Manchester Animation Festival DAY THREE (Harryhausen) (OUAN402)

Harryhausen's Lost Treasures/ The Clash Of The Titans

Delving into the world of Ray Harryhausen was my favourite part of this day. I knew virtually nothing about him before but now I have come to appreciate the insane degree to which he has influenced the movie industry by inventing C.G before C.G was a thing. I love C.G as much as the next guy, but I'm finding that with some films recently the C.G is everywhere, green-screened into the backgrounds and used in place of prosthetic enhancements and mechanical setpieces. And while it can definitely improve a film, it can also be overwhelming and make the movie lose its sense of tangibility and realness that makes it stick in my mind and is more involving. Harryhausen's effects are much more of a novelty to watch and because I could see the craftsmanship of the stop motion characters and knew that they were real and that the interaction on screen was genuine (or, at least, as genuine as it could possibly be), it made me focus more on them and drew my attention. I've become too habituated to C.G.

Christopher Lee: "So what should I do? Should I use my powers of acting?"
Stunt co-ordinator: "Just wave this stick around and look bewildered and we will add some stuff in later"
Christopher Lee: "Okay"

Harryhausen's works made me keen to get started learning about stop-frame animation, especially when I watched "Clash Of The Titans" for the first time. I really enjoy live theatre for, again, it's tangibility and to see the mastery of the craftsmanship in the sets and props right in front of my eyes. It is the oldest and purest form of storytelling, and stop-motion effects like those used by Harryhausen are the animation equivalent, and they lend themselves well to a rip-roaring epic like Clash Of The Titans. Each character is boldly defined and has an indescribable spark of life about them. Let's compare two Krakens, the Harryhausen one and the one from the sexed up 2010 remake.

This Kraken is fine, I suppose. But it is still a big grey blob.

This thing will stick in my mind forevermore

The film itself was incredible! I really like a good myth/ legend and this one had great action, a laundry list of exciting villains and it kept a brisk pace. I've already mentioned that I found the visuals to be spectacular.

"Duh got to fight Kraken to sex princess" - Perseus, The Clash Of The Titans (2010)

There is still a lot of love in the world for practical effects.

Manchester Animation Festival DAY THREE (Chris Shepherd's films) (OUAN402)

I'm devoting this whole section to Chris Shepherd's retrospective because it was so good! I didn't know much of Chris Shepherd's work, except for the thing he did with David Shrigley "Who I am and What I Want", but his films blew me away. They had such great range, dealing with harsh topics without using tired tropes but also having a darkly funny sense of humour and occasionally really clever, light humour. Or maybe the light humour had dark undertones and I didn't understand them. What I admire most about this filmmaker is the massive diversity of his content. Each of his movies is really fresh and interesting.

"The Broken Jaw" (1997)

This was one of my favourites. I liked the way that it exaggerated the old characters who attend the dingy titular pub, staggering about on their zimmer frames with swirling eyeballs and communicating in garbled grunts. I found it hilarious from start to finish. I liked the way the lighting was imposed over the photographed backgrounds. The whole aesthetic was brill. It made me consider my own practice because I always tend to lean towards a certain style that I think looks the funniest, so I rarely leave my comfort zone. Seeing great comedic value of these characters, though, made we want to experiment more with funny character design in order to become a well rounded cartoonist.

The Ringer:

A darkly comedic and deeply touching short that did something really different with the "absent dad" theme and was a great example of how animation and live action can intertwine. I loved the way that this film snapped back and forth between an animated crime drama and the live action drama, both of which were related to each other very cleverly and were well balanced against each other to help the movie keep a brisk pace. It's hard to work out what it is that I like about Chris Shepherd's films because it's hard to categorise them. I enjoy them because they tend to spurn the traditional customs of movie making with use of animation and unusual editing effects to stay snappy and exciting yet remain grounded with their characters and comedy, so it's accessible to everybody and not just the art scholars. I enjoyed the animation itself in this film for its detail and respected it's unique aesthetic.

