Early animation
Persistence of vision
phenakitascop
zoetrope
Winsor McKay - Gertie the Dinosuar
Lotte Reiniger- "The Adventures of Prince Achmed"
Norman McLaren - "Neighbors"
Michael Langan - "Dahlia"
PES - you may select any of the PES short films
Select a work - describe what you saw. Describe how this works employs the persistence of vision concept. How does this work succeed as an animation as opposed to standard filmmaking.
This week, i found the animation of Gertie the dinosaur one of the most interesting pieces. it is inconceivable to believe that one of the first animations ever made was so flawless. Although the piece was just about a dinosaur following commands by some imaginary person, i found the video interesting in the way that the lines from the image before was still perceived, but at the same time the eye still viewed the image as a moving image instead of separate sub-sequential still images. The addition of the music really added to the time portion of the animation, making it more cohesive and into a perceived video rather than slide show. When the serpent comes, the animation becomes really fast and its sequence is a really fast moving sequence of videos. I find this animation extremely impressive. comparing it to other animations from this day and time makes it look dated, however i think it makes it more valuable and able to enjoy.
ReplyDeleteWinsor McKay created the animation “Gertie the Dinosaur” in 1914, a relatively early time in the era of cinema. He set an audience up to watch his silent film. The title cards in the film interacted with his audience as he introduced them to his dinosaur. The dinosaur was animated to come out of a cave, eat a tree, and lift her feet up. This work employs persistence of vision by drawing the characters frame-by-frame and spliced together to make one film so that in the 24 frames-per-second frame rate it appears that Gertie was an actual living creature captured on film. “Gertie the Dinosaur” really succeeds as an animation as opposed to standard filmmaking through its distinct drawing style and the fact that dinosaurs aren’t alive any longer. McKay discovered how to use his artistic skills by drawing hundreds of sketches and cutting them together to create movement. Typical filmmaking requires a camera that will catch images successively if the camera is running, as well as capturing something that actually exists in front of the camera on film. McKay stunned me due to his standard of animation for the era he was living in.
ReplyDeleteNorman McLaren's "Neighbors" is an animated short about two characters who cannot agree on their property lines. The animation depicts the two neighbors crawling, flying, jumping and running about as they each try to claim their stake in the land and the little flower growing right between them. This animation requires significant persistence and patience in order to effectively achieve it's concept. Unlike typical movies, that would allow for long recording sessions in which large scenes could be recorded simultaneously, "Neighbors" employs a stop motion technique, and is therefor a series of individual photographs with only incremental movements on behalf of the characters. Although the end result shows a fluid animated picture, the process is very staccato and therefor adds an interesting element to the piece. For example, the scenes in which the neighbors were flying, required that the actors jump repeatedly into the air and then compile the photographs into a set of moving images. This demands a new level of respect from the audience for the time and effort needed. It succeeds as an animation, because of the technique used to make it and for the unusual movements of the characters that are achieved without other tools.
ReplyDeleteFor this weeks lecture I was really interested in PES. I thought a lot of his work had a lot of humor along with animation credibility. One that stood out to me the most was "Roof Sex". In this short film he animates 2 living room chairs having sex on a roof. This work employs the persistence of vision concept because he uses stop motion with every day objects. He does this so well and is very skilled at combining these stop motion images into a short film. This work succeeds as an animation as opposed to standard film making because he uses everyday objects that cannot move on their own. THe animation brings these objects to life and personifies each object perfectly.
ReplyDeleteCarly Imber
In Michael Lanagan's piece, "Dahlia", a city portrait of San Francisco was created using individual images. He created short animations of boats in the bay, driving through the city, parking meters, and the flowers. By lining up individual images and playing them one after the other, he created this animation. Persistence of vision allowed the images to look as if they were a solid animation/ video. By using this technique, there was definitely a choppiness, but it is this style that defines animation and keeps it separate from a fluid film. One point I found interesting was the images of the flowers. I think it was the bright colors and sharp contrast and quality of the images, but it looked as though they were almost computer generated. I feel like we have seen landscapes portrayed in stop motion before, but when Langan focused on the single subject of these flowers, it really created a new view on stop motion, not necessarily depicting action, but rather focusing on a single subject viewed in a new manner.
