Computer Animation in Sin City

Frank Miller created, wrote, and even penned some of the volumes in the hit graphic novel series Sin City. Miller has stated time and time again that the series couldn't be adapted into a film, because it just wouldn't be done right. Independent director Robert Rodriguez, known for his over-the-top action and kids films approached Miller wanting to adapt the series. After some video tests Miller was convinced that Rodriguez would be the perfect director to bring the pages to the screen. A few months later Sin City released on April 1st to praise from critics and fans. It had a modest, yet profitable box office taking. 

The film could've just as easily been a terrible flop. The film doesn't have a particular story or character to fall, just several short stories with reoccurring characters. The reason why the film works out so well is because it has a particular style to it, and what really contributes to the film's style is the animation in the film. The film was shot with a mixture of built sets and green and blue screen. The result is lively characters interacting with their environment, but the backdrops have a flatter feeling to them. Rodriguez and Miller decided to use a heavy amount of animation for the film so that the look of it can resemble what was drawn on the page. The film has a very noir and surreal look to it while also looking pretty realistic. 

The backdrops look fantastic animated, but the animators didn't stop there. They also cleverly enhanced the characters appearance with computer animation as well. The character, Kevin is  a great example of computer animation being used on an actor. Elijah Wood is in costume, but effects are used to darken his face, and place a pair of glowing white animated glasses on his fate. The animation is used in simple yet brilliant ways to produce images that wouldn't be possible if shot practically. 

Colors are played with a lot throughout the film as well. White silhouettes, black and white footage with colorized elements, shadows on faces, vibrancy, ect. It's all simple techniques that make a huge impact on the look and feel of the film. Unlike most films that waste time and money on more realistic looking effects, the animators in the film went for a very loose and fun style, echoing of film noir. I still can't stress how impressive the film looks for being constructed with simple yet effective effects.

The Computer Revolution and Pixar

This weeks assigned chapter talks about digital animation and its rise in cinema today. It's rare to find a film today that doesn't feature animation. You have computer animated films, animated films, stop motion-Even live action films technically have animation in them, because a large group of feature films today use special effects. Special effects became grossly popular towards the end of the 90s. It was hard to find a film that wasn't using animation to broad the scope of their film. 75% of all films in 1997 contained CGI. As much as I love animated films I find that animated effects in live actions films has become very excessive and cheap looking, and I hope that filmmakers would return to models and puppetry. 


Recently I watched Waking Life, not knowing anything about the film and I was truly blown away. I'm a fan of Richard Linklater, and was expecting a nice treat, but this just blew my mind. The concept is simple, yet it allows the story and its characters to build as they search for answers to their questions. Since the film was about dreams, of course I compared it to Inception. I'm not really a huge fan of Inception, because it takes the incredible concept of dream exploration and makes it look really dull. For a film about dreams you'd expect their to be more fantasy, much like his film or Paprika. After making this comparison I realized truly how incredible animation is, because it can create images and movement that are impossible in live action film. When putting together a film you're always going to experience moments of sorrow when you realize a certain element or scene won't turn out exactly how you imagined. Filmmaking is rewarding because it allows you to create and share your vision, but the final product will never match the dream you had. Animation isn't like that. Whatever the artist wants to include in their film can be drawn out or designed on a computer screen. 




Our project is going well. The character and sets are all ready, and I've just begun to start capturing their motions. I hope to finish animating in a week, maybe sooner. Then out group can start editing soon. 

Chapter 8 of Art in Motion


Chapter 8, in Maureen Furniss’s Art in Motion,  went over the aesthetics of stop motion animation, discussing everything from look to movement. Furniss argued that 3D animations  had width, height, and depth, compared to a more 2D animation which has only width and height. Furniss also wrote about the three main types of 3D stop motion animation, being figures, clay, and pixilation. From Furniss' writing is easy to tell that one has to pay a lot of attention to detail when going about stop motion animation. Backgrounds, characters, size, angle, and lighting all help to create the mood of the film, as well as allow the production team to get good material. What I found to be really interesting was that sometimes the production designers would make characters bigger at times to get close up shots of them. If done right, the figures can come to life on screen. 


