IDD Week 3

In telling stories, an animator must use many tools to connect the audience. The goal of the animator is for the viewer to understand the story he or she is trying to tell as well as to understand what the character is experiencing. The tools and techniques the animator uses all help to reinforce the story. The four shorts I viewed this week were all different and all successful. I watched each one several times and every time I came away with new insight and new appreciation for what the animator created. My favorite was The Cat Came Back.

 The Cat Came Back reminded me of all the cartoons I love. Some of the things that I appreciated the most were the animator’s use of hyperbole, music and perspective in each of the scenes. The character Old Mr. Johnson holding his breath turning blue in the bottom of the sea, the dynamite that the viewer knew would not work out well and the nine lives of the cat were all examples of extreme exaggeration that I believe makes great animation. One of my favorite parts that I found to be classic cartoon was the railroad track scene. Mr. Johnson is able to pass over the people tied to the tracks, jumps over the cow but is derailed by the bug. To me that is funny. The railroad tracks were fast and it helped moved the story along. The aerial camera angle looking down as the character falls into the pit helped tell the story of this pathetic character. Just like the panoramic camera angles panning Mr. Johnson’s house in the first scene showed a tidy and orderly life the rest of the camera angles stress his total loss of control in the rest of the scenes. The camera angles also tell the viewer a little about Mr. Johnson. The close up shots of the character looking at the cat showed the personality of the character. It showed his happiness to let someone in his lonely life. His facial expressions when the cat broke his rattle showed something about Mr. Johnson’s attachment to his childhood. Mr. Johnson’s facial expressions were a big part of telling the story.

The animator’s use of music also told the story in this short. The slow paced but cheerful tuba music with the teacup keeping in time in the first scene told the story of this content and orderly character living alone. Once the cat showed up havoc began to strike. The singing with the faster tempo and catchy tune helped with the feeling of chaos and helped narrate the story. Whenever the character left the house the music changed. In scene that the character got on the boat trying to get rid of the cat for example, the music became a nautical, quick paced music. This fast paced music helped speed along those scenes. The music changed again when the character was down trotted and exhausted going back up the hill to his house. The scenes back in the house the singing returns, reinforcing that the cat came back and Mr. Johnson can not get rid of it. This music made it apparent that this was no longer Old Mr. Johnson’s house. The music kept the rhythm of the story.

The animator gave perspective to the character and his surroundings by the simple drawing of hills and roads. It showed the little house up away from town. It also stressed the distances the character went to rid himself of the cat.  The lines helped with the movement of the characters and aided in the rhythm and timing of the scenes. The close up of tree trunks showed Mr. Johnson deep in a very large forest, for example. These tall trees dwarfed Mr. Johnson, again going to great lengths to get rid of the cat. In his own house he was quite big. The animator showed Mr. Johnson as taking up most of the doorway to his house. Perhaps this was to show there really was no room for anyone but him there. All of the different perspectives the animator used for the character helped in telling the story.

I watched this animation many times. I am in awe of the animator’s creativeness.

Works Cited

Barker, Cordell. “The Cat Came Back.” Cartoon. NFB.ca. N.p., 1988. Web. 25 Sept. 2011. <http://nfb.ca//cat-came-back>.

IDD Week 2

You know? I have been hearing a lot about how people feel discouraged about doing animations when they are not good at drawing. What they don’t seem to realize is that you do not have to be a good artist to make good animations. The animation “These are the Boring Bits,” is a prime example of this. This fifteen-minute clip about a man trying to decide if he should leave his current job just to see what else he can do with his life had what might have been some of the simplest drawing I have ever seen in an animation (well, not really but still). All of the characters were faces with no bodies and the only time you saw their hands was when they were picking up something. The backgrounds were also very simple with only a window or a poster in most of the scenes. However, what makes this animation so effective is because of what little it has (to me at least). The characters having no bodies gave the clip a very unique feel to it. I also loved how some things changed into different things like when Morgan’s (the main character) headset turns into an eye patch and pirate hook or when Morgan’s friend Caroline’s hair turns into a plant when she talks about how she wants to be a weed. Having these things helped make these scenes more interesting (which was good because without them they would be the most boring scenes).

Another example of simple drawing having an effect with animation is the short “Bendito Machine.” In this clip, we see what happens to a village that takes a machine created through some sort of religious like way and uses it for profit. With all the characters being silent, having shadowy designs and the only other color being the color of the sky, we are given a very interesting tale of what happens when you mess with nature only for your own gain.

I hope this shows you that you do not have to be good at drawing to get into animation. As long as you give it a unique feel to it, you can keep the audiences interests.

IDD Week 1

For IDD this week, we were assigned to watch a selection of animations and pick one to write about. Out of the ten animations I was given, I’ve watched two of them years before this assignment. One is “This Land,” and the one I picked was “Strong Bad Email #58- Dragon.”

The “Strong Bad Email” is a feature on the website homestarrunner.com. It stars Strong Bad who is a man with a Mexican wrestling mask for a face and boxing gloves for hands. In each episode he checks an email sent by an actual fan asking him something which he responds to while mocking the spelling errors of the sender. In this email, he was asked to draw a dragon. We then see him draw an s-shaped dragon with tiny wings and a big bulky arm and named it, “Trogdor the Burninator.” Then we cut to some of the other characters of the website making their own dragons. First was Coach Z, a tall skinny green man who wears a baseball cap sideways, who is drawing his dragon, which frankly looked more like a snake with a large head as apposed to a dragon. Next was Strong Mad, Strong Bad’s older brother who looked like a rectangular pro wrestler (sorry, that’s the only way I can describe him). Instead of drawing a dragon, we see him carving the word “DAGRON” into the table with an x-acto knife. Then we cut to Strong Sad, Strong Bad’s younger brother who has elephant feet (or hippo feet. No one knows for sure). We see him draw a much better-looking dragon than Strong Bad’s cartoony looking Trogdor. Strong Bad then burns it (hence the name Strong Bad) and walks away saying, “Trogdor strikes again!” Then we see a Trogdor theme song music video, which has become an Internet phenomenon.

When it comes to the artwork and animation, the creators make good use of it, especially when they move Strong Bad’s head when he’s in front of his computer to imply that he’s talking. Although the background for most of the cartoon is a dull blue wall, the designs for the characters more than make up for it, giving them a very cartoony feel to them. I also loved in the end when they showed a Trogdor music video where everything was presented like it was on a scroll from the medieval times giving it a good atmosphere. This was done better than in some of the other animations such as “Laid Off: A Day in the Life,” where the characters had very (and I mean Very) little animation and coloring which I found to be very boring. Back in the days of early animation, the creators of some cartoons such as Tom and Jerry or Looney Tunes were more focused more on how fluid the animation was rather than the design of the characters, which is why I admire this animation so much.

I picked this animation because it was what introduced me to a great website. What got me had me hooked was the funny and cartoony looking characters and very funny writing. Strong Bad is hilarious in every email and this one is no exception. Since watching this show, homestarruner.com has always been one of my favorite websites of all time. (Even though they haven’t updated in almost a year.)