Here Ye, Here ye!

Let the bells ring and the heavens rejoice. Come out onto the streets all ye boys and girls, men and women. Celebrate, dance long into the night, put your hands around the face of the person next to you and squeeze until they're eyes pop out. Yes, that's right folks! According to an article I read on Skwigly tonight, The Clangers are coming back! You can read the article for yourselves here: REJOICE! 

Yes my friends, The Clangers. I watched the clangers as a child (about thirty years after it originally came out mind you) and what strikes me now, watching them again (I often find myself going back to them if I feel blue, need cheering up or simply need reminding of why I actually want to do this) it is fascinating to pick apart the pure joy that this little show can bring. This, to me, is what animation is all about. It isn't big, it isn't flashy, it didn't have a massive budget. It was two guys who had a story to tell, and the heart and imagination to tell it. In the article  Peter Firmin, one of the creators of the show said: 

"The new series will include great storytelling with lots of heart" 

Body Memory by Ulo Pikkov

Tonight I happened across the animation stylings of Ulo Pikkov. I was particularly moved by this film called Body Memory. I didn't read anything about it before I watched it, and watched it purely because it was a.) stop motion and b.) had cute little string people with big heads.
The reality of it was so much more than that however. If nothing else the stop motion is beautiful. It's smooth and you forget that you're watching stop motion at all. The human movement of the characters is so precise. At first I found myself thinking "...what? What is this about?" my first impression was that it is about life and death and no matter how hard you try to fight against it we are all destined for the same fate. It wasn't until I really thought about it and noticed that the characters are in what looks like a train trailer for transporting animals that the reality of the film dawned on me. It's subtle and I didn't notice it at first but the lights moving on either side of the trailer, coming through the wooden slats suggest that they are indeed on a train and that the train is moving. It made me think of the victims of the holocaust and the unravelling of the string as a metaphor for the Nazi regime stripping away the very essences of their persona's until nothing remained of the person they once were.

This little film moved me and unsettled me and it really is worth a watch if you have a bit of time. It made me think about how sometimes animation can be a much more powerful tool for portraying bleak subject matter and important issues. With a live action film, the viewer knows what they are seeing so needs not to work it out for themselves. The experience of discovering what this film was all about was a much more memorable experience and led to a more powerful reading of the film, because it was not immedietly obvious and to have your preconceptions and assumptions shifted so dramatically is quite an experience.

Upon reading the blurb in the video description I discovered that the film is actually about deportation.

Ulo Pikkov on Vimeo  Nukufilm

After effects is not your friend...

The other night I was thinking about how I could animate my first assignment. It occurred to me that I had never really explored the fabled "Puppet Tool" in After Effects and set about animating one of the many characters I have scanned and stored on my laptop. I spent the evening just playing about with this tool and making myself laugh quite a lot. This exercise also made me remember how much of a fickle and unpredictable program AE can be. Needless to say there was a lot of shouting and threatening my laptop with a trip out of the window. 

I found the tool quite easy to get to grips with. I think in order to use it effectively i'd need to maybe modify the character a bit more, and draw it with the tool in mind rather than just trying to animate any old thing. This is something I'm looking into and continuing to experiment with so keep a weather eye to the horizon this isn't the last little video I will be posting up over the next few weeks. 

Steve Cutts animations

Today a friend showed me this wonderful animation by Steve Cutts. It was made using Flash and After effects. It's funny and dark but rings completely true to life. This is the sort of thing I want to achieve in my own work and I will definetly be taking some inspiration from these animations. I think I need to sit down with a large cup of tea and start figuring out how to use flash!

Steve Cutts - Website Vimeo

Here's a little something...

A little something I stumbled upon that I found interesting. I'm currently messing about with ideas for my first animation assignment and while searching for a 1960's style wallpaper to work as reference I found this article.
Granted it's about a year old now but still very interesting. Contemporary animation is important but my personal belief is to never forget where you've come from and what makes the contemporary stuff possible.
It's an interesting read and has definitely a.) made me think and b.) made me want to watch Yellow Submarine again.

                          How the Beatles' Yellow Submarine gave rise to modern animation

"Well, shave my legs and call me grandpa" or, Where it all began

My very first influence (with pretty much every aspect of my life... worryingly) was Ren and Stimpy.

I was introduced to Ren and Stimpy at the tender age of about four. Yes, that's right; four. My dad used to let me watch it with him when I couldn't sleep at night. Half of me thinks "Jeez dad what are you doing letting a four year old watch this show!?" and the other half thinks "Good job, pa!" Ren and Stimpy pretty much set the standard for most of my animations. The humour is dark and down right bizzare but every strange and insane thing that happens is perfectly normal and acceptable in the universe in which it takes place.

The expressiveness of the characters is something I draw inspiration from every time I sit down to create something new. The way the show's creator, John Kricfalusi, pays his own twisted homage to the famous Hannah-Barbera cartoons of the 1940's has always inspired me. The biggest influence on my own work, however, has to be the use of sound in the show. Random unrelated sounds, a duck quacking over the character blinking for example, that add so much more of the humour and depth to Ren and Stimpy's universe are something in my own work I can track back to the show directly.





From then on out I was instantly hooked by cartoons that had an extra level of dark absurdity to them. Cow and Chicken, Dexters Labratory and the shorts of 'What a Cartoon' on Cartoon Network all did their part in influencing me and the work I have created.






Ren and Stimpy. Created by John Kricfalusi and Spumco for Nickelodeon
What a Cartoon! created by Fred Seibert for Cartoon Network.