Safari:

For the sake of looking at a wide variety of things, I also want to address this totally off the wall animation that Shepherd made in 1989 with nothing but SCRAPS and plucky resilience. It's totally abstract and really clever and creative and has a whole bunch pf absurdist humour packed into it. The stop motion is reminiscent of someone's GCSE animation project or something like that, but given the bizarre subject matter it's actually rather fitting, since the characters are as alien looking and moving as the atmosphere of the whole film. I've mentioned this before, but I'm really amped to get into stop motion because for me it is the most real means of animated storytelling, and hand crafted figurines often have more definition to them. Overall, this film was short and sweet and charming and, similarly to the rest of the films in this retrospective, unlike anything I had seen before.

Manchester Animation Festival DAY TWO (Shorts I loved and the Women of Animation) (OUAN402)

Here are more great animation festival things.

Women Of Animation - A Panel:

Watching this panel sure made me thankful that I turned out to be a man of animation. I've been afforded so many perks, not just in the industry but in life and this panel helped to highlight the very real struggle of those who didn't win the genetic lottery. Of course, I'm exaggerating with that comment there for the sake of wacky jokes but animation is unfortunately a HUGELY bloke dominated industry. This panel felt very optimistic and, though. The women, including Terry Wragg, Camilla Deakin, Lindsay Watson and Ruth Fielding were tremendous and it was great to see some snippets of animation that clearly highlight an issue, further fighting against the stereotype that animation should be used simply to plonk your dumb kids in front of for an afternoon. No, it has far greater meaning than that.

Once Upon A Line: Dir Alicja Jasina / United States

One of my very favourite shorts of the whole event for its distinctive and entrancing art style and also the way the narrative was presented by showing how the main character's day over and over again, with interesting changes made each time. Repetition is totally a form of comedy. I feel like I could've watched this piece a bajillion times just to catch every clever detail. I have never really been a fan of abstract stuff since I tend to prefer more character driven animations, but to be fair I probably haven't watched enough abstract stuff to make a judgement. However, this piece took every one of my bigoted preconceptions, rolled them into a ball and then bashed them against my stupid head because the animation is both character driven and abstract, and it made me want to have a bash at switching up my own style to experiment.

Fishwitch: Dir Adrienne Dowling / United Kingdom

Another of my very favourite animations of the festival, mostly because of this amazing gill man character:

LOOK AT HIS HILARIOUS STUPID FACE! IT MADE ME LAUGH SO F*CKING HARD

The stop motion is practically flawless, the characters look and act hilarious and I was chuckling heartily from start to end. The characters bounced off each other really well, it was wonderfully paced. The gill man was very relatable because I am also an amphibian with a stupid face. It had romance, action, the whole lot. This animation knew exactly what it wanted to be and I can't think of anything I dislike about it.

Manchester Animation Festival DAY TWO (Ethel And Ernest) (OUAN402)

Day two of the fest brought a whole slew of great new stuff to absorb. Here are some of the most relevant things I want to talk about.

Ethel and Ernest and the making of Ethel and Ernest: Dir Roger Mainwood

Learning about the making of Ethel and Ernest before watching the film itself helped me appreciate the movie a lot more, especially the lengths that the team went to and the creativity that it took to emulate Raymond Briggs' style. One of the details that stuck out for me was hearing about how, to properly get the colours right to be similar to the graphic novel, the team made large sheets of watercolour washes.

Like this

Then they cut them into six, scanned each segment as a colour swatch, then every two or three frames would swap out one swatch for another very similar swatch to create the look that it was all hand painted, which would otherwise have taken years and years. I admire the genius behind an idea like that. It's rather revolutionary. I really hope that this film gets the commercial acclaim it deserves but I feel like it won't based on the fact that it is not made with C.G. I remember feeling the same way when Kubo And The Two Strings, a great stop motion film, got beaten out at the Box Office by Sausage Party, an okay C.G film, which grossed nearly twice as much for absolutely no good reason. We need more films like Ethel and Ernest to bring 2D animation back into the limelight where it belongs. It shouldn't become a medium just for the niche audience.