ReplyDeleteKatelyn Wollet
After watching the PES cartoon titled "Fresh Guacamole", I was shocked that an artist could combine any objects to form a film that looked like a real cooking experience. The most successful aspect of this film is the way PES handles each object. He treats the plastic objects the same way he would treat their food supplement. By doing so, the author is completely convinced he is actually using the real ingredients. The work employs the persistence of vision concept in that the viewers eye is attracted to the movements throughout the short film. Its the way he scoops out the "avocado" or the way he cracks the "chip" that make this video so successful. Standard filmmaking differs from this video because the actions in this video cannot be preformed without much tampering. The illusions created in this film take a simple recipe and make it exciting and new for the viewer.
ReplyDeleteThe PES film "roof sex" shows two chairs having sex on the roof of an apartment complex in New York City. PES spends a lot of time taking thousands of pictures of these chairs in different sexual positions. Then he uses stop motion animation to make these chairs look like they're actually having sex. This is the concept of persistence of vision: when successive images are perceived as motion by the human brain. This film is an example of a successful animation piece because he takes normal, mundane objects and brings them to life through stop motion animation.
ReplyDeleteLette Reinigers animation "the Adventures of Prince Achmed" was so interesting. She made littles pipet silhouettes cut out of paper and placed on a paper landscape. everything was done in silhouettes and the landscape got lighter in color as the scape was supposed to be further away. This created really great depth in a two dimension medium with only solid blocks of color rather than shading and gradation to give it an easy and obvious sense of depth. The way that Reiniger was able to create a sense of live movement was by taking the figures she had cut out, which were all separated at joint and areas of high moment and placed together with little pins or some sort of pivot, and she would move them slightly and then take a photo, then move then again and take a photo, and so on. when played all together you get really great movement and personality to the characters. this is animation and not standard filmmaking because, well for one, the figures are paper so they have to be animated to move, but also because it is taken one shot at a time and each photo is played together one after the other very fast in order to create the illusion that the figures are actually alive and moving.
ReplyDeletePES short film "Fresh Guacamole" is a great example of stop motion animation in which the audience is presented with the preparation of the dish, using random and household objects for the ingredients. For example, dice replace tomato and onions and poker chips replace, well, chips. This piece is successful because it has a heavy, distinctive visual aesthetic that is emphasized by the somewhat jumpy, shakiness that is typical in stop motion. The concept of persistence of vision is what perpetuates the illusion of a continual "movie", our eyes perceive contiguous movement, yet the video is really made up of thousands of individual shots. Additionally, PES' piece could not have been achieved through regular film because in order to create the action and movement, he had to piece together still images. So, PES' work is not only enhanced by the distinct visual characteristics of animation, but is inherently tied to it.
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ReplyDeleteOne of the works I was most drawn to was Lotte Reiniger's piece, "The Adventures of Prince Achmed". The piece was black and white as she used the technique of contrast to create her imagery and characters. It was about a prince looking for something within a forrest. Although minimal, the piece was not boringly simplistic. I found it very beautiful. Against a white background, the black cut out characters and scenery she created embodied a great deal of life and motion even though there was little depth (literally) to her work. Heidi Kumao told us yesterday that animation was an illusion. Reiniger mastered this illusion. By moving these cut outs very slightly and taking a picture, she was able to succeed at creating a compelling animation. The concept for this piece would not embody as much magic if she were to apply it to a standard film. It was the process of stop motion that really made this piece quirky, fun, and special.
