­fle and the Blue­Max­i­ma Flash­point Project, who have already archived tens of thou­sands of Flash games. All those adorable Home­s­tar Run­ner car­toons? Saved from extinc­tion, which would have been their fate, since “with­out a Flash play­er, flash ani­ma­tions don’t work.” This may seem obvi­ous, but it bears some expla­na­tion. Where image, sound, and video files can be con­vert­ed to oth­er for­mats to make them acces­si­ble to mod­ern play­ers, Flash ani­ma­tions can only exist in a world with Flash. They are like Edison’s wax cylin­ders, with­out the charm­ing three-dimen­sions.

Scott goes into more depth on the rise and fall of Flash, a his­to­ry that begins in 1993 with Flash’s pre­de­ces­sor, SmartS­ketch, which became Future­Wave, which became Flash when it was pur­chased by Macro­me­dia, then by Adobe. By 2005, it start­ed to become unsta­ble, and could­n’t evolve along with new pro­to­cols. HTML5 arrived in 2014 to issue the “final death-blow,” kind of.… Will Flash be missed? It’s doubt­ful. But “like any con­tain­er, Flash itself is not as much of a loss as all the art and cre­ativ­i­ty it held.” The Archive cur­rent­ly hosts over 1,500 Flash ani­ma­tions from those turn-of-the-mil­len­ni­um inter­net days, and there are many more to come. Enter the Archive’s Flash col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The U.S. Nation­al Archives Launch­es an Ani­mat­ed GIF Archive: See Whit­man, Twain, Hem­ing­way & Oth­ers in Motion

36,000 Flash Games Have Been Archived and Saved Before Flash Goes Extinct: Play Them Offline

What the Entire Inter­net Looked Like in 1973: An Old Map Gets Found in a Pile of Research Papers

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

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