The film itself was a real corker! I could've watched just the animation alone. So much effort went into it and I always enjoy stuff more when I know people suffered to make it, which is why I shop at Primark so much. What I can take away from this film the most is the tremendous character development and design, which is relevant since we are currently studying good character design and it's useful to see how characters age. The way that Ethel and Ernest age is subtle and pulls at the heartstrings, as we watch the two protagonists go from being young and exuberant to more subdued and grounded, although they're still tremendously relatable and likeable except for how Ethel is a STINKIN TORY. And it pulled at my heartstrings because their characterisation was so detailed that whenever something changed in the story, like they got older, I felt like it was the end of an era and a moving on of sorts, which in a ninety minute film is a difficult thing to convey but it flowed flawlessly.

Manchester Animation Festival DAY ONE (Aardman and the Phantom Boy) (OUAN402)

A few more things from day one that I'm keen to discuss:

Aardman Fellowship Award Event:

This was great fun. I found it inspirational to see the classic true story of an underdog company started in a garage that shot to success through creativity and perseverance. Inspirational and daunting, because I realised that no matter how much I persevere there will be a billion other jerks with their own startup companies with an equal love of animation, who I will one day have to fight for dominance in a world where everyone is a special snowflake. Aardman's humour is sort of timeless, which I really appreciated watching some of the early shorts. Even stuff like morph remains absolutely delightful and Aardman have continued this tradition of likeable characters, animated in a style that's transfixing to watch.

The Phantom Boy: Dirs Jean-Loup Felicioli, Alain Gagnol / France, Belgium

The premise of this film I really loved. The concept of astral projection was really cleverly used as a plot device to get the boy and the temporarily incapacitated cop to be an interesting team. That duo were the heart and soul of the film and they reminded me a bit of Hogarth and that bloke who owned the scrapyard in "The Iron Giant", except not as great. Astral projection also allowed the audience to witness more touching moments from the perspective of the phantom boy. An example of this that stood out for me was when phantom boy's mum is talking to him in hospital very calmly, and then goes to her car and breaks down in tears, all while phantom boy's astral projection is watching. That was moving. The art style is pretty fun as well. My main quibbles with the film are with the characters. My favourite character is the cop since he has the most development and seems to not be so much of a cookie cutter stereotype. Otherwise, I'm tired of bumbling Brooklyn mob bosses and their dumbass henchmen. It's a parody of a stereotype that has itself become a stereotype  I'm also tired of plucky kids who have a tendency to slip into being mildly irritating. Other than that, I really enjoyed this film!

Manchester Animation Festival DAY ONE (Great shorts, terrible shorts and My Life As A Courgette) (OUAN402)

I had a really swell time at the first day of the festival. It was really awesome to check out hours upon hours of non-stop, free cinema. I love a good story, mate, and the quality of the stories on display have been really cracking. What I like most is that I got to see the kind of stuff that I'd never normally check out. Here are a few things that I want to discuss most.

Parade: Dir Digna van der Put / Netherlands

The first thing that grabbed my attention about this short was the art style. The character design was slightly similar to my own, especially in terms of the eyes. Thanks to the charm and charisma of the design of the marching band members, the animation kept an upbeat and light atmosphere about it which I really liked, even when it started dealing with dark topics like mob mentality. The way it was shot, showing the parade marching across the seams of a jacket, was a great effect.

My Life As A Courgette: Dir Claude Barras / France

One of the standout films of the festival in my opinion. The stop-motion was lovingly crafted and a delight to behold. The characters were the most memorable of all the films I saw. I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps it was because they were designed really well (I'd definitely be able to identify them by their silhouettes) but also it was clear that the team behind the film had put loads of effort into giving each character subtle personality traits that reveal a lot about their individual pasts and their mindsets. A lot of character development is packed into a short period of time, for the adult characters as well. Another thing I admired about this movie was that it didn't patronise the younger members of the audience in its portrayal of kids, recognising the everyday trials and tribulations of children in a nuanced way that's reminiscent of Charles M Schulz' "Charlie Brown and Snoopy" comics.