ReplyDeleteWinsor McKay’s Gertie the Dinosaur is an absolutely delightful and extremely innovative piece of early animation. McKay was far ahead of his time in many ways, when he created this film and influenced countless films to come. His drawing style is simple yet charming, the dinosaur’s movements are slightly fragmented emphasizing the films early home made quality. Persistence of vision makes this film possible. Hundreds of simple drawings with slight shift in position create a sense of motion to the viewer. Although this is thought of as a low tech process it is fascinating how people overlook the magic of this simple process today due to computer technology. The film is also very comical. When the dinosaur eats the tree and it disappears inside it’s stomach I laughed out loud. The fact that something made so long could get me to chuckle and be fully engaged is quite surprising to me. In todays society we depend on sensory overload, tons of stimulating images one after another, a plethora of interesting sounds as well as special effects for something to hold our attention. This short film is a true masterpiece. It is apparent how this film influenced the work of Walt Disney and countless other animators.
ReplyDeletePES - Fresh Guacamole
ReplyDeleteIn Fresh Guacamole by PES we saw several techniques he used to not only portray his ideas but to entertain his audience. He uses several conventional items but in an unconventional way. For instance, he uses a grenade with play-dough in it to represent an avocado. The stop motion effect is what I was drawn to the most. I googled what the persistence of vision meant after the lecture yesterday and the definition came up as: "the phenomenon of the eye by which an afterimage is thought to persist for approximately one twenty-fifth of a second on the retina." This is very true for stop motion animation where many photos of scenes are played one after another to give us the illusion that we are watching one fluid piece. PES' piece succeeds as an animation because of the attention to detail, cleverness, and by how it makes us feel like it is one continuos piece. It is different from standard film making where the camera records its surroundings and takes multiple pictures of it as high speeds automatically. Stop motion animation involves manually moving the animation and taking the photos yourself, then ordering them as follows.
Kit Trowbridge:
ReplyDeleteIn "KaBoom!", Pez staged an air raid of the countryside, then the city, using stop-motion animation. Instead of having the bombing be a somber subject, Pez used bows and Christmas ornaments as explosions which gave the whole piece a playful, and quite beautiful, look. Pez was able to employ a lot of "in jokes" such as using popcorn around the plane because it is a food that explodes and matchsticks as missiles because they look like them and create fire. It was incredible to see him at Penny Stamps because otherwise I would not necessarily have made the connection. The work employs persistence of vision because even though some of the transitions are grand between frames, your eye understands them as a single continuous sequence. Pez achieved this, for example, by hanging the popcorn on strings then moving them a little in each shot to make it look like they were floating. He would never be able to create the same playful feel in a film, rather than animation, because part of the fun is that an entire found object city pops and bursts with ornaments at a speed that is slow enough for the viewer to delight in the image. The same use of objects could never be achieved in a film because there is no way to move them fast enough without special effects for an audience to believe they were actually moving. The fact that his effects are all manual, like hanging the popcorn, makes the piece especially admirable as a work of art and also contributes to this playful, kitschy, do-it-yourself feel. Much of the charm of Pez's work is the persistent somewhat slower pace to the movement of objects we all recognize but have never thought about as being "living" things. We delight in seeing a plastic plane appear as a stand in for an intimidating real-world one because it brings to life childhood imagination.
Of the videos we watched in yesterday’s lecture, the work that most spiked my interest was Michael Langman's "Dahlia." This work, composed entirely of photographs, could have easily ended up looking very much like a regular film as opposed to a sequence of stills. But using still photographs gave the artist the ability to play with objects, lighting and the manipulation of time in a way that he would not be able to if he were to have captured the scenes in video. For example, when photographing the action taking place at a harbor, he spaces out his images so that a slow-moving barge seems to be speeding along as quickly as a speedboat. When filming a parking meter he photographs many different parking meters at different times of the day in the same frame position and angle, so as to make it look as if one parking meter were constantly changing states. When photographing the flowers for which "Dahlia" was named, he pays careful attention to how he lights these objects. The flowers seem to sparkle and bloom in a surrealistic nighttime-lighting landscape. Langan's unique way of working with images and sequence turns scenes from life into glimpses of a dream.
