Week 4 Blog Post

Max Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell was made through rotoscoping, a technique Fleischer invented. It is a technique that requires a transparent easel and a projector behind it. The projector will throw images frame by frame and the animator would or artist would have to trace the frame by frame images to create a animation along with live-action film. I really enjoyed this animation, it was both inspirational and comical. I love how the drawings were still for a few seconds and then they came to life. The clown was alive! Literally! It came out of the easel and interacted with the environment. It was a character the viewer can relate to. There were shots where the clown went out of the frame and then back again from behind the house, which created a seamless animation. There were also different animated characters that interacted with the clown, like a cow, bear, and dog, and they all came from the cracked hole. Anticipation was definitely a big part of this film, the whole time, I'm wondering what the clown will do next and I'm also wondering is the clown going to come out and eventually it did. The text was also a great part of this silent piece because it gave the characters more personality. The music also gave the audience the expectations that it would be a comical piece. Everything was seamless till the very end. Rotoscoping is definitely a effective way in story-telling. The reason is because it brings animation to life and in this particular piece, the viewer sees the character (the clown) being created and coming to life, which really allows a more engaging experience for the viewer.

This is my favorite piece out of all the animations for this week because, the story for this one was more captivating. The Dakota piece was very very unique, however it was way too long and tiring to sit through and watch, and the beating drums along with the fast text had that heart attack effect one me. I tried to watch another one of Chang's piece, Riviera. Rivera was worst, I got dizzy the first twenty seconds and just could not go on. Rivera had four sections with moving words, and I tried reading it, which was the reason I got dizzy. All four sections were moving simultaneously, in different directions and it felt as if I was twirling around in a circle. "Early Abstractions" reminds me of a kaleidoscope, which is probably the intention. It's as if the patterns turn into different figures and then come to life and do something and then go back to being a pattern and, it repeats over and over again. Then we have Norman McLaren's Neighbours. Neighbours is a antiwar film. that uses pixilation. Pixilation is stop motion animation, except with real live actors. Neighbours is about two neighbors that fight over a flower. The neighbors fight till both of them die and it was not till their death that the two had peace and each had a flower. The message behind this is that countries get into war, fighting over one thing and they will not get what they want until they fight to the death. There's no point in winning when you've died and cannot appreciate the "award." McLaren did a exciting thing in this piece, he made the characters float in thin air, I like the idea, but was not sure if the characters were so excited about the flower to the point where they floated or if they were "high". Lastly we have Science Friction, film by Stan Vanderbeek. Vanderbeek used collages to create his animation, and I love that idea. It's both very artistic and different, because it's cut and paste unlike the the usual draw animations.