Cold Coffee: Dirs Stephanie Lanasque and Francois Leroy / France

I also want to address the films that didn't enthuse me so much. It helps me appreciate the other films even more. This short has resonated with me for the whole festival because it made me really uncomfortable and distressed, but not in a good way like some films can do. I've mentioned before that I don't care to watch something that I would normally dream up in a terrible nightmare because movies should be enjoyable, primarily. Even with horror, one gets a kick out of all the spooks. This had no spooks, just a grim CGI world full of blood and dead rats with a cast of characters who all take out holiday cottages in the uncanny valley. In fact, what detached me the most from this film was the character design and animation. Perhaps it was the shine of the skin texture or the cold dead eyes of the characters, but I really really disliked this short. Having said that, I am glad I saw it.

ANIMATION DAY at Leeds International Film Festival PART TWO (OUAN402)

I was planning on watching the anime "A Silent Voice" (2016) at the film festival but decided against it. I had already watched the 1991 classic "Bingo" that day and three films is enough.

That dog got up to some bloody shenanigans

I also watched "MVP 2: Most Vertical Primate" (2001) but that is a blog post for another day.

Just as nature intended

Instead, I decided to watch a piece of Spanish nightmare fuel called "Psychonnauts, the Forgotten Children" (2015)

Psiconautas los niños olvidados, to translate it properly

This really wasn't my thing, I'm afraid. There was a lot I enjoyed. I liked the way the frames all looked hand painted and the way it looks like it's ripped straight out of a finely illustrated book. Visually stunning, let's say, if I wanted to copy that quote from every film critic ever. It WAS visually stunning, though. However, it was like watching a horror film in the sense that the world the characters were in was really grim and terrible and I found the characters to be grim and terrible, which was absolutely a style the movie was intending to convey, but personally I'm not really into horror. I can absolutely see why this got such acclaim because it is really unique, but here are some of the unsettling and horrible things that I didn't want to spend my time with for the duration of an entire film:

A giant bird that is also a man

A sad bird/human who's addicted to heroin

A psychotic hallucination induced by having too much heroin

A spider that crawls out of a pig's nose while the pig is also on heroin

The whole film seemed painful and grotesque to watch, which is fine but I don't think it's a style I would like to emulate. Maybe I'll watch "Most Vertical Primate 3" to calm my nerves.

ANIMATION DAY at Leeds International Film Festival PART ONE (OUAN402)

Woo! Five animated films at the film festival for only twenty pounds! 

What a bargain. Except for the fact that I was called away on an emergency in the morning and there was one film that I didn't really fancy seeing in the evening so I only ended up watching two films for twenty pounds like a total moron. That's like ten pounds a film! Maybe that's reasonable at a cinema for billionaires where the seats are made of a solid diamond and the ushers are also strippers. Oh well.

I first watched "The Red Turtle" (2016) which was, shockingly, the first Studio Ghibli Film I'd EVER seen. I don't watch a lot of Japanese animation because I’m a massive racist I was never really exposed to it at any point, but MAN was it freaking beautiful!

The animation blew my skull out of my face. It was incredibly smooth and weighty and tangible and thick and creamy

It made me want to watch a lot more Studio Ghibli films. This film reminded me why I think traditional animation is my favourite kind. I could list all the reasons why I loved the aesthetics of it (I enjoyed the sweeping landscapes the most) but everyone already knows that these films look great.

This film was a great story to sink my teeth into. It's the kind of thing that could be told around a roaring fire as an ancient myth or something, like a timeless epic. It was incredibly touching with a well thought out world for the characters to inhabit and it was really intense and gripping, despite the fact that it's almost entirely silent except for the occasional anguished scream (a lot like my Saturday nights).

The Red Turtle is a masterclass in very subtle animation, and I can certainly learn from that. I have much to learn about animation in general. The characters are drawn so beautifully that with very gentle movements and facial expressions I could ascertain their entire situation without any dialogue or large gestures. Because of this, the characters were really engaging and I felt for them. Stories are the most important things about any visual communication for me, and this was a real treat.