ReplyDeleteNorman McLaren-Neighbors
ReplyDeleteThis piece was a short stop-animation presentation of picture slides, depicting a story about two neighbors fighting over a flower. The animation, made the two individuals seem as if they "floated" around their world. The pictures were put together well and made the animation flow cohesively. We were able to realyl get a sense of what the artist was trying to do with the piece. Persistence of vision was employed due to the artist using the element of making the neighbors "jump". Naturally we use persistence of vision, so with the continuous stream of pictures that depicted the floating and jumping, our POV made it seem as if they actually were jumping and floating around, not just a stream of photos. Its the delay that makes us believe everything is moving in the form of a video, but they are really just pictures. This piece works as an animation rather than a standard film because, filmaking is a constat stream of video rather than a stream of images, similar to animation which consists of images or drawings all complied together to form a animation.
Zoe Allen-Wickler
ReplyDeleteOne of PES's latest animations, which he showed during his presentation, was called, "The Deep". It's an animation featuring wrenches, corkscrews, pieces of instruments, old keys, and other mechanical tools and metal bits, all animated as though they're fish. They float and move just like underwater creatures and plants over a dark, watery background. PES often uses found objects, and the concept of persistence of vision is critical - without it, the animations would seem like the series of still photographs that they are, instead of fluid movement, to the human eye. However, the images move so quickly that the brain doesn't detect the darkness in-between images, and it appears to be a single, flowing image. Without this, PES's fish wouldn't have been able to capture with such precision the fine movements of floating underwater. This work succeeds so well as an animation because of the combination of the materials used, in an ironic and humorous way, and the vital eye PES has for movement, the ability to capture the movement of a fish with an object that is unrelated to, but reminiscent of, a fish. If it were a live-action film, the purpose would be defeated - there's nothing so unusual about average, real fish, as opposed to the humor PES employs by implying that a wrench is as real a fish as any.
The piece that interests me the most is "Dahlia" by Michael Langan. It is a stop motion film that portrait a lively and busy city. Langan puts together similar images he took of each objects and makes a continueing motion out of them. What makes this piece unique is that the subjects of the images are still (side walks, ships, parking meters, fences, etc.), while the things surrounding them are moving( people on the beach and side walks, clouds, plants behind the fence, etc.) So the camera is always moving in order to capture the moving subject at exactly the same position. And this perspective gives us a sense of continuity of thousands of living things in the busy city.
ReplyDeleteI found Gertie the Dinosaur very interesting in the lecture. Gertie the Dinosaur by Winsor Mckay is the first American cartoon, and what made this cartoon special and unique is that Mckay interacts with the character. He introduces dinosaur to the audience. I think adding text is very interesting, because in today's cartoon, it is hard to find text. Even though it was the first cartoon, it was very successful in not only cartoon itself, but in many aspects. People were only aware of phenakitascop or zoetrope, which they have to move, but Gertie the Dinosaur definitely amazed both people at the time, and people today.
ReplyDeleteWinsor McKay created a very interesting animation, "Gertie the Dinosuar," which was thought to be the first cartoon that features very appealing personality. The dinosuar comes out of the cave and does what the words on the chalk board. The whole animation was made with drawings of each frames. There were trees, rocks, and mountains. Sine the background stayed still, I was able to focus more on how the dinosaur moves and acts. Although everything was in black and white and the words were written on the chalk board instead of said as a narration, it still captures the movements and personality of the dinosaur. Typical animation is made by camera and captures the real objects, but instead Winsor McKay used his hand as a tool to draw thousands of drawings to create each scenes.
ReplyDelete~Young
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ReplyDeleteLotte Reiniger's piece, "The Adventure of Prince Achmed" caught my eye the most. Her work focuses on animated silhouettes that combine with powerful paper cut outs to make a visually appealing animation. Specifically, there was a "tarzan" like jungle warrior creeping his way through the night. Although it was briefly shown, the attention to detail in the set and her lighting choices tied the whole piece together beautifully. Also, by keeping everything colorless, it adds a completely different dimension to the piece and how it visually comes off to the viewers. This is one reason this piece works better as an animation rather than a film. It adds a piece of ambiguity that makes you want to know and see more. Lotte meticulously moves each body part, takes a picture and so on in order to emphasize her subjects' movements and actions.
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