Post 12 - The Last Post Before Christmas

Wow. Its quite hard to believe this is the last post for the class. It feels quite strange, anyways...

The final film we watched was Tim Burton's 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'. Before we started to watch it, we were 'warned' by the Prof. Petrik that this Mr. Burton fellow has created some strange and..unique works. Well, this film was no exception.

I feel compelled to admit that I did not completely enjoy this movie. Out of all the films and animations that we watched, I would say that I liked this one the least. Perhaps I am in a minority, but I just did not like Nightmare as a whole. The music was good, the characters and scenes were detailed, but I just didn't like it too much. Now, do not read this as I think that Nightmare was a steaming pile of feces, I do not think that. It just wasn't something along the caliber of Toy Story 2 or American Tale.

It certainly was visually unique and impressive, and it had an interesting idea of a plot: mixing holidays and their respective icons, but there was just something about it that I can't quite place my finger on. Most of the movie was very dark and isolated. To me, it felt like the characters had little interaction and much of their back-story was leftout. Also, the personalities were dead and generally not interesting, like many of the characters in the movie.

Those reasons combined with the points I can't quite put my finger on, made the movie somewhat bland. It wasn't a horrible movie, but average at best.

Post 11 - Toy Story 2 - The Sound of Toys

Toy Story 2 was the film of choice today in class. I had seen it before, but that was some time ago and I had forgotten much of it. It was interesting to note that the voices of the characters, to me at least, gave legitimacy to the toys. The restricted movements and voices were the most important factor that made these 'toys' into something human-like.

The things that the characters did, combined with their toy responses, gave the feeling that this was a community of individuals. You could distinguish between the toys by how they moved or acted. Such as the Mr. Potato Head™ changing out his eyes and nose for different facial expressions or the dinosaur not being able to both jump and shoot at the same time because his arms were too short to reach the buttons. This creates even more personality on the whole for the toys.

Even more than the movements, the voices created a believable community of toys. How they talked to one another was just like any human(s) would do. The voice actors did a wonderful job of expressing what the characters were communicating. They are the ones that made the characters believable and likeable. No doubt there is much credit to be given to the numerous people who animated, shaded, applied textures and lighting, but the voices are what gave the human element to lifeless objects. I would wager that if only the audio from the film was broadcast, the listener would get a very close idea of what was happening in the film.

Post 10 - Pocahontas - 10th Anniversary Edition!

This was the first time I had seen this film and despite all of the negative comments, I did not think it was bad. Now, I am not saying it was an epic masterpiece of animation history, but, it was not as bad as the comments led me to believe. It is true that the geography was not correct among other things, but I think the target audience for the movie was younger children and I don't think they would have been concerned with such matters. The only thing that I was kind of tired of, were all of the musical singing and dancing sequences. I counted 6 or 7 times where everyone would break into song and dance. I'll tell you one thing, singing and dancing does not mix well with explosives.

I enjoyed the raccoon, Meeko, and the hummingbird, Flit. Their interactions with each other and the surrounding environment was humorous. I liked the parts where Meeko would brazenly take biscuits from John Smith, or take bones from the dog, Percy. Other than the situations that involved these characters, I did not find many funny moments. It seemed to me this had more of a serious tone than other Disney movies. Interesting note: This film had the first on-screen human death in a Disney movie. Also, considering that neither Flit nor Meeko spoke in the movie (atleast that I noticed), they have actors that show up under the credits for their voices.

Post 9 - An American Tale

We watched the animated movie "An American Tale" today. It followed a family of mice who traveled to America from their native Russia in the late 1800s. Fievel, a young mouse who is the main character, gets seperated from his family while nearing the American coast. He experiences the hardships of being in a new country, along with the tremendous burdon of being seperated from his family. Freedom was the prominent reason for many of the mice to make the journey, not any financial reasons. The viewers meet many different and interesting characters along the way, such as Tiger the friendly non-meat eating cat. Many parallels were created in the mice society and human life at that time. Poor living conditions, child labor,and corruption were all part of life. The viewer could determine where mice came from by their voices and stereotypes that the characters acted out. The whole film was a microcosm of American life at that time.


P.S - Remember that in America, there are no cats!

Post 8 - Post World War 2

Today we viewed animation from the 1950s and 1960s. We watched several animated clips that helped to "educate" or convince it's viewers of certain points. The "Vote for Ike" clip was in black and white, simple and basic. It was, as you can guess, a pro-Eisenhower political cartoon where it showed the common person marching down to vote and bring in a new leader of the U.S. I should note that the creator of the cartoon was Disney's brother, Roy.

The second clip we watched was somewhat strange, for me atleast. It was a General Electric ad. I have trouble calling it an ad though because it was nearly a half-hour in length, but I do not know what else to call it. (Think how much it would cost to show it during the Super Bowl!) It created a parallel between the U.S. struggling for it's independence, forging a new nation out of a new land, and the advancement of technology, electric power. It is almost as if to say America and GE grew together in a symbiotic relationship.