Analysis - Keith Reynolds can't make it tonight (OUAN402)

I came across this film by Felix Massie after we watched another of his animations, "In The Air Is Christopher Gray". In class. It was a real gem with a cracking story,  comfortably condensed into a few minutes of rich and smooth animation with the assistance of some really good narration with great dark comedy and it made me want to find out more about this animator.

In The Air Is Christopher Gray (2013). An easy way to have characters talking without going to the hassle of animating is to not give them faces.

Keith Reynolds can't make it tonight (2007)

Since this came out six years prior to the other film, I prefer the art style of In The Air Is Christopher Gray. It's more polished and unique, whereas the stick figures in this animation seem a little more generic, like from a flash animation.

Having said that, this animation does do a lot of stuff differently, which I really enjoyed. The way it's shot is awesome, showing nothing but the two-dimensional cross section of an office building as the characters traverse up and down in the lift.

There are no other camera angles to add drama or intensity and I felt very detached from the action. This ties in well with the narrator who seems to not have much emotional investment in the characters, but simply tells the story in a bit of a monotone voice. There is nothing dramatic about it. This meshes really well with the actual, very dramatic content of the film which includes murder, lost love and the destruction of a man's life. The contrast means that the animation treads a fine line between being humorous and being unsettling, like a child's party magician with terrible dental hygiene.

Since the characters have no face and voice, and because it's shot and narrated in a very un-dramatic way, I wasn't emotionally invested in the onscreen struggles. It was really funny instead, appealing to my primal sense of humour in someone else's suffering.

What I like about this film and the main lesson I think I can take from it is that it tells the story in a very unconventional way which was refreshing to see. Rather than having one central narrative and traditional character archetypes like protagonists and antagonists, the narrator tells the broad story of each person in the office and what they are doing at exactly the same time, a method known as "panoptic" storytelling. The narrator is objective and relaxed about everything, and some of the best humour came from the occasional sly, witty comment that the narrator made over the disaster happening on screen. There are no heroes or villains in this piece, no grandeur, just a sense of "well, that's life" about the whole story.

It's really excellent.

Photoshop and me, BONUS BLOG (OUAN402)

I wonder how easy it would have been to have studied animation in 1935 or something. "Snow White" hadn't come out yet and I'm sure that the very notion of moving pictures was enough to put an auditorium full of people into cardiac arrest from the stimulation, and whoever could master it would shoot right to the top of the IMDb parchment.

Émile Cohl's "Fantasmagorie", the first animation ever made.

Now, audiences are far more fickle, expecting ever greater technological feats from filmmakers to draw their attention away from a constant stream of immersive media. I'm guilty of this too. As I write this, I'm listening to three podcasts at once from different phones and also I've duct taped my iPad to my head so I can catch up with series two of "Narcos" at any time. My attention span has gone to hell.

Speaking of technological advancements in film-making, learning to use the Adobe suite is the hardest thing I've had to work on in college, so I wanted to blog about it very briefly to evaluate how my personal and professional practice can evolve. Up until now I've been pen and paper by default and I had never even OPENED an Adobe program until four weeks ago.

What I find hardest about using Photoshop is, firstly, learning what every single command and button does. Of course it's complicated. What else can be expected from a program that allows you to do LITERALLY ANYTHING? There's no way to design it to be user friendly to everyone. Secondly, I'm still trying to wrap my head around where everything is when I make digital work. I tend to get so lost in a bunch of various layers and open tabs that I can't keep track of it and I freak out. With paper, I can thumb through it and I like the way that the work is tangible. Having said that, I am slowly, SLOWLY getting to grips with it and I look forward to being more well versed.

This post isn't about me making excuses, nor am I bashing technology like some neo-luddite who wants to take us back to the dark ages. I'm very progressive (I voted remain) and I vow to dig in my heels and learn Photoshop for no other reason than because I refuse to see myself grow old as my grandmother did, having to get my brother and I to fix her DVD player every time we visit because she put sliced ham in the disc drive, mistaking it for a sandwich toaster or something.

What a grim future.