Clay Animation and the Early Days of Television: The ‘Gumby’ Series


Michael Frierson’s article, “Clay Animation and the Early Days of Television: The ‘Gumby’ Series”, focuses on the introduction of television, its advancements, and marketing. The introduction of the television really shook things up for Hollywood, and pushed them to try and make better and cleaner looking work, much like the work seen on a smaller screen in family homes. Sadly, some studios couldn't compete and due to budget cuts a lot of studios began closing sections and selling material. A lot of the material ended up being syndicated on television, because it was mostly cartoon shorts that could easily be fit into a schedule. Cartoons being broadcasted pulled in viewers, especially children. More studios began to develop projects aimed at children. With this new attraction, companies began to search for ways to market television for children.  The filmmaker Art Clokey developed the “Gumby” show. Gumby aired up until 1971, but then in the 1980′s Gumby was resurrected.  Low budget filmmakers have become fascinated with Gumby, and because of this it brought him back. 


The Brave Little Toaster


Recently, I watched Toy Story 3, but something was different this time. I still adore the movie, just something was off to me. The plot of the movie reminded me a lot of another movie, which isn't very unusual these days, yet it brought back feelings of nostalgia. An old childhood film lost in the bac of my mind. Then, when flipping through film websites, a title popped up: The Brave Little Toaster. That's a terrific film that I haven't seen in a long time, and what's more surprising was I saw a few names from the Pixar team on that list. I read into it and found out that a big number of the founders of Pixar met while working on The Brave Little Toaster, and they all acknowledge the similarities between that film and Toy Story 3. Both films feature an object that goes on a journey, feeling lost and unwanted by their master, then through a series of events they end up in a garage dump. I now love both films even more, because Toy Story 3 was the Pixar team returning to their roots and finishing a fine trilogy at the same time. 

Gender Issues in Ghost in the Shell 


There are clear gender issues within the film Ghost in the Shell. The film does present a female lead, Motoko Kusinagi, in the future with the help of a male sidekick, but Kusinagi is very sexualized in the film. Both visually and metaphorically she's painted as a lesser being in the film, being in tight clothing and being a cyborg; an object itself. Even though most of the individuals in the film, Kusinagi is often seen nude. It should be noted that the puppet master is also, but it still seems that Kusinagi's lead role is overly tainted by the context. The female seems to be part of exploitation in the film. 


Aside from Kusinagi's image in the film, there are some events towards the end of the film that raise questions. Why is it that Kusingai, who's also highly sexualized, go from being a strong female role to having her body replaced by that of a child because it was the only one available on the black market. Not only is Kusinagi being turned into a lesser being the film also unintentionally takes a jab at child prostitution, in the context of a 'child body being sold on the market'. The film seems very conflicted when it comes to Kusinagi's character, not knowing whether to portray her as strong and in charge, or as an object floating through the film.


This movie has some traces of anti-feminism throughout, but Kusinagi's image is too questionable and it ends with a male figure saving her. It's odd how the filmmakers chose to reverse the already reversed gnder roles in the film, making the strong female lead turn into the typical damsel-in-distress, who needs  to be saved by her own sidekick. Maybe the film is actually showing that animated films have always had issues of gender roles in them. If that's the case then I credit the filmmakers for being risky enough to make the gender issues apparent by having them reversed only to once again change into the common Western animation scenario. 