And the last of the "educational" clips, we watched an animation produced by the New York Stock Exchange. Its purpose was to make it's viewers aware of how the stock market works and the channels a business must go through to have shares of stock.

The last thing we watched, and the most enjoyable, was Rockey and Bullwinkle. The show depicts the adventures of a squirl and a moose while a pair of Russian spies, Boris and Natashya, try to stop them. The show also had a literature portion, where Bullwinkle would comicly recite a poem, and/or they would show a fairy tale with a twist. In addition to those, the show also had a History section where Dr.Peabody and his boy would create an entertaining backstory to a historical event/truth.

Post 7 - War Effort

In class today we watched a film about the German animators during the changes in Germany in the 1930s and through the war years. We also watched a several animations from both Warner Brothers and Disney, which were funny and also interesting. The animations brought some seriousness into play also with the one "Education for Death", which showed the processes of "making" soldiers out of young German boys.

I personally found the animation clips interesting from a historical viewpoint because, for some reason, I find history interesting. The U.S. was gearing up for war and recruiting men and perhaps as a way to help future soldiers make the switch to military life, these animations preemptively answered questions that would have been asked. One could say it was an animated version of an instruction booklet.

The one Warner Brother clip we saw was serious in its intent, but had many funny moments throughout. It was trying to convey the need for secrets to be just that - secrets. You never might know who could be listening in on your phone calls - a Japanese spy might have stuffed himself into the phonebox! Also, the swastika was seen in many different ways: in the clouds, the windmill, and even in the moose antlers.

On a large scale though, these films probably conveyed the message faster than other ways and were effective enough to get the point across.

On a sidenote, awhile ago, I went down to D.C. to go to the Spy Museum for a class. In the section of the museum that was about the Second World War, they had a mini theater that ran clips of the war effort at home. They showed many animated clips like the ones we saw in class. In fact, I believe the one we saw, was one that was shown in the museum.

Post 6 - A Bad (wishing) Apple

We watched "Snow White and the seven Dwarfs" today in class. It was the first time that I have accutally seen the movie in it's entirety. I thought I had seen it before, but as we watched it, I realised that I had only seen parts of it. It was funny to watch the dwarves with each one having their own distinct personality.

Post 5 -

Post 4 -

Post 3 - But everyone's doing it!

I've noticed many people have posted topics on or about their childhood, the cartoons they watched and their memories of the times. So, here are my obligatory childhood TV memories!

Growing up, I too watched Saturday morning cartoons, among others such as Nickelodeon. I can remember on Saturday mornings watching for a few hours, then eating breakfast, and off to a youth league baseball game. Those were the days. Here are some of the shows that I remember watching:

G.I. Joe - Intro
He-Man - Intro
Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles - Intro
Ghost Busters
Scooby Doo
X-Men - Intro
Thundercats - Intro

I also remember watching TV specials for different holidays, such as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer along with the many Charlie Brown episodes. Last, but certainly not least, is Mickey's Christmas Carol.










(I stumbled across a website called Retrojunk.com while searching around on the internet. It is a site that has saved a bunch of media from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. TV shows, cartoons, movies, and commercials, it has it all. It is quite fun to go back and look at some of the things you watched as a kid, or see something that you had forgotten all about. Spend several minutes looking around and I'm sure you'll find something that you had totally forgotten.)

Post 2 - The need for speed

As I was looking over the different clips and films of animation, it occured to me that animation is still a very new techneque. Humans have been painting and drawing for thousands of years, but only animating a little bit over a century. While indeed animation can be viewed as 'a bunch of pictures stuck together', in this instance I consider it a whole new art. Animation has evolved and advanced so much in such a short period of time.

I can't help but make a connection between the rapid increase in skill of animation and also the history of flight. Both animation and heavier- than- air flight began in the late 19th century and took off in the 20th. A Trip to the Moon was created in 1902 by Melies. It would seem life was soon about to imitate art, because in 1903, the Wright Brothers flew the first aircraft a distance of 120 feet. Note : It would be another 67 years until anyone went to the moon. In a span of about 100 years both animation and flight have advanced so much, both starting from scratch and are now common things in our lives.

Post 1

The History of how I signed up for the History of Animation...

I signed up for this class mainly because I was told that it would count as both a history course and a higher level course. Not bad, kill two birds with one stone. A few days later, I found out accidentally that the name of the class was History of Animation. Hmm, the title that I signed up for was Topics in U.S. History. Strange. I then read the description again and it occurs to me that name of the class will change depending on topic. Well, so now I am in a History of Animation class. It couldn't be animation as in cartoons and stuff, could it? No - there is probably some time frame in history called Animation, kind of like Reconstruction. The strange thing though, is that Animation as a name for a time frame would make no sense, not to mention I've never heard of it before.

I admit I felt somewhat like a moron after the first class because it was exactly what I thought it wasn't. Now that I know what the class is, it does seem interesting. Definitely one of the more unique classes that I've taken.

test

test