Animating the Boob-tube


Chapter 7
Chapter 7 in Art in Motion discusses the two categories of full animation and limited animation. Maureen Furniss talked a lot about the differences, relationships, and history of the two animation. 
Furniss believes full animation  is all about every frame being drawn distinctly different or no reptition/cycling of the images.  Limited animation has many sequences of images, which feature reoccuring images, also known as cycling. Aside from this big difference, full animation also uses more metamorphosis of shapes and sizes, playing with the z-plane and has fluid motion, while limited only stays within the x and y planes and has less frames. 
Another significant difference I found to be interesting was that full animation is visually focused, while limited is more about the audio. 


Two fine examples of how broad spectrum of limited animation can be is the fine animator, Osamu Tezuka and Disney studio. Both created limited animation outlets that turned out successful films. Tezuka had methods of cycling crowds and vehicles, while Disney cycled its environments, characters, and sequences in their children's film. 




Mark Langer's Animatophilia, Cultural Production, and Corporate Interests
Mark Langer's article entitled Animatophilia, Cultural Production, and Corporate Interests is about the famous Nickelodeon show The Ren and Stimpy Show and filmmaker John Kricfalusi. What is most interesting about the filmmaker and the children's studio was that got into a huge fight over the production of the show, and the young filmmaker sort of took the route of a rebellious artist pitting himself against a show known for it's children's entertainment success. Nickelodeon couldn't take the missed deadlines and budgetary increases. 


What was a financial issue became apparent in cultural media as the themes of The Ren and Stimpy Show began to become more mature for its young audience. Soon the show was an adult show that was on a children's channel and it became a hit and gained a legion of fans. It was the precussor show for a series of shows like South Park and Spongebob Squarepants that pushed the boundaries and appealed to a range of audiences. 


Public television and animation continues to open up to new themes, styles, and writing. 




Recently watched Animated Film or Short Film
After reading about such shows that pushed the boundaries I felt the need to watch an infamous show in that category, South Park. What's so ingenious about the show is that it appears to be nothing more than a vulgar, violent, and overly offensive show featuring young boys growing up in a demented small town, yet it uses its setting and characters to present issues that can be seen both through the boy's perspectives, as well as their parents. Thus, the viewer is treated to cleverly written story arcs featuring the characters moving through the issue, sometimes several issues, being tackled in that episode. 


A great episode is Something Walmart This Way Comes. I tried to find a clip, but I couldn't so I'm posting the DVD commentary. The video features the creators talking about how a Walmart opened nearby them and their were protests. So they chose to write an episode with Walmart in it to discuss Consumerism and Monopolies. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGfGXNsWyW0

Short Animation Assignment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzuhhBal1j8&feature=youtu.be

This short animation was done by drawing on a dry erase board, and experimenting with the markings.

Issues of Representation

Issues of Representation

"Issues of Representation" was the title of the chapters we had to read in both texts. These chapters discussed race and gender and how they are present in animation, but both writers had very different opinions on the subjects.

Furniss talked about the different ways culture is present in animation, and how it was grotesquely skewered. Artists chose to group characters in stereotypical categories. Numerous side characters, back in the day, seemed very one-dimensional and crude. Example: Speedy Gonzalez. So race was heavily featured in films back then, but didn't seem to serve a purpose other than to laugh at other races. Gender was handled just as poorly in these films. The men would seem barbaric, while the women would seem ditzy, usually with the purpose of being looked at.

Wells seemed to stress gender more in his writings, discussing characters and how their images help to tell who they are as people. Men were usually presented as average hardworking people, while women were sex symbols. Wells talked about how female characters should be more than that and how they too can be presented as strong female characters.



Prince Mononoke


I recently watched Princess Mononoke again with some friends, and fell in love with it all over again. The animation, the story, and the characters are all rich and complex. Miyazaki (and his team) have done a terrific job of immersing the audience in the world of Gods, Demons, and Man. Within a two hour span, it feels as though you've spent your whole life in the land and know all of it's folklore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkWWWKKA8jY



Project


The project is going well, as of now I'm constructing the character and sets for my segment of the film. I'm doing cut outs, so I spent the last week researching and now I'm ready to start work.